The Largest Trout Of My Life

Paul is my friend who introduced me to the good fishing on the Weber River and also Sportsman’s Paradise so when he invited to try out a private lake on a nearby farm for large trout, I was definitely interested. 

I assembled the typical flies for small lake or pond trout to imitate leaches, scuds, minnows and terrestrials such as grasshoppers and beetles and spiders.  I gathered up a 6 weight for a hopper dropper rig and my 7 weight for streamers. 

As we arrived at the lake I thought I may have gone overboard by selecting heavier weight rods but as I got out and saw a couple of trout cruising, I realized I had made the right choice.  The fish were large.  I started out with a beetle and a scud as a dropper.  At first some trout came and checked out the beetle but didn’t even take a look at the scud.  I clipped off the scud and continued around the pond with just the beetle.   Casting into some riffles, I got a hit.  

It ended up being a gorgeous male tiger trout in spawning colors.  

A few casts later I caught what looked like its mate.  

OK, tiger trout are sterile but they still try.  A tiger trout is a hybrid between a brook trout and a brown.

Geoff, another friend from work; gave me a couple of streamers that he had tied for me to try out a few months earlier on the Wipers at Willard bay.  

These streamers weren’t very bulky but I noticed as I stripped them in that they gave the impression of bulk and looked just like live minnows.   

Another thing I like about Geoff’s streamer is that they would remain suspended in the water column even if I stopped stripping.  With the typical wooly buggers that I commonly use with a bead head, the fly drops to the bottom if I stop stripping in line or I strip too slowly. 

Continuing around the lake, I noticed some larger fish cruising a little further out.  After a couple of retrieves where I only got them to follow, but not commit to striking; I finally got a hard strike from a fish coming up from the depths.  Paul and his Border-Aussie Addie could tell by the fight and the bend in the rod that this was a monster.  I would fight to bring the fish into the shore on each side of me only to have it swim back out or swim into the weeds where we couldn’t reach it even with my long handled net.  After a long battle we finally netted it.  Removing the streamer from the side of its mouth, I quickly lifted it up for a photo.  With the net, put it back into the water to rest.  

Bringing out the tape measure I pulled the fish onto the bank for a quick moment to measure - 26 inches!  

This was the largest trout of my life.

Overcast Days on the South Fork of the Snake River

Overcast days are what you hope for when fishing with streamers.  Since it rained most days on the float we took advantage of streamer fishing.  

Camping at Dry Canyon especially provided us with great fishing.  It was right were a shallow side channel met the deeper main current.  

 We could walk out in the shallows and cast to the seam were the shallow water met the deep water. This strategy worked well for several cutthroat and rainbows. 

Using large salmon fly nymph imitations dead drifting along this seam also worked.  

Having a whole week to work the fly rod, little Nick did a great job catching some of the biggest browns of the trip.  I was impressed.  

Stopping from time to time near runs where fast water met slow or where there was a drop-off also gave us consistent action. 

As we were floating past some other fisherman on the last day, they informed us that just before the takeout at Byington there was some whitewater that may be dangerous for kayaks, especially a little one like little Nick’s.  Looking at the map we found a boat ramp that was also upstream from two S-curves in the river that we were already concerned about.  Given the experiences reported in the previous blog post, we were already being very cautious and thought avoiding these obstacles would be wise.  Pulling into this boat ramp, called Wolf Flat, I asked a guide who was just finishing a float if she was heading to Byington or Conant and if so, could I have a ride.  Luckily she was and would be happy to give me a ride.  On the ride I found out the river level had just been lowered which usually causes the fishing to be slower like it had been that week.  I gave her a $20 bill for the ride.  I picked up Nick’s explorer at Byington and drove back to the boat ramp on the other side of the river.  We loaded up the Explorer, barely fitting in my disassembled pontoon boat.  Driving over to Conant we could see the white water the fishermen had warned us about.  The white water indeed stretched clear across the river.

Rescues on the River

Since we had two cars we didn’t need to hire a shuttle.  We dropped our equipment off at the Conant boat ramp with little Nick to keep an eye on it and to setup the pontoon.  Both Nick and I drove to the Byington boat ramp and left the Explorer there.  We drove back to Conant and little Nick had everything ready to go.  

Since we put in at mid-day, we passed up the usual camping spot which is on an island at the start of the float.  We continued on and stopped at all the “good looking” fishing spots.  

