July 4th on the Weber

Celebrating July 4th has meant fishing for the last few years. Why break a tradition that is working for you??

I met Bill at Creamery Lane. The water is still a little high considering it is July but we have had such a wet spring that there is still a bunch of snow in the mountains and lots of spring rain have filled the reservoirs to capacity. So we got to it and hit the first hole that will normally give a good kick to the day with a herd of Whitefish. After a few Whitefish I hooked into a good fish that was doing so much head-shaking I wasn't sure it was a Whitefish. As I got it into shallow water my first thought was rainbow, but after getting it to the net we realized that we had a Cutthroat. I have caught only a few Cutty's on the Weber over the years but I think this is the nicest one. It was a very healthy 18" Cutty - could have stopped right there for the day and been happy. Fish took a wine colored San Juan worm.
Naturally, he went right on back. Not sure if this is a spawner that ran up from Echo Res. or if this is fish is always in the river but either way it was a nice catch.

It never takes Bill long to get some fish of his own and the wine color San Juan worm kept working, along with a beaded sow bug pattern. Here are couple of trout that Bill and I brought to the net.

Bill and I fished until 11:30 or so and then we made our way back to the cars and off to the Spring Chicken Inn for lunch.

I ended up with 10 in the net and Bill was somewhere near 20 (if we count the foul hooked Whitefish....).

Best patterns today were no big surprises; Beaded Sow Bugs, San Juan worms, and grey scuds.

Wader Recycling

A couple of years ago I found a pair of pretty cheap breathable waders in a garbage can. Being the curious person I am, I 'fished' them out and threw them in the car. When I got them home and saw how badly they were torn and that repairing them would be really hard I started thinking about what I could do with them. No brilliant ideas came to mind and I'm pretty sure they ended up in the garbage again.

So the other day I was surfing some fishing sites and came across a link for Recycled Waders. This site is actually really interesting and worth a look for those who might have a damaged pair of waders. http://www.recycledwaders.com


I'm think I'm going to order myself a wallet. Now if I could just find something to do with the OLD pair of neoprenes I have out in the shed.
-SP

Goofing Around with Pictures

A couple of years ago we were fishing Pork Fork [name changed to protect the innocent fish]. My wife Christie was with us and she was having a good time hooking up with some great slab rainbows. (see photo)


After the trip we got home and I was uploading the pictures from the camera. At first glance everything seemed okay, maybe a little cropping was in order and then I saw a little something out of place.


Some random expletive rolled out as I smiled and had a nice chuckle about it. I clearly hadn't seen Bill when I took the picture. So I had some cropping fun and "Little Billy" was born.


Now fast forward to today (5/29/09) and Bill and I went back up to the scene of the crime hoping to find those big piggy rainbows again with the built-in photo opportunities.
Imagine my glee when I see Bill trying to take a self portrait of a fish he just caught and he has his back to me. Could I pass this up??? Heck no...... so later that evening I get an email with evidence of a successful photo hijacking.


That is FANTASTIC!!!!!

So how was the fishing? The river was blowing hard in the morning and the off-color river makes me think the reservoir is turning over. We caught a few but no big daddy's today. Around noon the river dropped a good 6 inches and that pretty much killed it. I did have one really great strike on a grey Zonker that was a classic territorial strike. No way that fish was coming off the hook - it was set clear through the side of the mouth. I think the overall most consistent pattern today were bright red worm patterns or even "dirty worms" as I call them.

I'm really hoping the run-off water holds for another couple weeks so I can make at least one more journey up there in hopes of clear water and bigger fish.

Weber River - March 27th 2009

We had a nice break between storms today. Had some snow yesterday that quickly melted and another storm headed our way for the weekend so today was a great chance to get out and do some fishing.

Whitefish Jack and I had been trying to line up schedules for a few weeks and finally made it work. Jack has been logging WAY too many days on the river without me. I met Jack, his father Daryl, nephew Dominic and Bill on the Weber just after noon. We met at what we call "Creamery" since it is just off Creamery Lane in Hoytsville.

Jack and company had been fishing for around 90 minutes and already had some in the net. So Bill and I were anxious to get caught up and find a few trout of our own. We hit a really big hole that normally has good fish in it and for 30 minutes we came up empty. We changed patterns, added weight and basically beat the water pretty good with no results. It was starting to look bad when ol’ Whitefish Jack wandered down to us. He brought with him the magic Whitefish power that causes all Whitefish within a 500 yard radius to instantly start feeding.

