Florida Fishing Part 2; Indian River Lagoon

After Fishing Ft. Lauderdale and getting the fresh water fishing out of our system, it was time for some saltwater action! We met up with Captain Troy nash of Big Red Guide Service and fished the Indian River Lagoon just outside of Titusville, FL. Troy knew the lagoon like the back of his hand and had us on the fish all day long. Fishing the flats and sight fishing was a blast. Troy had heard there were some black drum in the area so we set out to catch some of those first. It didn't take long before Rob and I Were in the fish and our drag's were screaming as the fish were ripping out line. I also learned why they call them drum. They make a really cool low drum sound that sounds alot like the base in your car. After landing several black drum, we headed to a different part of the lagoon to go after the red fish and sea trout. Within five minutes of Troy showing us what to do, I hooked and landed my first red fish and Rob landed his first and biggest sea trout of the day. For the next few hours we landed several red fish and sea trout with a few puffer fish mixed in. Puffer fish are considered trash fish but I still wanted to catch one to add it to my species list. We also saw a Manatee and some Dolphin cruising the lagoon which was cool to see. At the end of the day, Rob and I landed around 25 fish. I would highly recommend Captain Troy Nash to anyone if you are looking for fast saltwater action!

Hear are some of the Black Drum Rob Caught.

We couldn't get him to puff up very much, but we tried!

Puffer Fish. Rob and I both caught one.

Here are some of the Black Drum I caught

Biggest red fish of the day.

All day long!

Biggest sea trout of the day!

Check out the single top tooth these trout have.

A tiny sea trout. The biggest one I leadered got away before the picture.

A gator at the Orlando Bass Pro Shops.

Florida Fishing Part 1; Ft. Lauderdale

I had a business trip to Orlando that lasted a week, so I did what any warm blooded American should do; pack some fishing gear and go down 3 days early to fish! My friend Rob was already there and we met up and made the 3 hour drive down to Ft. Lauderdale. We arrived to wet conditions. It rained off and on all day and the fishing was slower than previous trips I've made. We fished some of the ponds I had fished before around Ft. lauderdale. Even with the conditions we still caught quite a few fish, 5 species total. We even caught a few gar that spit the hook and fell back in the water before we could get pictures pf them. I love the fight that some of the exotic species have in them. They put up a better fight than large mouth bass in my opinion. If you go down, check out Everglades Pro Bass Bait Shop Located at 8246 Griffin Rd in Davie, FL. There phone number is 954-434-4495. Not only do they have everything you would need to catch fish, they can also give you good insight as to wear to go to catch what ever species you're going after. After a good day of fishing, We headed back to Orlando for our next trip. See Florida Fishing Part 2 for some great salt water action!

Large Mouth Bass

My first ever Midas Cichlid.

My biggest Jaguar Garbote of the day.

Rob with a nice Jaguar Garbote.

Another one of Rob's nice Jaguar Garbote's.

We should have taken this exit. Just think of the possibilites!

Mayan Cichlid

This is one of the largest Iguana's I've seen!

Thanksgiving Equals Good Times

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays! It's always fun to get together with all the family and enjoy their company and eat your own weight in turkey! We had quite a good time the past few days! I went fishing with my Father-in-law and caught some small rainbows in a little stream nearby while my Dad and brother took all the kids to hike sugar loaf volcano while all the wives did the black Friday shopping thing (scary)! After, we met up and went up the canyon to look at deer and show the kids some of the Indian petroglyphs that are in the canyon. The kids had a blast and got to enjoy some awesome country. Of course, Thanksgiving always comes and goes faster than you would like and the only problem with the weekend was that I didn't take enough pictures! I truely am blessed and hope that all of you had as good of Thanksgiving as I did.

My Father-in-laws trout out of Chalk Creek.

A bunch of the kids on Indian Rock up Dry Creek Canyon.

One of the nice bucks we saw while we were out and about.

The kids getting ready for an Adventure

Fire in the sky! A nice sunset from my parents back yard.

Early Morning On The Middle Provo

I made a quick trip up to fish the Middle Provo River. It was 18 degrees when I started and gradually warmed as the day went on. I was using rapalas and twitching them through the current. It was a typical provo river experience as far as all the fisherman around goes but I did land 3 fish and had a lot of follows. I'm still tring to perfect fishing with rapalas and I feel I'm getting better each time I go out. It seems that the later in the year we go, the less and less the fish want to play. I plan on hitting a little river down south after Thanksgiving, hopefully it's faster fishing down there. It's ok though, I'm starting to see ice fishing reports so my river fishing is almost done until spring.

19" Provo Brown. My biggest so far on this river.

21" White Fish. He had something funky going on with his belly.

Quick Trip to the Provo River

My father-in-law called me this morning and wanted to hit the lower section of the Provo river. I had a few hours before I needed to leave for the Utes last home game of the season (they won 38-7 against San Diego St) so we went. First off, I've never been a real fan of fishing the Provo river for a few reasons. Despite being a blue ribbon fishery, It's almost always crowded and quite frankly, the river has had my number! I've never been able to catch fish consistently out of the thing! But today I was excited to try out some of the new techniques I learned from fishing the Weber river with Joe the past couple of weeks. We only had an hour and a half to fish and in that time I landed 2 browns and missed a few others. My father-in-law also had a few takes. The first one I caught looked to be a few inches bigger than the one pictured but he decided to unhook himself at my feet before I had a chance to take a picture. It wasn't fast fishing, but I was excited to actually catch more than one fish on the Provo in one trip, which is a first for me. We will definitely have a lot more trips on the Provo, only this time, I have my sights on the middle section.

