The Amazing Summer Fishing on the Weber River

It has amazed me the past couple of years at how good the fishing has been during the summer on the Weber River.  There were many years when I’d often fish the lower Provo River and would rarely catch a fish in July or August.  My daughter Sara came out again this past summer with her husband Nick and the four kids.  This is always a fun activity packed week.  I also look forward to spending time fishing with Nick as well as taking the grand-kids fishing.  This year I started out by taking Nick fishing for Wipers at Willard Bay.  

Last spring I had good luck fishing with Ron catching our limits at the inlet of the bay so I wanted to show Nick this wonderful fishery.  Well, we didn’t have any luck at all.  I felt bad wasting one of Nick’s vacation days on unproductive waters.  Back at work, talking with my fishermen friends; they had the same experience with it being great at certain seasons and totally dead at others. This trip however did give us a chance to explore the Smith & Edwards store. You can see the store from I-15 with the sign “We have everything you’re looking for, if we can find it.”  I’ve always wanted to check it out but never took the time.  It seems that every time I’m passing that location, I’m either in a hurry to get somewhere or I’m in a hurry to get home.  The Smith & Edwards store has a small restaurant, restrooms and tons of outdoor equipment, clothes, supplies or whatever…if you can find it.

The rest of the week we fished the Weber River.  Most sections were very productive and we caught quite a few good sized trout.  

One section that was good the previous year wasn’t so good this year.  

It often makes me wonder how you can fish one mile of river and catch a dozen fish while fishing the next mile you don’t catch a single one, even when the water looks good.  

With just Nick and me, we were able to cover great distances of stream, from one access point overlapping into the next and always anticipating the stretch of river just around the bend. This is my favorite type of fishing.  

Fishing a stream that you can just barely wade across with small nymphs and catching lots of willing brown trout.  The trout are good size, 14 to 19 inches for the most part.  

We would catch a few white fish, lots of browns, a few rainbows and a cutthroat once in a while. 

Utah has this Walk-in access program where the Division of Wildlife Resources leases land from land owners for hunting and fishing privileges.  With this free license you are allowed to cross designated private property to access a river to fish or a stretch of land to hunt.  

The Weber has land such as this with ladders to cross the fences. There are binders at certain access points to record your name and number so they know how many people are utilizing this program and can compensate the landowners accordingly.  

The Real "Largest Trout of My Life"

I let Paul know that I had bought a net with a longer handle and he writes back: You’re a real optimist Howard, buying a bigger net!  It’ll be hard to beat that last tiger.

Well, when he invited me back to that private lake I was glad that I had already bought a bigger net.  That would have helped tremendously on the previous trip.   The lake has a steep bank around its entirety and an extra-long handle helps reach a large fish struggling away from being pulled too close to the bank. 

I started out using my favorite tungsten head black woolly bugger making my way around the far side of the lake. I used my loop 7 weight with a sink tip line.  Because it was bright outside, I allowed the streamer to sink a few seconds before each retrieve. 

I had a few smaller trout following when all of a sudden a large trout darted out and hit it. After wearing it out, I netted the fish.  That long handled net came in handy already. The trout was big, similar to the big Tiger I caught last trip.  Pulling out the tape measure, it indeed was 26 inches long. Wow, I never thought I’d catch another trout that big. This was a great way to start the day. 

I went back to the car for lunch as Paul was heading around the lake the other way.  Just as I finished lunch and headed back out, 

Paul caught a nice one that I was able to take a picture of from clear across the lake as he let it go. 

Then at the far end of the lake, near the trees on the shore Paul hooked into a large tiger trout.  It was putting up a good fight and I ran around the lake to help with the netting.  

The fish would fight down the side of one bank and then in the opposite direction down the other side.  I laid down reaching out as far as I could with the long handled net.  

Each time we thought we had it; it would pull out more line.  Finally we successfully got it into the net.  It was the similar in size as the largest we’ve caught here.  Addie was right there checking it out.  The fish was a little darker and the stripes were well pronounced making it one the prettiest fish yet. 

I caught a few smaller fish and then switched to Geoff’s streamer that I had used on the previous trip.  

Again, I liked the way it would hover in the water when I slowed down the retrieve.  

On the far side of the lake is an olive tree that is spread out so you can’t cast in front of it from the sides.  I cast across the lake as far as I could to hit the shore just under the tree.  It was deep near the shore but as I started to strip and the fly hit the shallower section near the moss, a huge trout came out from hiding and hit the streamer.  The fish fought a while on the far side but I eventually muscled it across the moss in the middle of the lake without allowing it to get caught up in weeds, luckily.  As it got close I could see it was my first rainbow from this lake.  It continued to fight, intending on digging deep into the weeds. 

Paul ran over to help with the netting.  As I raised its head away from the plants, Paul reached the net under the water for me to slide the fish into.  The rainbow didn’t like the sight of the net and took off again for one last run into the deep.  Finally sensing he was wearing out, I muscled it again close to shore where Paul was able to get it into the net.  This fish was heavy.  

I was tired by this time but between the two of us we were able to lift the net with the fish in it onto shore.  What a beautiful, dark colored rainbow in perfect condition. The tape measured 31 inches.  What a trophy.  Again, this was the largest trout of my life.

I laid down on the shore holding the rainbow in the water making sure he was still in good shape after that battle.  As I was holding onto the tail, it would try to swim away.  

I could tell it still had plenty of energy and had no problem staying upright; as I let go, it slowly swam back into the depths of the lake.

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.