Today we floated the Madison River from Palisades down to some other place I can’t remember the name of.  On our way to the river from West Yellowstone we stopped at an old favorite fishing spot, but my new mecca, the fly shop at Slide Inn.  The streamer selection there was unbelievable.  You have to love a shop that has more streamers than any other flies.  We picked up some crazy articulated flies and started out the day with high hopes.  Fishing was very slow going. It took us a while to get into some fish.  I ended up catching two nice rainbows on a black conehead sculpin.  Otherwise we hooked only a few more fish for the entire 11 miles of floating.  We worked hard and landed a brown trout, a big whitefish, and a bunch of small rainbows.  In all the day was nice, but the fish were few and far between.  Now, where to fish tomorrow?!

7th Annual OOF Day 1

Winter mule deer herd

Yesterday my family and I returned home from a weekend vacation to southern Utah to watch my oldest son play in a soccer tournament.  The weather was fantastic and we had a great time.  The drive home was full of great wildlife sightings.  We had one stretch where I spotted 3 bald eagles and 2 golden eagles in about 8-miles of road.  The other highlight was a huge group of mule deer around Mona, UT that consisted of about 100-150 head and there were numerous other groups of deer along the entire drive.  It is fun for the kids to see those animals (well and for me too).

Passing along a cool video to go along with a previous post on bald eagle viewing events coming up in February.  Again, do what you can to get out and see these awesome birds.  By the way I think I saw two baldies flying over Murray Park yesterday, but not 100% positive.  Keep your eyes to the skies!

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I had a great outing yesterday (Jan 20, 2010) to the middle section of the Provo River in Midway, UT.  It also happened to be my birthday.  I was very excited to get up there and had been planning this trip for a couple of weeks.  I got to the north parking lot around 10:30 AM and just as the snow was letting up. This combination turned out to be the right one as the fish were very active and hungry.  As soon as the snow stopped falling and the sun started to peak through the clouds there was a healthy hatch of black midges that had the fish feeding heavily.

I had in mind for sometime that I was going to fish streamers and try and get at some of the larger browns.  So that is the approach I took.  Within 10 minutes I had already landed two nice brown trout, the second being the fish of the day at just under 18 inches (to the left).  They were both aggressive strikes that left no doubt I was on the right track.  I was fishing an olive cone head sculpin pattern that is a cross between a muddler minnow and a wooly bugger.  I worked my way around through a few more runs and gave in to the siren song of the rising fish, but soon changed back as I was having a hard time seeing my flies in the light conditions.  In all I fished for about 6 hours and landed about 7 trout all of them quality fish.  Perhaps what I found most striking was how beautifully they colored … Continue Reading

Here are a couple of interesting stories from the local news from both today and yesterday.  Currently in Salt Lake City we have the Outdoor Retailers Winter Market which I would love to be attending, but alas I am not an outdoor retailer so I guess that will have to wait for another year.Outdoor Retailers Winter Market

• Outdoor Retailer Winter Market Expo: Utah retailers enjoying local advantage
• Outdoor Retailer show spurs innovation
• Outdoor Retailer debuts with a flurry

Wildlife News

• 40 bison will soon have a new home
• Two chances to see bald eagles:  I have seen an eagle in each of the last 3 fishing trips I have taken.  I can recall a time not too long ago, when I never saw eagles or rarely on trips up to the greater Yellowstone region.  I am so amazed by how well they have come back from the brink of extinction.  As a kid if I saw a bald eagle it was a unbelievable sighting.  Well I still feel that way, but to my children it is a common place occurrence.  I think that is pretty great.  If you haven’t seen an eagle recently get out to one of these viewing events.  You won’t be sorry.

Yellowstone Earthquake Activity

• Update on Yellowstone Earthquakes

Last October I was on a float trip fishing the South Fork of the Snake River with my favorite guide Bart Taylor and my cousin.  We were fishing streamers all day and meeting with pretty good success.  Around lunch time, my cousin hooked up with a nice 16-17 inch rainbow trout.  Bart dropped anchor while we landed the fish and snapped a couple photos.  As we released the fish, it slipped from our hands prematurely and started to float on it side down stream. Bart immediately started to pull up anchor so we could retrieve it.  It was seconds after the fish hit the water and a mere 6-8 feet away from the boat, that an eagle swooped down and grabbed the fish from the surface and lighted on another tree to eat his prize catch. Needless to say, this took us all by surprise.  I just missed accidentally capturing the moment on camera as I took a photo of the fish right as it was dropped (picture to the left).  Bart says he didn’t see what had happened, but knew something strange was happening because he could feel the gust of wind as the eagle pulled back just before hitting the fish.  He looked up just after the fish was taken.  We all looked at each other to make sure we hadn’t just hallucinated the whole thing after hours of slinging lead.  We looked up to see another eagle sitting in a bare cottonwood tree, presumably waiting for us to drop him another snack.  I think the first bird must have left his perch the moment that … Continue Reading