Somewhere above the Mythical Confluence

Read Part 1

My first fishing adventure with Kevin was about 3 years ago in October 2008.  We happened to both be at a mission reunion for Fall LDS General Conference.  I was shocked to see him there since I knew he was living in San Clemente, CA.  It was so great catching up with him.  As were about to part ways, he said, “this may sound crazy, but do you want to come fishing with me and Andrew tomorrow?”  I was about to say that I needed to work, when thankfully my wife Crystal told me to go and convinced me I could figure what to do about that.  When I told him I would go he said, “Ok, meet us in Evanston, Wyoming at 3AM.”  Only Kevin would think that was a good idea.  I have fished for a long time and know that most fish like an hour or two after sunrise to wake up, but I agreed just the same.

I showed up in Evanston at particular gas station at the appointed hour.  I walked into the gas station to find Kevin in one of his famous conversations with a complete stranger where they sounded like old friends as he calls them by name (which is gleaned from their name tag or simply asking).  When he is in that mode you can’t quite tell if he is hassling them or just really enjoying connecting with another person.  You soon learn it is mostly the latter, although I still think there is an element of hassle in there.  These conversations can happen anywhere at anytime.

As … Continue Reading

Kevin Hegewald: 1968-2011

I can’t go forward today without writing a tribute to a man I am honored to call one of my friends and one of the most remarkable people I have known. My friend Kevin Hegewald, passed away on September 20th after a long, valiant, and courageous battle with cancer. He faced this challenge with dignity and verve and vowed that his suffering wouldn’t get the best of his enjoyment of life. In fact I would say that even though cancer won the battle, Kevin won the war with his dogged determination to have as much fun as possible in his remaining days.

I have known Kevin my whole life as a neighbor and friend. We grew up about one block away from each other and I have always enjoyed spending time with him, whether it was while hanging out with his sister Christy, or during his band practices and gigs with my brother Jamie, or most especially in recent years when he would call me at strange hours to go on some crazy fishing adventure with him and his family.

Kevin has a smile that is absolutely electric and he is able to make everyone around him feel like a friend. His sense of humor is unmatched and possibly only outdone by his always entertaining choice of words in any situation. Kevin has a “zest” for life, which is a word I will always associate with him. He used to call his little sister, Christy (who is my age), Zest as a nickname when we … Continue Reading

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.

Goat Head Gear Logo

Howdy everyone. It’s been a while since my last post. I have had my nose to the grindstone for the last 11 months as a self-employed consultant and working on a couple of other businesses to boot. The one I am most excited about called Goat Head Gear is getting closer to reality. My business partner and I have been working hard on our first product, a small shoe screw for trail running and wading, called Sole Spikes™.  You can apply the screw into the lug of any running shoe, hiking boot, or wading shoe, generally about 10 screws per shoe.  They provide AMAZING traction in winter/trail running and provide some real bite when wading, particularly with the newer rubber soled boots.  We started this process over a year ago and have been refining our design and working with engineers to get a killer product at a great price.  We are working on the first real prototype to be completed in the next 2-3 weeks.  If that is successful we will start the process of officially launching our product.  The cool news is that we are introducing our product as a project on Kickstarter.com where we will be using “crowd funding” to help pay for our initial costs.  We have some nice thank you gifts for those who are kind enough to donate.  We hope to have that live in the next couple of weeks.  Please stay tuned for updates and of course it would be great to have your support on the campaign.  Check it out today.  Enjoy!

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