The Weber River, Take Two

Joe invited me to hit the Weber with him again and I wasn't about to miss out on the opportunity. We fished a different spot on the river from the first time we went in hopes of hooking up with some more big browns. Well, today the fish didn't want to join the party. The bite was slow all day! We had a couple of really nice browns on for a moment only to have them spit the hook. We didn't see any fish on beds today so I guess the spawn has wrapped up for the year. We ended up with 3 fish landed with the biggest going 19". The other 2 were in the 14-15" range. Even though the fishing wasn't as fast as we would have liked, it was still a great day to be out on the river! It won't be to much longer until we'll be getting out the auger and sled for ice fishing season. I'm definitely looking forward to it!

19" Brown Trout

Brown-Out On The Weber River, November 2009

I finally met up with a guy I've been wanting to fish with for a long time. I had read a lot of the Weber River reports that he posts on http://www.bigfishtackle.com/ about the monster brown trout that he catches on a regular basis. I frequent a lot of fishing forums and blogs and don't know of anyone in Utah that consistently catches as many big browns as Joe does. I was fortunate enough to be able to go out with him for a day and learn some of his techniques he uses to land these big beautiful fish.

We met up and were on the river by 9 am. About 20 minutes into fishing, it turned into an all out hog fest! In the 7 hours of fishing, we landed around 20 browns that were 17-21" in length and around that same number that went smaller than that. We also hooked some rainbow trout and mountain white fish. Joe and I both hooked into a few monster browns 24-26" range that spit our rapalas and plastics after some acrobatic fights. Some of those fish that got away were without a doubt the biggest brown trout I have seen while fishing! It was frustrating at times because I couldn't keep a fish hooked to save my life! I missed a dozen or so big browns that would throw my hook back at me after a few seconds of fighting. At the end of the day, I can say that this is one trip that I won't soon forget. Thanks again Joe! I look forward to the next adventure with you!

First fish of the day.

Spawned-out female



21" Beast

This one looked like it was part piranha. Check out those chompers!

Check out the hump ...Awesome!

Nice Weber Rainbow

"The Ghost Fish" October 2009

A friend and I decided to head out fishing after work. He had been telling me about a reservoir that he took his boy to a few days ago where they caught some albino trout. I had seen pictures of them before but had never caught one myself. That one small detail is all it takes for me to get interested in going after it! We arrived and were fishing by around 5 pm. He had told me that the times he had fished this particular reservoir, the fishing had always been fast. Well....not so much this day! There is a big snow storm on it's way in tomorrow and I think the pressure change had alot to do with the slow bite.
The albinos were really easy to spot crusing the surface. We both cast spinners using our ultra-light rods and had alot of follows and slight hits but it was tough to get them to commit. I had 3 albino's that I fought all the way to shore only to have them throw the hook at the last second. I'm not going to lie, I was getting a little bit frustrated! The first fish I ended up landing was a nice 15" fat rainbow. That settled me a little bit but that's not why I was here.
It started getting dark on us and then I hooked my last fish of the evening. It was an albino and I wasn't about to lose it this time. I finally landed my first albino trout! At 12", it wasn't the biggest fish ever, but it was still nice to be able to cross this species off my list. Talk about an interesting looking fish. From it's white body to it's red eye's, I couldn't think of a better fish to catch around Halloween.

My first Albino Trout "The Ghost Fish"

I like how their fins are see through.

Utah DNR Gill Net Study, October 2009

I volunteered to go help the DNR with their gill net studies at Strawberry Reservoir. What a great experience! I arrived at the strawberry fish trap about 8 am and the boats were on their way back with the netted fish. they set nets in 8 different locations in the lake. Once the nets arrived, we strung them out one location at a time. There were marks along the net for different depths (there were other reasons too, I just don't remember what they were) and we took the fish from the specified spots and measured and weighed them. There were alot of Utah chubs, bear lake cutts and crawdads with a few Utah suckers and rainbows. There was even a single kokanee caught.
The wildlife biologist's did alot of different studies on the rainbows and cutts depending on the location of the lake they were netted in. It was interesting to me to see what the fish had been eating. There sere small chubs, crawdads and even a cigarette butte pulled out of one of them! They took down the age and sex of each fish as well. When they were done with the trout, they filleted them and we got to take some home. Unfortunately, I forgot my share! This is an activity I plan on doing again. All the DNR guys were great to work with and very friendly! I learned alot of things and forgot even more! I need to work on my retention. After we were done, They cooked up the crawdads and we had are fill of them along with some sandwiches.
On the way home I stopped at various spots in Provo Canyon to take some pictures. This canyon is breathe taking in the fall. There are so many great photo opportunities. There is also the Provo River that runs through it as well. This is a blue-ribbon fishery and is known for big browns. I cast a few times and caught a small brown on a spinner. I would have had more success if I would have had my fly rod. All-in-all, it was a fun day and I learned a ton!

This is how they came back from the boat.

Getting the net set out so we can get to the fish.

One of the big cutthroat's pulled from the nets.

Measuring and weighing the fish.

One of the wildlife biologist's doing his thing.

Spawning kokanee salmon in Strawberry River.

Bridal Veil Falls

One of the many great views in Provo Canyon.

Upper Falls

The vibrant colors of Fall.

11" brown trout from the Provo River.