Wednesday, July 23, 2008

R and B

I love music. I've even been known to listen to a little Rhythm & Blues from time to time. My true passion though is fishing and when you talk R&B with a fisherman in Utah you usually mean Rainbows and Browns.

When I made my way down Daniels Canyon the sun was still too high to think that the Snake Creek fish would be active so I headed to the Provo River near the Charleston bridge. The area downstream of the Hwy 113 crossing was a big floodplain. It had dried out enough for me to hike out to the river through the tall grass and willows. I jumped a mule deer fawn and was too slow to get a picture but got a nice close up view of the little beauty.

When I made my way to the river I started blind casting and swinging the WRT through some pretty swift water.



After several casts with no luck I began to look for a likely fish holding spot. I spied a deadfall across the river on the opposite shoreline that had a nice calm area on the downstream side.



I had to switch to the 1/4oz WRT and began casting ahead of the snag and letting the big spinner swing. On the third cast I was met with some outstanding resistance - the kind that pulls back!



This fat rainbow inhaled the lure and took me and the telescopic ultralight for a ride.



This fish was at least 18" and very strong. I had to use the current to tire it out.



After the photo shoot he was returned to grow up some more.

When the sun finally slipped behind the mountains, it was time to head to Snake Creek and to see if the brown trout were ready to come out to play.

The creek was running low and slow and the weeds had all but choked out most of the channels.



I was able to hook and land one pretty 13" brown from the riffle below the trestle.

The setting sun reflected off the clouds making for quite a show.

4 comments:

Tracy Batchelder said...

Have you ever caught a fish in that part of the river before? It's a nice one!

John Batchelder said...

Paul and I fished here on our first trip to Utah.

Paul Batchelder said...

Ah yes and we are due to fish there to gether again...can you say GR in Feb.?

Bawana said...

Thats a great fish John, good job you released him you don't have a frying pan that big!