A Real Fishing Adventure

I feel as if I say this every time I write a new post these days, and I probably do - Saturday of this week rolled around and I desperately needed to get out and get some fishing done.

I'm not exactly what you'd call a stress manager; in fact, I'm the opposite of that. I take small problems and kind of blow them out of proportion. Alright, not kind of - I do. Anyways, fishing is my therapy, but we how busy I was after work this week (writing articles, fixing the Camaro, and going on the first date I've been on in months) I only got out once before Saturday to fish and soothe the nerves of my tattered soul.

Saturday came around, though, and Colby and I as usual loaded into my Camaro and headed off for the wild blue fishing yonder.

Only this time, it felt like an adventure. A true, honest-to-goodness, go lose yourself in the wilderness adventure.

We left around 1:30 in the afternoon, driving through some of the most desolate, deserted land this state has to offer. Our exact location will remain a secret, because this lake is truly a gem in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and its location was entrusted to me by a fisherman far better than I.

After nearly two hours on pavement, we left the asphalt for a dirt road. In a Camaro. I'm pretty certain that never has the world seen a Camaro on this particular road before, yet here I was trying everything to not kick a rock up into my oil pan and ending the adventure prematurely.

The road was dusty, the car kicking up clouds of dirt that swirled in the still air. Towering craggy cliffs lined either side of the small canyon the road wound its way through, bare and dry in the warm afternoon air. A stillness hung in the air, though. An odd feeling, really, that something was unsettled.

That feeling permeated the entire fishing adventure on Saturday. I couldn't shake it, and neither could Colby. We've fished together a lot, almost every weekend for four months now, and we've never been on a lake where we felt as if we were trespassing into a realm we weren't supposed to be in. After some of the inexplicable things I've seen in the wilds of Utah (I need a whole blog post just for that) I'm a bit more wary now when I feel odd, like I did at this lake.

As we arrived at the lake and finally stepped out into the desolate area, Colby and I both looked at each other with the expression of, what did we get ourselves into?

I've fished this lake a few times before, but never have I felt so off-kilter as I did on Saturday. Truly, it was an odd feeling.

Regardless, we rigged our poles up and walked around the lake to where the bank drops off sharply into a weed bed - the exact kind of great hideout for larger fish.

Quickly, I hooked into a decent cutthroat.

These cutthroat fought hard, as cutts tend to do. They were full of attitude, spunk, and did not like being netted in the slightest. 

This one had a bit of whirling disease, and no spots on the body. Weirdest looking cutthroat I've ever caught, and that includes the albino cutthroat from Joe's Valley. 

The real draw of this lake is not the cutts, although I have seen massive 25 inch hawgs drifting through the shallows like a boss. Tiger trout also roam this forgotten (I almost want to say cursed, because of how weird I felt there the whole time) lake, and can reach trophy sizes. 

I'd been fishing with a size 7 jointed Rapala, but switched to a black and yellow Marabou jig, in the hopes of provoking something bigger to strike.

I was rewarded handsomely. 

I had the jig about 10 feet off shore, when I felt a sharp tug, then felt the fish dive to the bottom. I set the hook, and the fish just sat on the bottom, shaking its head like a two-year old throwing a tantrum about eating broccoli. 

Eventually, I pried the fish off the bottom and fought it up closer. As it wiggled and swam and tried to escape me, I saw the flash of orange on its body that gave the fish away as a tiger. 

I yelled to Colby to get the net, and he came bumbling over just in time to net this beauty for me. 

This beauty tipped the scales at a solid 2.5 pounds, and came in at 21 3/4 inches long. Not a half bad fish in the slightest. 

Colby finally got a fish to hand after that, hooking the first of 3 nice cutts for him. 

As the sun began setting, the fish got more active as they're wont to do. I was still using a marabou jig, but in different colors now. I was jigging softly off the bank, right where it dropped straight down. A few minutes prior, a large tiger had come to take a swipe at it, only to miss and swim back off. I was hoping to entice him to return. 

As I pulled the jig closer to me, I saw a dark green back come swooping in like a little kid wearing a Superman cape, and chomp on the jig.

I set the hook with absolutely no idea what I was in for. 

Now, I fish with lighter tackle than a lot of fishermen, for two reasons. 1, it gives me a bigger challenge. Lighter tackle means an easier time snapping off fish, losing line, and lures. It makes the game harder, and I enjoy that sometimes. And 2, when you hook into fish with light tackle, the fight is incredible.

As I hooked this fish, it took off, ripping line off my reel like kids rip wrapping off Christmas presents. I was using a smaller sized Abu Garcia Cardinal reel with 4-pound fluorocarbon and a drag set decently tight. This fish was ripping line like there wasn't any drag at all. Colby was right next to me on the bank, fixing his line, when he heard my reel screaming and looked up in surprise. 

I hooked the fish two feet from shore, if that. It ran about 50 feet out, my reel screaming, my heart pounding, and my mind repeating the same thing - keep the line tight or your gonna lose him!! 

