I went up to the Uintas for the first time this year yesterday upon reading the news that the Mirror Lake Highway was now open. Trial Lake was the destination, it is one of the easiest lakes to get to while the snow is still melting. I did have to carry my tube over a patch of snow that hasn’t yet melted, but it was well worth it, The Unitas rarely disappoint.

I forgot my camera, so my blackberry had to be used as a substitute. The final count of the day was 38, fish ranged from 6 inchers fresh from the hatchery truck to a few that were 14 inches long. The fishing was fast, everyone on the lake seemed to be catching fish, including people from shore. Just about anything will work up there, I used a several different leech patterns of all different colors.

You might remember an entry from last year where I posted some pictures my uncle took after he volunteered to help the Utah DNR guys with their fall gill netting survery. This year I got a chance to go and help out with the spring survey. I want to say thanks to all the guys that work hard to make Strawberry the great place we all love to fish. They were more than willing to answer all of our questions and let us be involved in every step of the process. I’m going to post these pictures in chronological order to give you an idea of how the day was spent.

As soon as the boats pulled in they unloaded these buckets containing the nets, which contained the fish.

Next we  strung out the nets, and started untangling the fish.

You can see how some of the fish can really get tangled in the net.

Everybody took a chance to pose with this monster cut throat. 26 inches, 7+ pounds. They caught him in the net that was 55 feet deep.

Next we started collecting information about the fish, including weight and length, where they were caught (location and depth)

The fish are then dissected. Their stomachs are opened to see what they were eating. One of the bigger cutthroats had eaten a small rainbow, We also saw lots of crayfish and beetles, but the overwhelming food of choice for the cutthroats this time of year is midge pupa. This is why they are so much harder to catch in spring. The fishes organs are also checked. The DNR guys have a code for everything so I was not able to understand everything they looked for, but the whole process was very impressive.

Not wanting to waste such quality fish, we filleted them…

And then ate lunch!

]]> http://utahfishblog.com/2009/06/18/a-day-at-strawberry-with-dnr/feed/ 0 incaseyouhaventheard P6040003 P6040004 P6040005 P6040006 P6040016 P6040027 P6040028 P6040034 http://utahfishblog.com/2009/06/05/east-canyon/ http://utahfishblog.com/2009/06/05/east-canyon/#comments Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:45:19 +0000 incaseyouhaventheard http://utahfishblog.com/?p=171 ]]>

I have fallen way behind with my updates. I wish I could say this happened because I was too busy fishing, but that would be a lie.

My first fish of the year came out of one of my favorite places to start the season, East Canyon. The way it happened is kind of unusual. I was hanging out with a few friends, and must have been talking an awful lot about how much I love to fly fish (Probably because I was catching up on missed episodes of the Orvis Fly Fishing Guide podcast on the drive over.) After a couple hours of conversation I found myself at Walmart at 1:30 am buying fishing licenses with my friends. We had plans to set out at 7am.

If you gauge a successful fishing trip by the number of fish caught in the day, then today would have been a disappointment. Fortunately spending time with friends who were excited to go fishing made the day a huge success!  I landed a good sized bluegill on my first cast of the day. After that however we didn’t catch anything else.

Fishing Crew

I went back to East Canyon the next day armed with a float tube and fly rod. This time I did much better.  5 fish total, 3 Rainbows, 2 Smallies.

Here is the biggest fish of the day. He was hungry for a brown and yellow girdle bug.

This was the biggest Rainbow of the day. He was about 15 inches long.

The bass fishing at East Canyon should be really good right now. The water is really starting to warm up. I just had a pair of shorts on under my waders and was comfortable all day. I hope to make it up there 1 more time this month before I start heading up to The Uintas.

On Friday I ventured to strawberry with my dad and uncle. We were hoping to find some fast fishing right after ice off but I think we were about a week too late. We saw several people float tubing in what I thought was water so could it could turn to ice any second. Our plan was to cast flies from shore behind a bubble. I caught a single cut throat trout about and hour in and it turned about to be the only fish we saw all day.

Doing my best to not get skunked.

The weather was windy in the morning for a few minutes, but then it stopped blowing and turned into a warm sunny day. Fishing season has officially started for me. You can expect updates after every trip, hopefully at least 2 updates a month.

Utah local Jay Morr wrote a great piece for the latest This Is Fly. It starts on page . Be sure to check it out!

My dad and I made another trip up to Strawberry today hoping to catch a few more big cut throats, unfortuantely that didn’t happen, I cycled through all my usual flies without even a strike, Finally after tying my zonker on for the 3rd time I managed to hook into one. It was the only fish of the day.

I just got a an email with a bunch of pictures from my uncle Roger. He went up and volunteered with the DNR guys. He got to see a lot of nice cut throat trout, the kind that I would love to catch. Here are a few pictures.

Part of the gill netting process

2 26″ Cut Throat Trout

Rogers friend John working hard

More big fish

]]> http://utahfishblog.com/2008/10/23/gill-netting-at-strawberry/feed/ 0 incaseyouhaventheard 3 4 2 11 http://utahfishblog.com/2008/10/23/inspiration/ http://utahfishblog.com/2008/10/23/inspiration/#comments Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:12:41 +0000 incaseyouhaventheard http://utahfishblog.wordpress.com/?p=141 ]]>

This morning I was bored in one of my classes, I opened up my rss feeds and came across this.

I need to go steelhead fishing asap.

The picture is from ThisIsFly’s daily blog. If you aren’t familiar with ThisIsFly you should definitely check it out. It’s my favorite magazine, and the fact that it is available free and online makes it even better. You can find it at www.thisisfly.com Enjoy!

My dad and I headed up to Strawberry this morning in search of some big cut throat. We each caught a single fish. My dad’s tube was leaking air and we couldnt fix it so our day got cut short. We were both using red cyrstal killers. The fish were near the surface and in closer to shore. This is definitely the time of year to be up there!

Here is my dad holding up the fish I caught.

The Uintas have been the place to be for me this fall. A few posts earlier I talked about Mirror Lake and Moosehorn. I have been back to Mirror Lake twice since. While neither day was quite as good, I still managed to catch around 80 fish spread between the two days, often on consecutive casts. I caught fish on every fly I put in the water. I used various crystal killers and leaches. I had success on green, black, orange, brown, white, red, and purple patterns, all beadheads. I was fishing my flies very close to the surface. I did see a few anglers floating bugs on top but they weren’t catching as many fish as I was.

One of the bigger fish I caught from Mirror Lake, around 15 inches.

It definitely pays to be out in the middle of the lake, people from shore were catching fish, however it was much slower for them. I was catching fish everywhere, but found it to be the most productive out in deeper water with a faster then average retrieve. It was not unusual to get a strike on almost every cast.

My dad showing off one of his nice rainbows.

It rained all day yesterday in Salt Lake, which means snow in the moutains. The Mirror Lake Highway may be closed by now, however if you can still get up there I’m sure it will be worth the trip. Be sure to dress extra warm if you are going to be sitting in that water all day.

A nice colorful Brookie from Mirror Lake.