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East Carson River – 08/25/08 Early AM

This Monday dawned bright and early for me.  I was meeting my friend Dave at hangman’s bridge for a quick outing at 7am.  That means I am out of the house by 6:15 so that I can get some gas and a cup of coffee…you have to be crazy to be a fisherman.

Our plan is to hit the trail at Hangman’s, hightail it to the Creek hole, fish for an hour or so, and hike back out.  Dave and I both have work, but I know that the boss is out of the office, so I figure that if I check in around 9:45-10:00, no worries.  Anyone that has done this hike knows that it is an easy hike after the first hill, and a great time to catch up so that you do not waste time chatting while actually in the water.

We arrive at the Creek hole and I notice rising fish in the big pool below the hole.  Question is – what are they taking.  Not being able to identify the bug that is hatching, I take the safe route and tie on a #20 Parachute Adams to try to match what I see.  No takers.

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West Carson River – 08/19/08 Early AM

Back from Utah and back to my home waters.  I am finding that I am super busy trying to get caught up with three weeks of email, phone messages, honey-do’s, etc.  I start to burn of the catch-up routine, so the best remedy is to head out fishing.  Since this is a work day, I have to do one of my early morning slams.

Leave the house by 6:45am.  On the water by 7:15am. Done fishing by 8:30am.  Back in the office and ready to work at 9:00am.

I decided to keep it simple and hit up the West Carson at the gauging station up the road from the house.  The first thing I notice when I see the water is how much lower and clearer than even a month ago.  I guess that I hoping it would be the same, but that is an unrealistic expectation.  As I string up the rod, I am diligently keeping an eye on the back wall of the gauging station hole.  I see some gentle rises in the slack water, so I tippet down to 6x and tie on an olive-bodied spinner.  I slowly creep into position and start casting.  Up comes a fish to look at my offering – refusal.  Another fish comes up to take a gander – refusal.  Hmmm…..

After about 10 more drifts with no activity, I change to a #18 Para Adams.  First drift, a fish comes up to take a gander.  Nope!  Then another.  Again, refusal.  Now I am getting flustered.  In total frustration, I try a #12 Royal Trude.  This fly is like NOTHING that is on the water and is much, much bigger than any fly hatching.  But, a friend once told me that you sometimes have to “give them a reason” to react.  First drift and I nail the 12″ ‘Bow that seems to prefer the back wall between two rocks.  She is easily the biggest fish in the hole in this thin water and she fought nicely.  I figured that she spooked the entire hole at this point.

A quick readjustment upstream to the cable hole, and I grab a super spunky 10″ trout on the first drift.  He was tight agaist the bank, under a rock that I have seen many anglers stand on to fish this hole.  Just goes to show you that just because you fish the same river freqently, does not mean you have to fish it the same was every time.  Mix it up a little and you might be surprised.

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Utah Safari Pt 4 – Big Cottonwood Creek

4 days, and a big circuitous loop of North Eastern Utah, I find myself back in Salt Lake City.  There is a big trade show to unpack and prepare for, but there are still three days to go before opening bell and one more fishing outing in the Utah Safari left to talk about.

After spending a few hours finalizing my booth setup on the second morning, I decide to head out fishing for the rest of the afternoon.  I have to be at the airport later that evening to pickup the boss, but I have around 8 hours to fish.  I wanted to try something new, but close.  I stopped in at the Western Rivers FlyFisher and got the scoop on what was close and fishing well.  The recommendation was to hit up the Big Cottonwood Creek just up the road.  Good thing I did as the best tip I took out of that shop was that waders were mandatory on that watershed.  On the drive up the canyon, I did not see the sign, but at the parking area on my way out, I witnessed a warden giving a fisherman a stiff warning for not heeding the rules.  I hunted for the sign on the way down and sure enough, it was posted.  I bet it was in the proclamation as well, but who reads all the fine print.

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Utah Safari Pt 3 – Current Creek

After a full day of hiking and fishing on Nameless Spring Creek, we drove back into Vernal, and ate a quick meal in a restaurant.  yeah…we wimped out on the camp dinner, but we knew that we still had about 2.5 hours to drive to our next camping spot and our excuse was that we did not want to be prepping and eating dinner at 10PM.

We figured that it would be difficult to find a free and available camping spot where we were heading.  We got lucky in that as we drove up the dirt road, we found one spot in an area all alone from the crowds, above a section of river that we were going to fish the next morning…perfect!  it did rain a bit that night, but nothing that was going to cloud up the water.  All was good.

At this point we were back in known territory for me.  I have had the pleasure of fishing Current Creek the previous year and I really liked this little creek.  Technically, the Current is a tail-water, but it fishes more like a meadow stream with all the beaver dams.  The fish are very pretty and range from small to beastly.  Your average size fish is about 12″, but you have the potential to catch “a ton” of fish in the course of the days fishing.

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Utah Safari Pt 2 – Nameless Spring Creek in Eastern Utah

After a great day on the Green, we camped one more night in the killer spot we found below Dutch John and departed the next morning for [nameless] spring creek outside of Vernal Utah.  It was a short 2.5 hour drive from our camping spot.

I promised not to divulge the name of this spring creek, and I plan to keep that promise (unless you happen to be one of my closest fishing buddies).  This place reminded me of Hot Creek.  It burbles out of the ground, flows for about 5 miles and confluences with the Green.  It was small creek overgrown with brush and tons of that horrible plant, stinging nettle.

We arrived at the parking area, and were elated to find that there was only one other vehicle.  We prepped for the day and started the hike.  I knew that we were going to hike most of the way down to the Green and then fish our way back upstream.  I was anticipating an 8 mile day of hiking and at the end of the day, that is exactly how I felt.  On the hike downstream, we passed several really cool petroglyph sites, so of course we had to stop and check them out.  About half-way down, we ran into the other carload of folks and they were HIKERS.  That meant that we were the only fishermen on the river (so far).

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