Six-Gun
Member
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2013
- Messages
- 427
After last, very productive trip out to the little creek I fished last week for Bonneville cutthroats in Utah, I decided to bring a friend named Scott along who doesn't know the area (this is key :-D) and who had never fly fished before. He was okay with having to work hard to access the tight water and picked up on what needed to be done pretty quickly. Long story short: it was another excellent day and I think we may have another new fly fisherman coming into the fold.
Before we went up to the really good sections, I decided it was time to see if I could actually catch something on a #20 zebra midge out of this water, as the low sections hold a lot of undersized fish. The midge worked well enough to entice a couple of fingerlings like this little fella right here.
After toying with the small fish at lower elevations, we climbed the mountain to get to the bigger fish. To avoid burning out my old spot, we worked a completely different stretch of water about a half mile further up from where I last fished. Once again, it didn’t take long to get on them. I put Scott on his very first cutty in the very first pool we tried.
He went through the usual frustration beginners have dealing with tight quarters and ceaseless brush snags, but once he got the hang of the bow and arrow cast, he was catching some very nice fish quite productively!
While my primary focus was to guide Scott and show him a good time, I also wet a line and caught some nice ones, too.
We got well into double digits in our individual catches but, in the end, Scott clearly caught the fish of the day. Heck, it was the best fish I’ve ever seen taken out of here. I spotted a small hole in the brush surprisingly close to a bend in the water. I was very tight and we debated whether it was worth the effort to work through the branches just to cast into a single pool. Just then, I noticed what was clearly a very big trout hovering very close to where we were staring into the water. I immediately gave Scott my 6’ TFO 2-weight so he could work better through the small opening and warned him to make a super-slow approach. I figured it would be great for his confidence to land a nice, fat fish. Little did I know what I just gave up!
Scott made a few drifts with a #12 stimulator, but fish only gave it a couple of half-hearted sips resulting in no successful hookset. Worse, the fish got a bit spooked by the hookset attempts and swam somewhere into the cascade foam that we couldn’t see into. Scott pitched into the foam a few times and tried to lure him out with the same fly with no luck. So, I took a minute to tie on a #10 cricket irresistible figuring that might provoke a heavier strike. Sure enough, one cast later, the fish surprised us when he shot out from under the bank right under our feet! We had no clue he swam back around from the cascade to directly under us. When I saw the fish surface, I knew immediately it was larger than anything I’ve caught out of this creek. At the end of it all, Scott landed this gorgeous, 14-inch measured cutty. By the standards of this small creek, this is a true monster and he knew it. The smile on his face says it all.
I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more positive way to introduce someone to fly fishing. We camped out the night before and were treated to an amazing meteor shower and followed that up with a bunch of 10-inch+ fish all day long. He said he absolutely wants to do it again.
Videos:
The fish were mostly very aggressive as you can see in these two video clips.
Scott landing a fish on a fast bite:
http://youtu.be/drEpOpvwKms
Me working through a testy tangle of branches to land a cutty:
http://youtu.be/9yr0KjCKkSs
Before we went up to the really good sections, I decided it was time to see if I could actually catch something on a #20 zebra midge out of this water, as the low sections hold a lot of undersized fish. The midge worked well enough to entice a couple of fingerlings like this little fella right here.
After toying with the small fish at lower elevations, we climbed the mountain to get to the bigger fish. To avoid burning out my old spot, we worked a completely different stretch of water about a half mile further up from where I last fished. Once again, it didn’t take long to get on them. I put Scott on his very first cutty in the very first pool we tried.
He went through the usual frustration beginners have dealing with tight quarters and ceaseless brush snags, but once he got the hang of the bow and arrow cast, he was catching some very nice fish quite productively!
While my primary focus was to guide Scott and show him a good time, I also wet a line and caught some nice ones, too.
We got well into double digits in our individual catches but, in the end, Scott clearly caught the fish of the day. Heck, it was the best fish I’ve ever seen taken out of here. I spotted a small hole in the brush surprisingly close to a bend in the water. I was very tight and we debated whether it was worth the effort to work through the branches just to cast into a single pool. Just then, I noticed what was clearly a very big trout hovering very close to where we were staring into the water. I immediately gave Scott my 6’ TFO 2-weight so he could work better through the small opening and warned him to make a super-slow approach. I figured it would be great for his confidence to land a nice, fat fish. Little did I know what I just gave up!
Scott made a few drifts with a #12 stimulator, but fish only gave it a couple of half-hearted sips resulting in no successful hookset. Worse, the fish got a bit spooked by the hookset attempts and swam somewhere into the cascade foam that we couldn’t see into. Scott pitched into the foam a few times and tried to lure him out with the same fly with no luck. So, I took a minute to tie on a #10 cricket irresistible figuring that might provoke a heavier strike. Sure enough, one cast later, the fish surprised us when he shot out from under the bank right under our feet! We had no clue he swam back around from the cascade to directly under us. When I saw the fish surface, I knew immediately it was larger than anything I’ve caught out of this creek. At the end of it all, Scott landed this gorgeous, 14-inch measured cutty. By the standards of this small creek, this is a true monster and he knew it. The smile on his face says it all.
I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more positive way to introduce someone to fly fishing. We camped out the night before and were treated to an amazing meteor shower and followed that up with a bunch of 10-inch+ fish all day long. He said he absolutely wants to do it again.
Videos:
The fish were mostly very aggressive as you can see in these two video clips.
Scott landing a fish on a fast bite:
http://youtu.be/drEpOpvwKms
Me working through a testy tangle of branches to land a cutty:
http://youtu.be/9yr0KjCKkSs
