Lots of Beaver Head at Mcguinn's Bachelor Party...

It's been a while since we last posted anything but it wasn't because of a lack of fishing. We have been getting out but June, and so far July, the water conditions have been miserable. So instead of the traditional bachelor party Jon Mcguinn decided that he would urge the boys to take a fishing trip to Montana.

We were going to go try our luck on the Madison but it became apparent that the only river that was fishable was the tailwater below the damn on the Beaver Head. The river reminded me a lot of the Weber here at home... Not a lot of top action and the fish hung deep along the bottom, requiring lots of weight to get it down. It was tough going the first day but by the second day we had some bugs that were producing. The fish fight so hard on this river! We caught Browns, Rainbows and the occasional White Fish. Below are some photos of the trip.

Don Johnson, Owner/Operator Corrugated Box Sales getting ready to fish.

Dalt with a monster Brown.

Camp set up on the lake. The Mosquito's were intense!!!

Mid day break under a big sky.

Gearing back up. Notice Jordan's purple daisy dukes... Later that night he walked into a local bar and the music came to a screeching halt... He turned a few heads to say the least.

Great Brown.

This was one of the biggest rainbows I have ever caught. I will never forget the great fight. He leaped 3 feet out of the air a half dozen times. Tony saved me with a nice net assist.

Another shot of the girth.

Tony on a hot streak..

Now that is a whitty to be proud of. That thing is huge!

Lennon was a trooper and kept me warm at night. Great Sunset...

The Crew at dusk.

I would definitely like to make it back to this river. There are some serious trophies in there.

Thanks for checking in.

Chris Giles

Huntington Outing

Jon had a trade show in Grand Junction all last week and mentioned he wanted to go fish Huntington on his way back on Friday. We made plans to meet at the Holiday Inn in Price Thursday night and we would hit the river in the morning. I invited Ricky and the touring party was formed.

That night we tied flies and watched Egypt finalize their revolution. We knew we would have to drive right up below the damn the next morning because the water flowing out would not be freezing. As we drove up th canyon the river was swallowed by snow and ice but we knew the tail water would be fishable.

I rigged up quick thinking I would be the first one in the water. Little did I know as I cut a trail towards the river I would end up chest deep in snow and struggling to move even a foot ahead at a time. Ricky and Jon took notice of my struggles as they rigged up and they wisely chose to walk to the bridge and get in there. I cut my losses (20 feet from the river but at least a 15 minute struggle) and walked back out the swath I had vigorously cut through the deep snow and worked my way towards them by the bridge. I finally reached them on the river and the jokes ensued.

The fishing was weird. We all caught one fish right off the bat and then it went cold. The flow was barely moving and the water turned murky. I was thinking something was in the water up above and it turned out to be about 100 ducks feeding on the plant life on the bottom of the river. Once we made it passed the ducks we smacked into the damn.

We hoofed back to the car and had some lunch and headed down stream to look for some faster moving current.... Found the faster moving current with a ton of spooky fish. We caught a few more and headed out.

The highlight of the trip being Jon spotting a 20" brown in slow moving current... We all casted at him but he wasn't interested. I think something may have been off though because he circled back down to where we were all standing and literally came to our ankles and tilted on his side and locked eyes with all three of us. It was really surreal and I have never seen anything like it. Keep in mind his size and the effort we put in casting at him for 20 minutes. It was almost like he was saying "hi" or checking us out..."what are you doing here??? you idiots!!!

The other highlight was Ricky catching his first trout on his brand new Sage fly rod and it was also his maiden journey on his first hand tied bug. That's two big firsts...

Below are a few pictures of the outing. We were all were kicking ourselves after we passed on taking pictures of the nice browns we caught right off the bat. "Do you want a shot of that one dude?" "Na... we are going to catch a ton more..." That's fly fishing.

Rigging up before I started trail blazing...

Looking down the canyon

Caught a few nice ones

The shadows and the fish

Brought to hand

Typical water we were working...

We could see 40-50 browns in this hole

And they could see us... they were spooky to say the least.

We know this river can be epic dry flying but the winter is a different story. Man it was great getting out with some good buddies though.

And thats how the cookie crumbles...

Chris Giles

Top five biggest browns??? I think yes...

Rickie was at my house around 11:30 and we headed out for a quick fish on the Weber. We decided to target some more of the land lock steel head, that are reservoir rainbows coming up stream to spawn. (haha ... not real steelhead but still...)  As you can see by John Mcguinn's last post there are some big fish in the river right now...

