Another State Checked Off

[Al Agnew]

Years ago I set a goal of fishing a smallmouth stream in every state that has smallmouth before I die. Well, the goal changed a bit through the years, and now it's to fish a stream, either for smallies or trout, in every state. So last week when we got out to Montana, Mary immediately had to go to Park City, Utah, for some meetings, and didn't want to drive by herself. So I went with her.

For whatever reason, I didn't pack any fishing gear. I planned on driving around the area of the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains and taking reference photos, and maybe checking out some places to fish another time. She goes to Park City once or twice a year and I figured that once I went with her one time she'd kinda expect me to go again!

It's a long drive from Livingston, Montana, to Park City. It took us most of Wednesday to get there. The bed in the room was not the most comfortable, and I didn't sleep well that night, so Thursday Mary and I did a short hike, explored uptown Park City, and I spent the rest of the day reading in the room while she went to her first meeting. But on Friday I went out exploring.

There are several good sized reservoirs near Park City, and I checked them out, getting some good photos of ospreys in the process, and learning that there is a thriving smallmouth population in them. Okay, if nothing else, when I come back I can fish for smallmouth. One fishing report said a few people were already catching smallies, although the water temps were still in the 40s. I also checked out some streams, but unfortunately, it looked like all of them were posted about every 15 feet. More on that later.

A lot of the roads up into the mountains were still closed. The snowpack in that part of Utah is way below normal, but there were still drifts in the high country. I did find a great red rock canyon, climbed a rather scary cliff, and got some good photos. But I came back into town early that afternoon, and got on the internet to find out if there were any fly shops in the area; I hadn't seen any in the middle of town.

What came up was one fly shop about four miles away that offered guided trips, and another guide service, called Park City on the Fly, that didn't have a fly shop but for some reason intrigued me. So I called them. It's a husband and wife team, and they could furnish ALL the gear and tackle I'd need, all flies, even rain jackets, for the price of the trip. Not only that, but they were giving a 20% discount because it was the off-season. And they had Saturday open. They'd even have my license waiting for me on Saturday morning and all I had to do was sign it. (I had to pay for the license, of course, but it was only something like $8.)

So I booked a "half day" trip. The woman told me that this time of year, "half day" didn't necessarily mean 4 hours, because if the fishing was good we'd stay out about as long as we wanted to.

Her husband picked me up Saturday morning at 8:30 sharp at our room, handed me a nice breakfast of blueberry muffin, bagel and cream cheese, and cantalope, and I ate it as we drove to the river. He asked me if I had to get back at any certain time, and I said I was open until probably about 5 PM, when Mary got out of her meetings. He said the blue winged olives should come off that day since it was cool and cloudy, and he'd been planning to go fishing anyway, so if I didn't mind we'd plan on fishing as long as we needed to in order to get into the hatch.

The river was the Provo, between Jordanelle and Deer Creek reservoirs. He told me that, even though the Utah Supreme Court had decided that the landowners did not own the stream bottoms in Utah and that the public thus had a right to wade and fish most Utah streams, the present governor had somehow pushed through some sort of ruling that basically closed most wadeable streams to the public, ignoring the supreme court decision. The Provo in this stretch had once been nothing but a straightened ditch flowing through an intensively farmed plain between the two reservoirs, but the federal government had somehow come in and done a huge project to rehabilitate the stream. They did not remove it from private ownership, but had negotiated an easement for the public to fish it.

When I saw the river, I was impressed. It's a small, wadeable river, flowing about 150 cfs, very similar in size to the blue ribbon section of Current River. And there was little or no evidence that it had ever been anything but a natural stream channel, with beautiful meandering bends, classic pool/riffle water. We drove to the access not far below the upper dam, and saw two cars already there. The guide was disappointed, and asked me if I was willing to walk a half hour to get into less crowded fishing. Of course I was. So we went to another access a few miles downstream, where the parking lot was deserted until a car pulled up as we were putting on waders. From there, we hiked for that half hour and started fishing.

The river was green-clear, maybe 4 feet of visibility. The weather was cloudy--it had snowed during the night but the snow was mostly melted in this lowland--and maybe 40 degrees. It was supposed to be cloudy with scattered snow showers all day. But as we got to where we would start fishing, the sun broke through. That's not a good thing for the BWO hatch--you need dark days. And nothing was happening on the water but scattered midges, so we started with some small nymphs the guide had tied.

We had carried four fly rods in, two rigged with dries and two with nymphs. I started fishing, and almost immediately briefly hooked a nice brown, but it didn't stay on, and that was all for the first two runs. I hung up once and lost the flies, and the guide just handed me the other nymph rod already rigged, so I didn't lose any fishing time. He retied flies on the first rod so it would be ready if that happened again. He also told me that it was great to fish with somebody who knew what they were doing--he was impressed with my mends and my handling of drifts in complex currents. Which made me swell up a bit, of course. I told him that I didn't need constant baby-sitting so I didn't mind in the least if he fished too; maybe he could try some different flies to see if we could figure out what the fish were taking. He did fish some, but was always within easy reach to net fish and do whatever needed to be done to help me.

We reached another nice, deep, slow run and started catching fish almost every cast. Browns, mostly 11-14 inches, along with some massive whitefish, some of the biggest whities I'd ever seen. These beasts were 20 inches or better, and fought very well. From then on, the fishing was very good. The guide said that there were some rainbows in the river, but most had died off several years ago due to whirling disease. We didn't catch any.

The surrounding mountains looked to be getting snow, but it wasn't until about 2 PM that the clouds finally came over us, and the BWOs began to hatch. And suddenly the river was full of rising fish. I had a blast catching trout on little dries for an hour or so until the sun peeped out again and the hatch shut off. Finally got one nice fish, about 17 inches. The guide said there are some 20 inch plus fish in the river, but 17 inches is about as good as you can reasonably expect on a given day.

Our half day trip had ended up being from 9 AM to 3:30 PM. We'd hiked in that half hour, probably close to two miles down the river, and had spent the day in about an eighth of a mile of stream, never seeing another person except for a guy walking his dog. The scenery wasn't great, plenty of houses were visible in many places and the mountains were pretty far in the distance, but it was pleasant. And the whole trip, with all that stuff furnished and with a great guide, ended up costing $220.

And I can now cross Utah off the list of states where I've fished a trout or smallie stream.

[Jerry Rapp]

thanks for the report Al. Very good read and heck of a lot better than Donnie's stories!

[Addicted to Creeks]

Wow man. Sounds like a very fun trip to say the least. Great read