Ham's Fork: Last Day

Nick and I discussed our options for the morning in order to make sure we would make it home by 5:00.

Option 1) We could get up early, about 6:30, eat breakfast and leave by 6:50. Drive 40 minutes to where we had fished the evening before and fish from 7:30 to 11:10. Drive back to camp by 11:50, take down the tents and pack the car and leave by 12:50. With a 4 hour drive we’d be back by 4:50.

Option 2) We could pack up our tents and load the car in the morning before fishing. This would save us the 80 minute gravel road round trip drive from the fishing spot to the camp and then back.

We decided on option 2 since this would give us 80 minutes extra to fish.

It was cold first thing in the morning taking down the tent before the sun had hit us but by the time we had the tent packed up we were plenty warm.

We were still the first car at the private property access other than those who had camped there. Again we talked to the owner and paid our ten dollars each. We also talked to him about camping and he said it is included in the ten dollar trespass fee. Next time we’ll just have to camp there.

We continued using the same bead head pheasant tail nymph we used yesterday. One thing nice about this stretch of river was that you could pretty much leave the strike indicator at 5 to 6 feet above the flies since the water depth was pretty constant at 2 and a half to three feet deep, with riffles and pools well interspersed.

The size of this fish from this stretch continued to amaze me.

For the most part they were all female rainbows that ranged from 18 to 23 inches. Nick and I each caught at least a dozen of this size.

Nick was also able to catch a couple of exceptions. We saw a few beavers, muskrats and more frogs. The fish that are as long as the net look big, but when they are also as long as the net and the handle you know it is big. The biggest fish this day was a 22 and a half incher that Nick caught. It looked like a steelhead.

Ham's Fork: More Monster Rainbows

After lunch we started to work our way upstream. 

I caught a smaller rainbow and checked its throat contents to see what it was really eating - mostly small mayfly nymphs. 

The closest imitation would be a pheasant tail nymph so Nick and I tried bead head pheasant tail nymphs or something similar the rest of the day. 

This worked quite well because we continued to catch quite a few large trout, several around the 20 inch mark, as we worked our way upstream. 

These fish seemed to like the well oxygenated riffle sections and we caught quite a few in the shallow riffles right before a drop off to deeper water. 

By 7:30 we thought we had better head off to camp and get dinner started.  Where was the gate? 

We walked along the fence to try to find one of the gates that would lead us back to the car.  The fence all looked the same and there wasn’t a gate anywhere.  We were sure there was an opening we walked through to get to the river. 

We finally found a place we could crawl through but it certainly wasn’t the gate we originally went through.  Finally we found the path that would lead us back.  We followed it back to the river and took note of the location to make sure that next time we could recognize were it was.

Ham's Fork: Twenty Inch Rainbows

Thursday morning we let the sun hit the tent before getting up.  Mornings are cold up in the forest with frost showing up on the tent.  We continued eating Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast.  After brushing our teeth and loading the fishing gear into the SUV, we headed to the private property above the dam.  We met the owner and his dog, registered and paid the $10, and headed to the river. 

The cows didn’t mind much as we meandered through them and through the gate.  We noticed a few other anglers working the closest good holes so we quietly walked upstream to find some stretches not currently being fished.  As we started fishing, we could see some of the large trout as they would dart out of sight.  This raised our excitement level considerably.  I checked the vegetation in the river to see what insect life was available, lots of scuds. 

We both hooked a couple of smaller trout which managed to get off.  Smaller trout meaning that they were smaller than the big ones we saw dart out of sight earlier, but certainly bigger than the one’s we had caught the previous two days.   We would have to do better if we wanted to land one of the bigger ones. 

The first big fish I landed took a greenish grey scud.  These are hard fighting rainbows.  I let the fish take line upstream.  This was encouraging because I knew this would wear it out.  As it drifted back downstream I moved downstream as well keeping the line tight downstream of the fish so it would continue to fight against it facing upstream.  I tried to get close to it with the net but each time I would get near, it would see me and with an extra dose of energy, dart upstream.  Finally, in the middle of the stream I managed to pull it close enough to reach it with the net.  I needed a bigger net.  I couldn’t get its head to go into the net like I wanted but while the fish was still I managed to get the net under him and lift it up with the fish barely in it.  What a beauty.  It looked like a steelhead.  The gentlemen fishing downstream came up to get in on the action.  What a great fish. 

This is why we fish this stretch, he commented.  The gentleman offered to take a couple of pictures and asked me if I was a guide.  The fish measured 23 inches long, one inch shy of the entire net including the handle. 

The gentleman asked, what did you catch it on?  I answered a greenish, grey scud.  He jokingly yells back to his friends “OK guys, they’re taking greenish, grey scuds”.

I got back to Nick just in time for him to hand me his camera so I could take pictures of him releasing the big rainbow he had just caught.  This was a great start for the day. 

Ham's Fork: Flat Tire

Wednesday morning we went to the sportsman’s access closer to the dam.  After Nick put on his waders he says “oh no, we’ve got a flat tire”.  OK, let’s take the waders back off.  Needless to say, this delayed the fishing for a while.  The spare was in good shape.  In fact, it was a regular tire, not a small spare tire.  Heading back to Kemmerer we found Cooper Tires who quickly fixed the flat.  While there, we ate lunch at Taco Time and made a call home since we had phone service.

Since our fishing had already been interrupted by the flat tire, we decided to go check out the Green River and see what kind of shape it was in.  Remember, this was our original destination.  Well, the river was a couple of feet high with lots of debris floating down river.  The water was pretty clear but it would be tough wading with the river so high.  Streamer fishing would be fruitless, catching mostly weeds on every cast.  We ate lunch at my old camp site (from a previous trip) overlooking the river.  The sandwiches were pastrami, corned beef, cream cheese, cheddar cheese and swiss cheese on whole grain bread.  We ate these with Fritos, V-8 and Gatorade. 

This area is desert with only sage brush as greenery.  Seeing this made us feel fortunate we were camping in the Bridger National Forest.  We did however; still see a moose in the middle of this desert.  I slowed down to take pictures and the moose ran along with us.

We then went and checked out another access point.  Again we caught lots of trout, although still on the small side. 

While checking out the various stretches of the river, we encountered some fishermen above Kemmerer Reservoir who had good luck catching larger fish on the private property, after paying a $10 trespassing fee. 

We decided we would try this spot in the morning.

For dinner we warmed up cans of stew while watching an elk and its calf on the hillside on the other side of the river.