I kept tension on the line, and when there was a slight break in the fish's crazed run, I tightened the drag, but he still took line. I got him in close to shore, almost to the net, when he'd take off again, about three times before Colby was finally able to net him. The entire fight took about 10 minutes. 

I was rewarded with this beauty, though. 

19 inches, a solid 2.5 pounds, and one of the best patterned tiger trout I've ever caught in my life. 

Beautiful! 

I finished the day off with one more cutthroat, as did Colby. 

Darkness fell soon after that, and we couldn't see our lines or anything. We reluctantly packed up, seeing as the clouds moving in blocked the star's light we wanted to fish by, and loaded gear back in the Camaro for the drive home.

In the dark, the drive through the eerie canyon was even more ominous than mid-day. We started telling ghost stories, as is usual, but kept coming back to how unsettled we felt the entire time we were fishing. 

The whole lake had a silence, a stillness, over it, that we couldn't begin to describe or explain away. As we drove home, we tried to figure out what it was, but we ended up at a loss. 

We did however, see a UFO. Not even kidding! Something with green and blue lights flew really low over a mountain around 10 that night. We think it was a helicopter, but as we were unable to identify it correctly, it remains an unidentified flying object. 

The adventure was great, just what we both needed. And it was the first real adventure of the new year for me. 

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. 

Splake, Cutts, Tigers, and Bows

Saturday came as a huge relief. After one of the most hellish weeks I've been through in a while, a day of fishing was a much needed respite for my overworked and worn-out soul. I needed a day of fishing like a not-so-pretty high school girl needs a date to prom - in a bad way.

So, I called up my old reliable fishing friend Colby, loaded up the Camaro (its first ever fishing trip, as a matter of fact) and made the trek to a favorite old reservoir of mine, home to a variety of species of trout.

As always, descending the unstable boulders down to the waterline is as difficult as getting Phil Robertson to shave his beard. My shins are gonna bear some nice bruises for a while after this trip. 

Taking pictures like this always makes the day feel more epic. And despite the not-chilly look of the place, the wind picked up and clouds blocked the sun for most of the morning, which meant pretty frigid temps for our exposed hands as we jigged furiously in the hopes of some decent fish.

The first fish of the day actually came on a spoon, though - a pretty small, but feisty, splake. 

Splake, especially after ice-off, are so fun to catch. They fight as if they've got something to prove to you, and I hooked into a few decent 17 inchers today that fought harder than a dog when faced with a bath. 

The next fish didn't come for quite some time. Frustratingly enough, I missed about five bites in the same spot, and all of them felt like decent takes. I wasn't exactly in the greatest of moods after that (and not to mention I lost five or six jig heads in the rocks as well) but we kept on.

We rounded a point of the shore where the rocks dropped really deep, and the ice was only about 15 feet out. I had on a Gulp minnow, as did Colby, and we started tossing the jigs onto the ice, pulling them off, letting them drop, and then just reeling in some nicer splake. 

We caught a few bigger ones than that, though. Colby had a splake on bigger than anything I've ever seen in person. It was right in close to the bank, not more than five or so feet out, when it furiously threw the hook and swam off into the depths. Colby was understandably upset, and I thought he was going to throw his pole into the water he was so mad. 

I also had on a decent sized rainbow, probably in the 20 inch range, if my guessing game is correct. And let's face it, fisherman always guess the right size of trout! That rainbow threw the hook as well, though. 

I also reeled in a very, very, very pale cutthroat. This thing could have been in a fish version of Twilight it was so pale, but the crimson slashes and spotting pattern gave it away as a cutt.

That wasn't the only cutt I managed to land, though. After walking back around the lake to another ice shelf, I reeled in this beauty. An 18 inch, two pounder. Fought like a toad, jumped out of the water, caused a general ruckus, and got both Colby and I excited to keep on fishing. 

Maybe two whole casts after that fish, I had the jig sitting on the bottom for a minute. I popped it off the bottom really quick, and was watching it sink back down when I saw a pretty big dark shape dart out from the ice and go for the fish. 

So I did what any self-respecting fisherman would do - set the hook like this fish was life or death. Which, when trout are this nice, they actually are. 

I felt the fish just start fighting immediately, and it began tearing line off my reel like women spend money in clothing stores - faster than the eye could see! I didn't think the fish was particularly big at first. I supposed it was another Cutt of similar size to the one I already landed. But then, after probably a good five or six minutes, I had the fish close into shore and saw a really, really nice sized trout. After a slight tussle to get it out of the water, I was rewarded with this 21 inch, 3 pound beauty of a tiger trout. 

These are the days you live for as a fisherman. The action wasn't steady - it was inconsistent, and you definitely had to work to get the fish. But the spirit of fishing was there. We were out, had the lake to ourselves, and all the crap and goings-on of real life were left behind for 8 hours while the only thing that mattered was reeling in some trout.

Fishing is a release. It always has been and always will be for me. There's nothing that quite calms me down or helps me feel more connected to myself and to what really matters in the world than a good day of fishing. And I got to spend said day with a great friend, so I honestly couldn't have asked for anything better.