Many people know Lake Powell as a summer boating paradise, but most don’t know that it is also a paradise in the winter, but for fishing. ”Roughin’ It Outdoors” is a locally produced outdoor themed TV show that has evolved over the years, but is always worth a watch. I never miss a week. Last Saturday night they featured striper fishing at Lake Powell with three good segments on the subject. Looks like it would be a fun trip to take.
I really dig the stories that Brett Prettyman (@brettprettyman) contributes to the Salt Lake Tribune and his blog. He always has a cool story to tell. I love this one using nets through the ice to remove carp from Utah Lake. For those who don’t know there is a massive multi-year project underway to clean up the state’s largest freshwater natural lake which is managed by the Utah Lake Commission. One of the biggest parts of that plan is ridding the lake of carp which have a severe impact on the overall health of the lake. It would be great to see nice clean and clear water in Utah Lake for the first time in my lifetime. The goal is to restore the endangered June Sucker to it’s only native body of water. Perhaps they could even restore the lake to its historical glory as a producer of gigantic bonneville cutthroat. I think another eventual benefit of cleaning up the lake would mean a cleaner and possibly more trout friendly Jordan River. This is a nice river in all other respects (except maybe for the the occasional floating body) and is a shame that it can’t be enjoyed as a trout fishery.
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 they all were. The yellows, reds, and blues were all very vivid.
I will also report that I nymphed for a little bit but didn’t meet with much success. I lost the two brassies my son tied for me early on in the endeavor so I didn’t take a fish on them, but it was fun to give it a shot.
As for other observations on the day. There weren’t a ton of birds out, but I saw a bald eagle fly overhead, some magpies, song sparrows, and heard chickadees all day. It was a perfect winter fly fishing outing.
I came across a few interesting outdoors related headlines this weekend. Here is the run down:
Utah’s exotic species: The good, the bad and the ugly – The Salt Lake Tribune – This article covers several of the numerous introduced species to Utah – some loved and some not so much. Of they ones they list I am most annoyed by starlings, burbot, quagga and zebra mussels, and tamarisk. A couple of trees they didn’t list, but drive me nuts is the are chinese elms and sumacs; they are nearly impossible to kill. It strikes me as a bit hypocritical to pick and and choose which non-native species we tolerate. In just about every case on the list, I would be just as happy with the native counterpart in sport. Bonneville cutthroat trout are the native trout in Utah and they are fun to catch on the fly. I don’t know if I would miss brown or rainbow trout if they were never introduced but hard to imagine. I know that bighorn sheep were once abundant in the mountains here so not sure why they favored bringing goats in instead of recovering sheep.
Man catches carp the weight of Kylie Minogue – The Telegraph – Perhaps the best written headline of the weekend. I would like a to catch a fish that could be measured to a popular celebrity, perhaps the size of someone like Meatloaf or David Crosby. Anyway that is one MONSTER carp. Looks like something from an episode of River Monsters or Hooked.
Utah Field Guide: Bonneville Cisco – Roughin’ It Outdoors on KUTV 2 – A little feature on a fish found only in Utah’s Bear Lake. A smelt-like remnant of the ancient inland sea that covered the region, Lake Bonneville.
Dirty air has Utahns fleeing – Deseret News – Not my favorite because it is cool, just sick of the dirty air around here in our mountain home. I can barely even see the mountains today it is so dirty out there. Time to move to the country. Yuck.
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 fish hit the water, if not a moment before. It was a truly amazing encounter that I am grateful have witnessed.
I had a great outing today on the Lower Provo River in Provo Canyon, UT. It started off rather sketchy as the day was really snowy and I wasn’t sure if my 20 year old Honda Accord was up to the task, but I figured if I just took it easy I could get there without any issue. My usual 40 minute drive was more like 80 minutes, but once I got there I found I had the whole stretch to myself. I went to Vivian Park and fished up from the bridge. Given then weather I determined I would be nymphing. It was about 18-20 degrees Fahrenheit and a constant snow was falling. I had in mind to fish a fly I haven’t used in a while; a big, juicy cranefly larva pattern about size 6. I trailed it with a size 14 red fox squirrel nymph. For weight I used a BB size split shot and an 8 ft leader with 5x tippet. On my fifth cast of the day, I took a nice brown trout about 15 in long. It took to the air straight away after being hooked. Once I landed it, I could see that he had eaten the cranefly larva. Over the next 10 minutes minutes I landed two more fish both were mountain whitefish of decent size and both foul hooked. I think they were taking the cranefly and I was hooking them with the RFSN. The cranefly was big enough they couldn’t fit it in their tiny mouths. I hooked 3 or 4 more browns ranging from 11-14 inches and all on the cranefly. The fish of day had to be the 18 inch rainbow that was a healthy slab of a fish. Rainbows aren’t common fare on the Provo River and this one as a great fish. It took the RFSN. The fish was a beautiful shade of steel blues and lavenders. I had originally thought I was snagged when I hooked it but he eventually started moving and put up a pretty good fight.
By the time I hooked him I had run out of 5x tippet (I know, stupid) but had switched to 4x and it didn’t seem to be an issue and allowed me to play him a little harder. I took a couple more browns from the same long run and then moved up several hundred yards. The weather was getting colder so I called it a day. Not a bad way to spend 3 hours.
Some additional notes from the trip. I saw several american dippers, song sparrows, and a bald eagle flew over head through the snow. I also observed at least 2 fish feeding up on the surface but didn’t make the switch to dries. It was a fun trip. Enjoy the slide show.
During the recent Thanksgiving holiday my family and I visited my wife’s family in Arizona. My father-in-law is an avid fisherman specializing in bass of all kinds. We usually take his boat out at least once while during a visit. This year we went to Saguaro Lake in pursuit of Yellow Bass. Up until last year I had no idea that such a fish existed. They are small and resemble a White Bass, but have a yellowish tint to them.
To catch these little guys you have to find a spot where hey are grouped and jig for them. They tend to be in about 20-40 feet of water and you can really only catch them if they are on the bottom. Suspended fish are too hard to catch. The secret jig we use is a 1 oz lead weight painted white with a faint pearly fleck and a treble hook attached to the bottom. Such a simple jig has turned an amazing variety of fish in my last two trips for yellow bass including a channel cat, a largemouth bass, two bluegill and of course lots of yellow bass. Here are photos from the last trip:
Possibly the smallest ever yellow bass taken on a hook. Also you can see the jig here.
I am always on the lookout for big fish stories and found this great one from the Salt Lake Tribune. This woman caught an enormous lake trout on a fly in the Wind River mountains in Wyoming: http://www.sltrib.com/outdoors/ci_14027915 I am always jealous of stories like this. I never seem to have issues catching fish but they never have much size to them…hopefully soon!
