Friday, June 22, 2012

Upper Weber River 6.22.2012

Took my Mom and Dad to the Weber on Friday. The report for us was slow. The water is running at around 110 CFS. Threw some streamers, various caddis flys, scuds, and got nothing. It was windy so we couldn't fish on the top very well with a fly dropper. There were a few guys fishing that I ran into that had caught a few but they were just using worms. Any reports of doing better let us know?

Monday, June 18, 2012

Otter Creek 6-16-12

        This last Saturday, the old man and I decided to run up to Otter Creek. It was Fathers Day weekend, I don't often get to go fishing just me and my dad, so it was a nice change. We left St. George at about 530 and were in the inflatable lake worthy Sea Hawk II by 8:00. We tried our fly poles for a few minutes, but soon switched to what we knew could catch em in Otter Creek. Pop Gear and a worm... My dad put on a Dave Davis and a worm while I had a frog flat fish on thinking maybe I could get a bigger fish going after bigger bait ha. Well after my dad had already got 3 by the time we went about 50 yards I decided to switch to pop gear and worm. I put on the same thing and we kept cruzin along the only problem now was that every time I let my pole get all the way out my dad would already have another fish on. So we would turn off the motor so he could real it in and I would real in too so I didn't get mossed up. Well after Dad had caught about 4 or 5 and had 6 or 7 bites, We figured that something must be wrong with my set up, we switched to a smaller Dave Davis, I was using a bigger one with about 5 Multi-colored spoons on it while my dad had a 3 spoon smaller one. Well that did it, We both started catchin them left and right. Weird that fish were attracted differently to different sizes of pop gear. I don't know how many we caught and let go but we finished at about 1:00 with our limit in the cooler right when it started to get a little windy. They all seamed to be about the same size accept for one that was just a little bigger maybe around 17-18 inches, while the others were around 14-15, Even though they weren't huge they were fun to catch, they hit it hard and it was fun whenever we got a bite, They are definitely eatable.

Perfect Weather, and a Beautiful Day to be fishing!

As much as I would like to say the excitement was over, the fat lady wasn't singing yet. We decided to head up the east fork of the Sevier River to throw the fly, we head up about 15 miles southeast of Antimony. My dad had heard a patient at his office say the fishing was good up there. We fished a few holes, I was able to see two fish in that creek but they didn't want what I was throwing at them. we were there about 45 min - hr. and It was starting to get pretty windy so we decided that we should start heading back.



Well my dad made it back to the car first, and I came up a few min later and he had his fly pole pulled apart and I was wondering what he was doing. I went to open the back so I could put my gear in the back and it was locked, I soon found out that all the doors were locked, and worse that the keys were inside haha. Now we're really up a creek...(Literally). No cell service, the road we were on was pretty quite too. Not many cars drove on it. We decided that we had better do what we could to get it unlocked, that even meant trying to shove our fly poles through the crack of the door to try and it the unlock button desperate times call for desperate measures. we ended up braking two fly rods which is always a shame. We actually got one of the rods in perfect position and hit the unlock button about a billion times but it wouldn't ever unlock. Here are some pictures..
Dad holding what's left of his fly rod (The Handle)
One of the poles broke from pushing on the unlock button


Now we have three parts that have broken off inside the door.

Still tryin to have a positive attitude...
Well desperater times call for desperater measures, nobody was driving by, the unlock button wasn't unlocking no matter how many times we hit it and we still had a long drive to go back home. It came to the last resort.. we had to break a window....




(just a little blood...)


That's nice how the duck tape blends in with the paint you can barely notice there's not a window there.




Saturday, June 9, 2012

Mammoth Creek UT Fishing Report 6.8.2012

17 inch Brown

My Mom and Dad ran up to Panguitch Lake Friday night but it was too windy to fish so they decide to go over to the Mammoth. It was less windy but still fairly bad enough to not be prime conditions. They both caught 1 :). Fishing was slow they threw everything they could think of. He did catch this pretty nice 17 inch brown on a Parachute Adams right off the top of the water. Good job Dad!

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Parley's Creek Cuthroat Spawn 6/6/12

Yesterday I went up to Parley's Creek on my lunch break and volunteered for a couple of hours with the Division of Wildlife.  I had talked to Jordan Nielsen who works out of the Springville, UT field office the day before and he invited me to come up and help out while they survey some of the cutthroat that they had shocked the day before.  Jordan gave us a little pep talk and thanked me and the rest of the volunteers for coming.  Then he ran through what we were going to do and how to do it.  He had us bring males and females in at separate times to the station that they had setup before I got down there.  The fish that we brought in from the creek were already separated so that part was easy.  When we brought them to the station the first thing that we did was put the males and females in separate holding tanks (55 gallon garbage cans full of water).  The part I thought was interesting was that each holding area contained a chemical in it that calms the fish down.  The guys that worked for the division began by measuring all the fish that we had brought them.  Then, they took the females and extracted all the eggs they could without hurting them.  Then, they milked the males and put the two together so the magic could happen.


Most of what I was doing was releasing these fish back. Here is a video of me releasing one of these beautiful fish back into the lake.


Here is another small video clip




I am mad that this next video did not turn out the way I wanted it to.  The guy that took it for me did not realize that there was water on the lens.  Oh well, the fish I am holding in this video was prob one of the longer fish of the day coming in at 21.5 inches long






Here are some pics of some of the other fish that we got to release.





There are some big fish that run up that creek to spawn.  Unfortunately all of those fish that hold in Mountain Dell Reservoir are not fishable due to the fact that the Res is closed to fishing.  The only shot that anyone would have at some nice cuts like these is if some of them are still upstream when the river opens up to fishing on the second Saturday in July this year.  I guess there are some nice fish in Little Dell Res upsteam but if anyone does fish that, make sure you only use flies and lures only and immediately release any fish with a cutthroat marking.

It was a lot of fun and I hope that they call me next time they do it because it turned out to be a really nice and enjoyable way to spend my lunch break! 
Jimmy Sorenson
6/6/12