After a brutal 7 hour drive from Lost Wages to Salt Lake city, I arrived at my friend Jay’s house. He had been busy packing up his truck for our journey, so it was simply a matter of transferring my fishing gear from my vehicle to his truck and it was back on the road. I am fortunate that Jay was willing to drive the 4 hours from Salt Lake to the Green as I was in no condition to drive anymore that day.
We arrived in Dutch John around 1AM and it was time to look for a camping spot. Fortunately for us, we were prepared to camp in Forest Service (that means FREE) land as Jay’s truck had a shell with a padded carpet kit exactly for this purpose. We found a suitable site with little trouble, and turned in for the night.
The next day dawned bright, cloudless, and hot by the early AM. We cleaned up camp, grabbed a quick breakfast, and headed down to Little Hole to start our fishing trip. The Green is a big, beautiful river filled with big, beautiful trout. As we were walking down to the river from the parking area, we saw tons of grasshoppers jumping around. Could this be a sign?
I decided right off to rig up with a hopper, which meant that I had to break off the caddis fly that I so intuitively tied on at the truck. While I was re-rigging, Jay tossed in a few casts and was fast into a fish before I even had the previous fly snipped off. Now the pressure was on. As i was tying on a hopper, Jay was into a second fish. Could this be a sign?
I leap frog Jay to the next likely sopt and start casting tight to the banks. On my third drift, i was tight to a nice 14″ brown. Land, release, and recast. A few more drifts and I was into a smaller 12″ Rainbow. jay had leaf frogged me and I could hear him hooting and hollaring from upstream. Reel in, move upstream of Jay, start casting. Follow…follow…refuse. Recast…wham! Another fish! unbelievable!
All the signs were good. The planets were aligned, the moon was new, the weather was good, the rain was gone, and the crowds were minimal. I could not ask for more, and yet, I was rewarded with a H-U-G-E day of fishing to big trout on a beautiful river. We were so engrossed, that we did not stop for lunch until 3PM. By that time I had hooked, landed, and yes, lost more fish that I can remember. Believe it or not, I lost count.
I did manage to get some pictures which you will find below, but I will be completely honest and tell you that the fishing was so on fire that I could not bother to get the camera out of the pack for every fish that was caught between Jay and myself else risk not catching the next fish. Sad excuse, but greed cardinal factor (sin for your Catholics) in that decision.
Click each picture to see a larger image.
any more fish pics?