Right off the bat I hooked a massive rainbow sitting off a shallow shelf. He took it to me and got out in the main current and started dragging me down stream, jumping and causing a wake to break in his path. I chased and worked him for about 5 minutes. We tried to net him a little pre-maturely though. These massive fish need lots of respect and you have to battle them just right or they will be gone. And so it goes the fish was netted by Rickie and flipped out the top of the net and was GONE. That got our blood moving with excitement.

After a long dry spell things picked up again. (it turns out we were following a couple of guys with spin rigs). They both had kept a couple of nice browns which brings up another point. To release or keep? Maybe its guys like this that make the river so healthy? I never see people on the Provo keeping 18 inch browns. Maybe less competition creates bigger, but maybe fewer fish? The debate rages on.... After a quick chat we tipped our hats and worked our way past them up stream.

With the big rainbow still fresh in our minds I hooked two big browns that pushed 20 inches I am sure.

Enjoy some photos of the outing...

This one was a jumper... Long and lean.

Gorgeous fish.

Very soft take but big fight. Seeing this one flash I knew it was big from the very start.

Top 5 for sure.

Nice little kype jaw.

Cool, calm and collected, Rickie does battle.

Landed a couple big fish of his own on the day.

Thanks for checking in.

Chris Giles

January Hay Day!

Chris and I were siked to get on the river last Sunday! We had spent the last week tying countless flies and were extremely eager to get out and give these new patterns a go. In addition to tying dozens new trout candy, we knew that the warmer weather conditions were going to translate into more active fish. Lets just say that our new hand tied flies and weather predictions paid off.

Chris scooped me up around  10 and we hit the road, still unsure about where we wanted to fish. As we started to head east up I-80, it started to rain heavily and we began to second guess our thoughts on how excellent the fishing and weather were going to be. Chris was unprepared with only a fleece, so we decided to stop and try to pick up a couple of cheap ponchos in the event the rain would fall heavily. After unsuccessfully scouring the local Wal Mart for 20 minutes, we said to hell with it and climbed back in the truck and headed toward the river. 30 minutes later we arrived and found partly cloudy skies with very little rain falling. We were stoked and knew the fish would be hungry, especially for the new flies we had both spent hours tying. Usually I am the first one ready, since big papa Giles likes to take his sweet time getting all rigged up and ready to wet his line. I scrambled to finish dressing myself and ran down the path to catch up. We both slipped into the water and started the process of determining where we thought the fish were holding. Chris threw the first few casts (as usual) and within a couple of moments, he was hooked up on a nice brownie.

Chris with his first brownie of the day

Not a bad hook up, only a couple casts in

 As soon as Chris hooked up on the special trout candy we had formulated, we had a pretty strong feeling that this was going to be a very productive day on the river. The bugs were looking good, weather was ideal and we were there right at the perfect time. We worked the hole for a few more minutes, both landing several good fish. We were amped to be out on the water together, laughing and enjoying the beautiful Utah scenery, wildlife and the hungry fish! We started working our way up river landing a couple of fish here and there, but didn't come across any ripples that were particularly appealing. As we continues to walk, we spotted a few huge deer and then noticed a run of water that looked absolutely ideal. This is where the real fun began! It is important to keep in mind that often times these great looking stretches of water hold only a few fish. Little did we know, but we were about to stumble on a hole that yielded more fish than I have ever seen. Take a look at a few of the photos we were able to snap while pulling out fish after fish.

Chris with a nice healthy brown

Cheese!

Same fish down the hatch

Tight line all day long!

Check out the shoulders on this thing (not Chris)

Letting him take some line...

And reaping the reward

Chris says "Another One? Hell"

Beautiful spots

I could literally post photo after photo, as we continues to pull larger numbers of good sized fish out of this "honey hole". It was pretty incredible, and in fact, I think we stepped back for a few minutes and just laughed at the amount of quality fish we were landing. We both knew that this day was going to go down as one of the best days we have had, but had no idea that there was still more in store. Chris stated "well, we got what we came for" and we then decided to start heading back to the car. As we were walking back down stream, we could help but laugh and talk about how great of a day we had just had. It was truly a memorable experience.

