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.