Little Nick caught the first fish, a robust cutthroat.  Way to go Nick!!!  This was a good start to the float. 

There are a lot of channels where the river braids forming islands and structure for good places to fish.  We stopped at a few more side channels where we ended up catching, between the three of us, a grand slam; at least one each of the various types of fish in the river, cutthroat, brown, rainbow and white fish.  One thing that was noticeable was that there was a white fish kill.  After I got home I read in the paper that it was due to …kidney disease.

While the side channels help create good fishing spots they can also create dangers in the water.  While we were floating, a side channel happened to hit little Nick sideways and tipped over the kayak.  Luckily we always wore our life jackets while floating.  Nick quickly pulled over to him, had him continue to hold on to his own kayak and the oars while at the same time holding onto his kayak while pulling him and the kayak out of the current and over to the bank.  After emptying the water out of little Nick’s Kayak and allowing him to rest a bit, we carefully floated over to the next campsite.  Once there, Nick was able to get him into a dry and warm change of clothes. 

Another time, while fishing one of our favorite series of side channels and islands I crossed a channel too close to where it entered the deep water of a different channel.  Although the channel I was crossing was only knee deep and seemed safe enough, the current was fast and the rocks themselves started sliding under my feet down toward the deeper water.  I ended up following the rest of the rocks right into the deep water.  The water was well over my head and the current took me in even deeper to the middle of the run.  Although I tried to swim, I had a hard time even raising my arm because the fly line with the rod attached was tangled up around my hand and fingers. Each time I went to make a stroke, I had to bring up the whole rod through the water.  I had already gotten rid of my hat and net but couldn’t let go of the rod, even though I tried several times.  By now I started worrying.  I sawing Nick running over to help and tried to yell to him that I was having trouble.  He jumped in and pulled me out.  

After Nick rescued me, a couple of ladies fly fishing from the breast cancer awareness program Casting for Recovery, pulled over to make sure I was alright and to help give me food, water, change my clothes and get help to move the kayaks and pontoon boat over to the island we were now on.  I let little Nick know this is why your mother always insists that you wear a pair of clean underpants.  You never know when a lady fly fishing guide is going to be changing your clothes.  It is times like these that you realize that those people fly fishing around you may also be the ones to help save your life.

Fall Creek Falls on the South Fork of the Snake River

Nick and I have decided that the float through the canyon stretch of the South Fork of The Snake River is our favorite trip.  This year we changed it up a bit. 

Nick invited his son, my grandson, little Nick to skip school for a week and join us.  They drove from Cincinnati to Yellowstone.  On the way they got hit by a tornado in Iowa.  Then they stayed the night in Yellowstone and got snowed on.  On their way to Swan Valley they had to take a detour because of a forest fire. 

We met up at the South Fork Lodge at 5:30, plenty of time to get the invasive species stickers for the kayaks.  

Since it was already starting to get late, we decided not to start the float until the next day.  We camped at the Falls Campground across the river and just down the road from South Fork Lodge.  There is a small tributary that enters the river near the campground which forms the Fall Creek Falls waterfall. 

This waterfall is easy to miss, both from the road and from the river unless you know it is there. 

I missed it the first time we camped at the Falls Campground and I missed it when we floated that upper stretch of the South Fork of the Snake, just up from Conant Valley.

The first time Nick and I camped at the Fall’s campground a bull moose came right into our campground.  This time, as it was getting dark, we heard an animal slowly working its way towards us.  All excited, we grabbed our cameras and kept a look out.

Finally the animal got to our camp.  It was an animal alright, a cow.

I tried out my new tent on this trip, a Bear Grilse tent.  It is a small tent, 8 ft. by 8 ft. just small enough for taking on a pontoon for a float to camp along the river.  It withstood the rain well and fit the three of us just fine…but not big enough for cots, a table and wood burning stove.  The important thing is it is easy to setup.  It’s advertised as being able to setup in a minute.  Kind of like an umbrella, the main tent can indeed be setup in a minute.  Once you add the rainfly, guy ropes and stakes it may take a couple of minutes. I was impressed and very pleased with the tent selection.

The next morning we checked out Fall Creek Falls that until now had evaded us.  They were beautiful and worth investigating.  They also overlook the most gorgeous, picture perfect valley.