A Lazy Fishing Weekend

I live a pretty hectic life - as I'm sure y'all do, too. I work full-time as an SEO writer for a company in American Fork, and then I also work for the Jazz as a feature writer. I attend all the home games and do stories, interview players, and eat food. Oh, and I live in Santaquin, so all these trips are made up and down almost the entire Wasatch front.

Needless to say, when Saturday rolls around, I'm about as beat as those fellows on Finding Bigfoot, when they don't even hear a howl in the night. Regardless, I still haul myself up at the crack of dawn, clamber into my Camaro, and drive all over this state in search of fish.

I hit Joe's Valley again this Saturday morning, in the hopes that the stellar fishing I'd enjoyed there of late would continue. I think the fishing gods were slightly upset at my new-found zeal for that remote reservoir; although, by the sight I was greeted with there, I never would have guessed.

Absolutely gorgeous. This valley is one of the three places in Utah that I want to build a cabin eventually, the other two being Fairview Canyon and Torrey. 

After clambering down the loose boulders to the water, I noticed that the wind was really quite gusty; so gusty in fact, that I was having the damndest time casting. I finally got one decent cast out, right in the eddy between a couple tall boulders, and hauled in this pretty little splake. 

As soon as I put that one back in the water, the wind started picking up worse, with gusts probably coming up to 20+ miles per hour. I was standing on the dam arm, watching the waves crash into the rocks, and I was getting soaked from the spray. 

I walked around to a sandier part of the shore, but the wind started blowing even harder, and I heard a sharp crack. I looked up on the ridge above me, and a tree had snapped right in half. So this wind was just a bit of a problem. Fishing in wind that strong is about as effective as someone politely asking Vladimir Putin to stop his nonsense in Crimea.

I pressed on, though, relentless in my quest for a fish or two. I hauled in an incredibly pale cutthroat - I've only photographed one other cutt like this. They've both come from Joe's, so I have to assume that a portion of the population loses their pigmentation due to the chemical makeup of the water, or something like that. 

At first, it's easy to think it's just a planter rainbow - but the spotting pattern and orange slashes under its jaw gave it away as a cutt. This fish took forever to get in, by the way. He took the hook pretty good, fought like Miley Cyrus faced with community service, and I was pulling him against waves that were crashing around me like Lannisters around the Iron Throne. 

Anyways, after that fish, I decided that the wind was just too much too handle and I had to call it a day. I wanted to hit some water on the drive home, but every place that I had in mind was either iced up, or was still windy. I think the entire state of Utah was windy on Saturday. 

Sunday rolled around with me sleeping in for the first time in 2 weeks - before Friday, I'd worked 13 days straight without a day off, so sleeping in was like a gift from the gods. I decided that Sunday needed some fish in it, too, so I set off to a small trickle of a stream near my house. 

Now, I've heard tale of big, big browns in here - we're talking in the 8 pound range - and I've even seen a 3-pounder hauled outta here once or twice. But I've never hooked into anything worth writing home about in this stream - until today. 

This picture doesn't really do the creek justice - it's a lot more overgrown, weedy, small, and shallow than this picture makes it out to be, but this happened to be the most picturesque place I stopped at today. 

I caught seven browns out of here, and five of them came from this spot 

I was standing right below that opening, and I'd fling the lure up into the tube - which is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Ever played horseshoes? Know how infuriating that is? Well, take that and multiply it by ten, and that's how hellaciously difficult it is to cast up into that tube without a), hitting the side and dropping in to short, or b) skipping the lure across the water like a rock.

After a bunch of cursing and a lot of practice, I finally got the hang of the cast and was rewarded greatly 

The coloration on these fish was fantastic. Look at all that red! 

More beautiful colors - also, I need a new camera, as my arm looks as white as Edward Cullen's face. That's juts not good. 

Now, this next fish was the surprise of the day - as I said earlier, I've heard tales of nice fish in here, but haven't ever come across anything too noteworthy. 

I think on the third or fourth cast at that hole, I felt a fish take it, and immediately I felt that it was heavier than all the other fish. I was fishing with my light actin Ugly Stik and 4-pound fluorocarbon line, so I had a pretty good indication of just how heavy it was. 

After it jumped, hit itself on the top of the tube (I wish I had a video camera running at that moment) got tangled in the weeds, then went to the bottom of the river and shook its head for a solid minute, I finally got this 13-15 inch beauty of a brown to hand. 

He was followed up by a few more fish, too. 

These browns are far and away the feistiest little fish I've ever come across - every single fish jumped out of the water at least twice, pulled line off my reel (granted I was fishing with a loose drag, but still) and made a big general ruckus before finally posing for their mandatory photo-op. 

How bout the spots on that one? This guy was the most ridiculous of them all. He jumped three times, swam back up the tube twice, and got tangled in branches before I could get him in. Despite being short, he filled up my hand quite nicely. 

More of that beautiful red on the back fins. 

All in all, this weekend was pretty lazy - I didn't have to do too much to catch these fish. But that's exactly what I needed. Just a relaxed weekend of fishing to wash away the stress of the day-to-day life. 

As I've said multiple times, fishing is the ultimate release for me, and that's why it's so addicting. I'm actually writing a whole book about fishing, and I hope to post some excepts here soon. Anyways, get your lines wet, and drop me a line if you wanna go fishing! And please, tell me what you think of the fish and of the blog. Thanks for reading, y'all.