Thank goodness he showed up and after the deserved mocking of our fishing skills, Jack proceeded to show us up. BIG TIME. While frustrating it never ceases to amaze me how Jack can just make fish strike. Within minutes we all had caught fish and jokes and smiles were back out. The ever popular phrase “Get out of my hole” was echoing across the river every time someone hooked up.

At one point I was waiting for Bill to pick up his line so I could “crowd” him a little and he had a great strike that sent a really nice trout back flipping out of the water. Too bad it came free. A while later in almost the same spot I nailed a really nice brown trout that made 3 spectacular leaps from the water to the joy of Jack and myself. It was about 10 minutes after Bill had walked back up river so I think this trout was waiting for him to leave.

All said and done it was a great day to be on the water. Temps were in the high 40s to low 50s depending on clouds and wind. We had some midges hatching but only saw a couple small fish slurping dries.

Jack ended up with something like 34 fish. I never got the tally but I’ll assume that 32 of them were Whitefish. Bill was near 10 and about half trout. I caught 7 and hooked up another 5-6 times. I caught 4 browns and 3 whites but that big brown that gave us a great tail-dance show and then fought hard was a great fish for the day. Flies for the day were Beaded Sows, Larva Lace Worm, Wine San Juan Worm, and Jack's Newly Created Unnamed Fly

Water was slightly off color, probably from snow melt, but the river was higher than expected. I noticed that the water managers have Echo Reservoir pretty darn full for late March. I haven’t seen Rockport Dam but hope to get back up here next week to see how full they are before the run-off gets raging. Probably another week before they flood the river out to fill up all the irrigation systems that pull water from the Weber. Can’t believe that irrigation season is just over 2 weeks away. Time to start watching the river flow reports and get excited for the rainbow spawn and spring fishing.

Jack - You are the ONLY person I know who could catch a Carp that big out of the Weber and be proud of it. What a freakin' pig fish.

-Scott

Wet Wading the Weber River

After a long drought of not fishing I have finally got some fishing in.

On Saturday July 26th, 2008 I fished the Weber River near Wanship, Utah. I went with Jack at 5am to be on the river relatively early. We have been wanting to fish a certain stretch for a while and now with the Utah law changes it was going to be possible again. The fishing was overall excellent for a hot July day. Dog days of summer are slow to actually affect the river this year with higher than normal flows for July. The river was flowing a good 25% higher than I was expecting to see and the so the water was a little off color and quite cold. Great for the fish!!!

We got to an area we affectionately call "School Hole" and basically put up camp. This is huge hole that is a good 8-10 feet deep with a big run on top of the hole making this a great place for fish to hold and casually eat as food floats by. A lazy trout favorite for sure. This also has some big boulders in the bottom of it making it easy to snag up, but the big challenge is the back eddies. This give the fish easy holding water and makes detecting strikes pretty hard sometimes.

We started off fishing Prince nymphs (12-14) and Pheasant tails (14-16) and "Whitefish Jack" starting hooking up immediately. Of course Jack can catch Whitefish in a puddle on the interstate so this is no big surprise. I took a little longer to finally hook up, and after changing my dropper to a green larva lace caddis I finally caught a whitefish. We did some river screening and found green lace worms and lots of sow bugs. Classic Weber river fodder.

I broke off on a big snag and re-rigged with a grey sow bug and caddis dropper and that started catching me fish. By lunch I had 11 in the net with another 10 hookups that didn't play out. Jack had something like 18 (17 Whitefish - including one that when netted appeared to be lassoed because the leader was wrapped around the fish but no hooks to be pulled).

After lunch we fished until about 6pm. We decided to wet wade the afternoon and the river was pretty cold but felt really good at the same time. When time came to start working our way back to the cars I had 17 in the net with at least 15 hookups that I just couldn't keep on. I caught 1 Rainbow and 3 Browns and the rest were Whities. Jack had 32 by his count but sometimes I think Jack counts them before they are in the net....... (love you Jack)

The best patterns were Provo Sows, Jack's Red Headed Step Child, Green lace worm caddis, and prince nymphs. We didn't see much bug activity but a few PMDs were around and of course we had little midges around too. Not alot of dry fly activity but there were tons of hoppers along the trail so those days are not far away.

*******************
Friday August 1st I met Phat Matt and Jack again at Wanship for some afternoon wet wading. We fished our way up to School Hole again and had a great time fishing with Phat Matt again.

