On the Fly in Utah

 Gentle Readers:

My apologies for the lack of reporting, but your narrator has failed to get in any meaningful hunting or fishing this year, due in part to a heavy work schedule, the need to attend rallies to avoid a Caligulacracy, and a general lack of opportunity to get out and be fun.

On April 29, your reporter took what turned out to be a 14 hour drive to pick up Tommy and his stuff from the University of Utah, where he just finished his second year of living in splendor, taking some cool classes, snowboarding and, most importantly, becoming a better fly fisherman.  As this report demonstrates, he has emerged as the best fly fisherman in our family, due in part to the low bar that this title reflects.

On the way up, this writer sought out the finest road cuisine based solely on the unique appearance of the eatery.

This is the Duck Creek Pub and Grill, which has a remarkably Bigfoot-infested theme, both inside and out, in spite of the scientific fact that hardly any Sasquatches really inhabit this part of the West. 

Due to our success and the desire of our guides to avoid giving away their good water, this writer will employ some clumsy pseudonyms for these liquid locations, as well as not using some cool photos that otherwise reveal too much.

As is almost always the case, we tried to set up our fly fishing with Jeremy Jones of Wasatch Guide Service.  Jeremy and his assistant guide Paul took us on what was one of the best fishing days of our lives on the Porno River, which provided us with an enthusiastic stable of willing step-trout eager to swallow what we had to offer.

The flows were high and the day was  cold and rainy as Jeremy and Tommy made ready with our gear.

We got off to a quick start, with both anglers dumping and catching fish with equal measure as we worked the rust off.

Tommy has made huge progress and is in a fly fishing club where they tie their own flies and sample local waters.  He ended up shaking off rust that seemed to stick with me for most of a long and incredibly cool day.

There is simply not enough space to reproduce all of the incredibly beautiful fish we pulled out of this river on a day where there was no pressure from any other anglers.

It was mostly browns, but we did catch a few rainbows.

Tommy had the hot hand and as the day progressed, he hung and landed fish after fish.  We had to photoshop some of the background of this shot so that masterbaiters do not discover where we keep our Porno Queens.

This river is so serene, especially when it is so early in the season that it gets little traffic.  We were fishing on a Wednesday, early in the season when blown-out water is a risk.  We only saw one raft of recreational students and no other fishermen.

The clouds came and went and we took a break from a spot that was so picturesque that it looked like Julie Andrews would come singing over the mountain at any moment.

Paul nets one of the fish that your narrator decided to release after it was in the net, instead of before.  Casting was pretty easy, as we were using nymphs fished about 10 feet above heavy shot to account for the current.  The fish were eating sow bugs and we saw very few risers.

Jeremy gave us a whole day, which included  a delicious lunch, but we wolfed that down in a vulgar hurry to get back to thrashing.

Too many of our photos give away specifics, so all of the shots of Jeremy netting fish have been sequestered in the Porno Dungeon.  Tommy got very comfortable with the rhythm of his casting and he and Jeremy chatted away as they netted fish after fish while talking about Tommy's upcoming three day trip on the Green River with the UTES fly fishing club.  This is a trip out of my dreams and Tommy is already living it.

Jeremy was booked with another group the next day, so we had made alternative plans.
As we sat around Jeremy's cool cabin on the river decompressing from the excitement of the day, we indicated our plans for the following day included fishing with Dan Santelli, who Paul had fished with on prior occasions.  This gave them time to warn Dan and his guide Kennie Garcia that this writer dumps fish, so they needed to be kind and patient.

Once again, our day with Jeremy was sublime.  Even as it came to an end after a spectacular day of hooking fish after fish, your reporter had to be deported from the stream like a kid whose mom has a hold of his ear and is dragging him away from his friends.  As a permanent novice, I learn so much every time, mostly because I do not go often enough to remember what I was painstakingly taught by these talented guides.  I would like to think that I will be better next time, but probably not as much better as I would like.  I always leave Jeremy burdened by a combination of great instruction on technique randomly preserved in a brain like an ice cube.

We topped off the evening with a great dinner at the Copper Onion, one of my favorite places to grab food and beverage, and plotted our next day, knowing that this one would be a hard act to follow.

On May 1st, we arrived at  6 am at the family home of Tommy's girlfriend Amelia, whose dad Dan is an excellent fly fisherman. His tolerance for Tommy is greatly enhanced by the fact that Tommy loves fly fishing and encourages Amelia in this activity.  Dan had made arrangements to fish with Kennie Garcia, who is a friend of Jeremy's and a great guide as well.

Our plan was to go to another secret river that is much farther away, so we had to be on the road early.  The rainy weather had left us and the four of us traveled to a secret location on a river that flows through Indian country.  We would be fishing Good Indian Creek, which flows out of Dead Indian Reservoir.

This is high desert country and we marched into the creek at a ford that got us to the other side before the sun was on the water, but not before an osprey seized a brown trout from the water in our path.  There had been a release from the Dead Indian Dam that briefly muddled the water, but it turned out these fish were here to bite hard and drag us around.  Dan and Amelia went ahead and out of sight with our other guide Brian, while Kennie took Tommy and your reporter to fish closer water.  Kennie explained to us how these fish behaved and it was a fair warning.  This stream was populated almost exclusively by large, fast browns that fought like home guard yellowtail at San Clemente Island.

Tommy got on the board right away and eclipsed his personal best from the previous day after a long fight with a brown that looked like a pike.

Your reporter got busy with another brown that surrendered to the net after a pleasant war of tuggery.

Tommy stayed hot and kept hooking up.  These fish seldom start off ready for the net and tended to take line and force the angler to give chase while bending their heads to the bank with  wrist-fatiguing persistence.  If you were not ready to scramble out of the water and up on the bank to give chase, you were not going to keep up.

Kennie coached us through the process, frequently pumping the stomachs of our quarry to determine that they were feasting on sow bugs, just like the trout on the Porno.  

These Indian Creek fish tended to be longer and lighter in color, almost like rattlesnakes.

Tommy and your reporter even got into simultaneous hook ups, enabling Kennie to capture two fish in the same net, which allowed for some great pictures.

This happened more than once.

When we got up around the bend and joined Amelia and Dan, Amelia was lighting them up.  She chased one fish 150 yards downstream and around a really tough bend in the river.  She even fell in at one point but did not give in to the fish, resulting in this fabulous torpedo of a trout.

Tommy kept landing more big browns, making these two days the best big trout days of his young fly fishing career.

Eventually, it was Dan and Tommy dueling away for quantity and quality with both hooking up often and not allowing their fish to ever think they had a chance of escape.

Here, Dan hooked up at the same time as Tommy, resulting in another two fish netfull.

Tommy hooked up a couple of minutes later and Dan assisted in herding the fish to Kennie's net, in which Dan's hefty trout was already residing.

Both fish were allowed to relax in the green room as these anglers gazed lovingly into the mesh and worked on their award acceptance speeches.

There is not enough space in this blog to capture all of the day's guests of the net, but these were a couple of outings that will be hard to beat for delivering all you could have hoped for.

That night, we enjoyed some good food and fine bourbon at the Santelli residence and bored anyone who wasn't there with rehashing of our bravery in the face of the many trout we captured and released.

We just do not get to do this often enough, but when we get to keep such good company and have  fantastic times together, we know, for certain, that

These Are the Days