Let’s face it, fish are killing machines.  As beautiful and peaceful as they seem, they know how to eat!  In this episode of fish vs. other creatures, a baby duck finds out what the inside of a pike looks like.  (Thanks to Brett Prettyman for sharing this and the trout rattlesnake videos).  Enjoy it over and over again.  Also please excuse the curse words.

I love this video. Few things are funner than getting a trout to eat some kind of crazy fly.  In this case…a baby rattlesnake.  Love it!

Adam Eakle, (Roughin’ It Outdoors) has a nice profile on bonneville cutthroat brood stock management in Little Dell and Mountain Dell reservoirs. Looks like there are some pretty nice trout in there. Wish I could embed the video, but instead check out the link:

Little Dell Bonneville Cutthroat Trout

Mountain & Little Dell’s Bonneville Cutthroat Trout via KUTV

The Kreelex is a successful pattern for trout. I have fished it on the Snake and Green Rivers, both with success. The audio on this isn’t so great.

From This is Fly Daily

via LOADED.

This is a great fishing photo from 1900.

Shorpy :: History in HD – High-Definition Historical Photos
via The Gentle Art: 1900.

Amazing footage of tarpon dining on glass minnows. The minnows look like showers of sparks like those home fireworks. Would be cool to see up close.

This is Fly Daily

via TARPON AND GLASS MINNOWS.

This is a great post on the Utah on the Fly forums with some nice how to video on some unique fly patterns.  Check it out and get out fishing soon.

Fly Fishing Utah – The Utah Fly Fishing Resource

via Strawberry Fodder.

20" Snake River Finespot, the fish of the trip

It’s always hard to post the last day of a trip partly because of how busy life gets when you are back and partly because I think it is hard to admit that the trip is finished.  Well, this trip ended with a bang.  After 2 days of beating the water into a lather with not many fish to show for it, we headed to the Snake River for a shot at redemption…and we found it.  After picking up our licenses, we hit the river about 9:30 AM.  We decided that our best hope lay at the Wilson Bridge. There is a great shelf at the foot of the bridge that we fished for about an hour getting chases on streamers and landing a few smaller trout on a dry and dropper rig.

I set out up stream and immediately found some amazing water and saw that there was a healthy green drake hatch underway, so I switched to an olive wulff and a beadhead PT dropper.  The results were nearly instant.  I hooked and landed a nice 16″ cutthroat and then another about 12″ inches long.  I walked the bank and cast nearly straight upstream and found the fish within about 1-6′ from the bank. I next hooked a little whitefish on the dropper.  Another hundred yards upstream I got a HUGE trout to take my fly, but somehow my knot came undone and I broke him off.  What a bummer.  I kept on with a few more fish in the 10-12″ range.

Paul and I met up again and found another monster … Continue Reading

Today was another SLOW fishing day with a lot of walking and casting.  We started out on the Henry’s Fork in Box Canyon.  I hooked into a pretty big trout that unfortunately I didn’t land.  I landed a couple of little fish.  One big drawback was that the water was milky and made it tough to see what was going on.  On the plus side there was a tremendous hatch of mahogany duns, blue winged olives, and caddis, but it didn’t really seem to get the fish looking up.  We had fun watching an osprey fishing and saw some other cool birds.

We decided to move to the Madison and see if we could do any better. The water there was really nice and I was able to land a nice brown trout on a little bead head pheasant tail I was dropping behind an elk hair caddis.  Paul hooked and flung way may be the smallest trout ever taken on a fly.  It was smaller than my index finger (see the web album link.” Thankfully the scenery and company makes up for the very slow fishing.

7th Annual OOF Day 2

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