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.