By the time we headed off the river for dinner at the Spring Chicken Inn, I had 7 in the net. One Rainbow, 3 Browns and 3 Whities. I had one big male brown with a HUGE head and jaw that was pushing 20 inches. We had a photo lined up but fish dropped and disappeared before we could get the photo. Matt caught 3 (2 whities / 1 brown) but the brown he caught took him for quite a ride down river and Matt was all smiles about it. Jack caught 9 - ALL WHITIES - and we that is why he is known as the Whitefish Whisperer.

Those 2 big browns made this a great couple of hours. Again it was Beaded sows, Provo Sows and Prince Nymphs.

Utah Fishing Laws change - July 18th 2008

On Friday July 18th 2008 the Utah State Supreme Court issued an opinion on a case that had been traveling the courts for some time. This was a case concerning trespassing laws and how landowners enforce them over the rights of the public to use a waterway.

It was long my opinion that Utah's laws were not up to date with how most Western states had instituted the way that sportsman or recreationalists use the waterways. With Montana leading the charge in recognition of how much the fisherman and outdoorsmen use the water, Utah has been a little slow to take up the challenge of who has the rights of the water.

For some background on this you can look up the "Equal Footing Doctrine" which is what lots of river rafting groups use to make their claims for access to run certain waters. This basically says that the states have a requirement to hold the waterways in the public trust. It also says that the states cannot give away this right by way of land deed or other method. In the 1970's the state of Utah sued the US Gov't using this doctrine and the newly passed Clean Waters Act to force the government to allow certain use of the Great Salt Lake. They won and in the decision the courts expanded the law to include any tributary of the navigable waters that fall under the "Equal Footing Doctrine".

In Utah up to this new court decision, many landowners would refuse access to the waterways even to rafters and kayak groups and would often, illegally, place fences across the rivers. The battle between outdoors & sportsmans groups and landowners has been going on ever since.

The court decision in essence reads that in Utah if you are in the river you are not trespassing. This is marvelous news for fisherman. This means we can enter the rivers on public access or areas and then stay in the water and fish the water that was previously "posted". While this isn't going to be the favorite ruling for landowners this is a new era for sportsmen and finally drags Utah's laws into the 21st century.

I look forward to fishing a bunch of water that I haven't fished for years.

San Juan River Review

We have been home from the San Juan for a month now so I figure I had better post the results. The water this year is WAY up due to record levels of snow in the Cortez mountains in Colorado the BLM decided to raise the river from 600 cfs to 3000 cfs to clear some water before the run off and they were planning to raise the river to 5000 cfs once the run off begins. With 3000 cfs coming from the dam we knew that fishing below Texas hole would be really difficult without a boat so we planned to attack the upper stretch known as the Braids and Kittie Hole.

We began our drive around 2pm from Salt Lake City and we crammed ourselves and gear into Leland's Suburban. This ended up being a great vehicle for 4 guys and their gear and put me in the market for a 'Burb' myself. The trip down was uneventful and after some gas stops and pit stops we made it Farmington, NM around 10:30pm. Of course we hadn't bothered to eat dinner so we found a still open Del Taco and ate there. We drove to the Walmart to buy our licenses and other misc. junk and then hit the road for the 20 miles to Abe's Motel and Fly shop.

Abe's has been around longer than I have been alive so some of the rooms aren't that new or that nice but they are right on the river and very convenient. We have stayed there twice now and previously I had camped in the Navajo State park so this is a real plus to have a shower and bed every night. When we found our room we were really surprised to find a newer room that would comfortably sleep 4 guys if one took the floor. The notes on the room are filed away for future reference. The one MAJOR downer to Abe's is that they only have 1 station on the TV!!! It comes in on 3 channels but it is the same station. COME ON ABE - HOW ABOUT A LITTLE SATELLITE OR SOMETHING???

Friday morning we hit the river and headed up from Texas hole. Hard to picture the volume of water until you see it, and it was impressive. We did some scouting and found some fishable water and got into a few fish. The secret was to find a decent channel of water with a good feeding lane or riffle above it and then you would find fish below there. Numbers of fish per day were down a bit from where you would like them but the quality is sure there. Actually the issue isn't number of fish, rather the fact that there is so much water means that the fish are really spread out. You could see fish in many places as we waded to new sections. The fish are just all looking for places to not have to swim hard and get lots of food and with the high water in the braids there are lots of places for fish to hold.

I am posting the pictures very late in this process. I also have some video I need to clean up and post as well. Also, somehow I never got a photo of Leland with a fish. I know he caught some. I'll have to see what I can dig up and get it posted too.

This final picture is after a full day fishing and then a HUGE mexican dinner, it was all I could do to keep the eyes open. Off to dreams of bigger and bigger fish.