As we approached the car and the hole that we first started to fish, we decided to give it one last go before dressing down and getting back home for our "Sunday dinners". Chris threw a couple casts and landed another good sized fish. He threw another cast and landed an even better fish. As I stood on the shore watching him continue to catch fish after fish, I could no longer resist. I wet my line for a few final floats through a perfect ripple and after three cats without a yield I said to myself "this is the last one". I long ranged one way up stream to give it a good float through the whole run. Then WHAM........ My indicator was aggressively yanked under water and I immediately knew that I had either hooked a big boy. As the fish started running down stream and talking a lot of fly line, I screamed for Chris to get down stream and give me a hand (he carries the net, hahaha). I fought the fish for several minutes, letting him take line, then bringing him in closer, take line, bringing him back; the battle went on and on. Eventually the fish wore out and Chris was able to skillfully net him. I was a bit up stream and was unable to see the fish as he was landed by Chris, but the shout Chris let out and the  look on his face let me know that I had just caught a beauty. I personally dont think the photos do it justice, as the usually never do, but here is the big guy that I landed. The best part about the story  is that we were headed to the car and were in not for Chris, I never would have thrown another cast. What a hell of a day! Here I am back at home tying flies, drooling over the next time I can get out on the water and catch this beauty one more time!

I could not stop laughing

Pretty damn girthy

Until we meet again

Thanks for reading y'all. Please stayed tuned for our next post and the launch or our website. Hope to see you on the river!

-Jon

Middle Provo With Lots of Laughs

On Sunday Danny J, Johno McGuin and myself decided to go fish the Middle Provo and we had a great time. As you all know this time of year brings extremely bad air quality to the Wasatch front (or "Fog" as the local news likes to call it) and an escape to the Wasatch back was a welcome excursion...

The plan was to leave at 10:00 so we could be fishing during the peak hours or 12:00-3:00 but when 10:10 rolled around I thought I better give John a call to make sure he was on his way. He answered and right off the bat I could tell he was laying in bed. "I wasn't sure if we were still going because of all the snow" me..."Yes we are, are you going to come with us?" John... "I will be to your house in 5 minutes".

35 minutes later he rolled into the drive way and we were off and giving John a hard time the whole way there. Haha Classic.

Once we were on the river we realized what a perfect day it was with clear blue skies and a bright sun shinning down, although the day ended with cloudy skies.

We covered a bunch of ground and we all caught some nice fish. After our cold session we went to Davanza's at Kimball's Junction for some food. My cheeks and stomach hurt from laughing so much and I was in bed early that night. There is something about being outside in the cold all day that makes you extremely tired at night...

We had a few glitches however with John snapping off his tip trying to chip ice from his guides and Danny J had a part break on his frozen reel. With warranties and a few new parts they will be back to good as new in no time.

We all caught 7-8 fish on various bugs and I hope to get out again soon. Enjoy a few pictures...

Danny and John gear up

Danny- Bombaclaught- J enjoys a good fight with a nice brown

Notice the fresh tracks along the bank...We didn't see another person out or any other tracks besides ours. Maybe a few Otters though...

Getting the fly out

Ah yes! nice brown and sunglasses to boot...

Say AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

Looking down at the approaching clouds.

Thanks for checking in.

Chris Giles

Cold and Rainy but Productive!!!

My buddy Rickie and I went out on the Weber yesterday in hopes of some action. Right off the bat we were into fish.

The weather was rainy and wet and taking the fly out of the fishes mouth was dreadful because you had to get your hand wet and then try and dry it off in the blowing wind. For what ever reason the fish were biting and it turned out to be a very productive day. (by day I mean two hours... My face was about to fall off and next time I will need a face mask perhaps)

Rickie had a few frustrating moments and his rod took the brunt of his frustration. Everybody has bad days but his luck on this outing was not very good. We all have days where you cant keep your rig on or you are constantly battling the harsh wind. I am sure he will knock em dead next time...It happened to me a couple weeks back when I was skunked. (don't worry Rickie, no one reads this...)

The fun part about this time of year are the rainbows coming out of the lake. They put up a leaping fight and some of the fish are as fat as they are long...

I had something that doesn't happen all that often happen on this trip. This time of year I tend to fish with two flies and I hooked two fish at once. They made a carefully synchronized jump out of the water after being hooked that was impressive. I had both of them on for a little bit before one let go. They were both 17 inch browns and the first picture below is the one that made it to the net. Only Pablo Oleiro can land two fish at once...

A few pictures from the outing below.

 The Brown that didn't get away.

Nice Rainbow.

Check the close up of his gill. Both sides were like this. Gross!

Thanks for checking out the post.

Chris Giles

Bad conditions and skunks running around everywhere...

Skunked is not something a fisherman likes to hear.

Sunday Dalt and I headed out on the Weber. We were excited to be fishing and out of the soup in the valley. The sun was out and the river looked great but the fish were tight lipped. We tried a dozen different bugs over 3 hours and only hooked two fish. They were not brought to hand though...

I wish I had a better story or even some pictures...

Check back soon for better news.

Thanks,
Chris Giles