Late Season Action.

Rob and I met up this morning to go try our luck on the Weber River. We drove up the canyon to his property and were greeted by a fantastic sunrise and a 27 degree chill. The brown trout are currently spawning and in my opinion, this is the best time of year to fish this river. Not only does it give you the best chance at landing some of the monster browns that this river holds, The fish are also the most colorful during the spawn which make for some great photo opportunities. The river was high for this time of year and the fishing was slower than we were expecting, maybe due to the recent storms we've had. In years past it's been gang busters during the spawn. We both started out landing a few small cuts. Rob was using flies and I used jigs. We hit hole after hole with minimum success. As the day heated up, so did the fishing. I don't know if that was connected by ether way we liked it. We started getting into the browns at this point and we ended up with a few nice fish going up to 20 inches in length. We saw a few really nice browns on beds which was cool to see. I was hoping for faster action but still had a great time and I will definitely be back on the river shortly to continue my search for that monster brown.

Rob's first brown of the day.

Close up of my fish in the picture below. Great shot Rob!

My biggest of the day. I love the hook jaw!

Robs Biggest of the day.

A red fox soaking up the morning rays.

Indian River Madness

While on a business trip to Orlando, Rob and I got to go out for a day of fishing on the Indian River. We made the hour and a half drive from Orlando to Ft. Pierce where we met up with Captain Charlie Conner of Fish Tales Charters ( http://www.fishtalescharter.com/ ). We started early and we had fast action for most of the day. We started out fishing a sea wall and Rob hooked up with a ladyfish right away. After spending some time there we moved and fished some docs where we both caught Redfish and Rob all but landed a snook. It got off right at the boat! We then hit the flats where we had success catching spotted sea trout and jack crevalle. I also caught a small flounder. After that we hit a few more docs where we slammed the sheephead and more jacks. Once you catch a sheephead, the name makes total sense. You look at there mouth and its chuck full of teeth that a sheep would have. I've never seen anything like it! We also caught some hard head catfish, gag grouper, mangrove snapper, pufferfish, pinfish and black drum. We had multiple doubles during the day with several species. It was unbelievable! We used live bait at times and also threw some swim baits and jigs. Capt. Charlie knew his stuff and it was one of the fastest fishing days I've ever had! We caught 13 different species of fish in 1 day! We also saw manatee's and dolphins which was a cool experience. If you're ever in the Orlando area and are looking to go fishing, call Capt. Charlie and rest assured, you'll have tight lines all day. Trust me, Disney World has nothing on the kind of day we had out on the water!

Beautiful Sunrise.

Ladyfish

Rob's biggest redfish of the day.

My biggest redfish of the day.

Speckled trout double

Black Drum

Pinfish

Sheephead Double

Mangrove Snapper

Gag Grouper

Jack Crevalle double

My biggest Jack Crevalle of the day.

Hardhead Catfish

Hardhead catfish

The Boulder Mountains...Thats More Like It!

If you've read my previous post on the Boulder Mountains, then you know it wasn't the best fishing experience of my life. I had such high expectations of landing the big trout that the area is known for and came away a little disappointed. Although I learned better fly fishing skills on that trip, I wasn't able to catch the big one so to speak. Well, I regrouped, decided to take my spinning rod this time and headed back down with my older brother Jason. We arrived late, set up camp and got a few hours of sleep before we headed out. Jason and I had higher expectations on this trip and it just felt like it was going to be a good day of fishing.

The first lake we hit was one that I fished the last time I was down. I knew that it held huge brook trout and it was just a matter of hooking up with one. My brother brought his fly rod and fished the way I was taught on my first trip. He is far superior to me with a fly rod and had a lot more success hooking into fish than I did when I was down a month earlier. He hooked into several brookies in the 16" range. I tried fly fishing the first two hours with a single bite and decided it was time to stop messing around. I went back to shore set up my spinning rod with one of my favorite jigs and within no time had a fish on! It was like that the rest of the day. I landed 12 brook trout with my biggest going 18 inches and just a complete toad. These brookies are footballs in this lake and put up a really good fight. I hooked one 16" fish that had an 11" girth!

The next day we made our way to two other lakes but instead of going after brook trout, we were targeting tiger trout (hybrid between a brook trout and brown trout) and splake (hybrid between a brook trout and lake trout). We first went to a small lake that is known for monster tiger trout that you can sight fish for. Boy did we see some absolute hogs! The only problem was that they didn't want to take anything we were throwing. we fished for the first half of the day with no luck. there were a few other fisherman on the lake that were having the same success we were. I was able to land 2 tigers the last hour we were there and one of them was well worth the wait! It measured out to 22" and is the biggest Tiger I've ever landed. The crazy thing is that there was a tiger in that lake that we saw that made the one I caught look small and I'm not kidding. I believe the Utah state record tiger is swimming in that lake. We had some lunch and headed down to our final lake of the trip. I started fishing an inlet while my brother made his way around the lake. No sooner did he make it over to where he wanted to be that he told me to come over. I made it over and he was laughing to himself just telling me to look into the water. I couldn't believe what I saw! there where fish everywhere! It looked like the bottom of the lake was moving. We quickly cast in and both of us had fish on. It was really fast fishing. There were tigers, spake and colorado cutthroat trout and we caught all three species. It was a really good trip for us. Jason caught three new species that he had never caught before and I caught my personal best for 3 species. The biggest of this lake was a splake that took my jig off the bottom. when I got him in I couldn't believe how fat it was. The fish was wider than my hand from the tip of my fingers to my wrist! The only bad thing about this trip was we were only there for 2 days. Needless to say, we are already planning a longer trip for next year! This trip ranks among the best fishing trips I've ever had.

18" Brook Trout

16" Brook Trout

22" Tiger Trout

Check out the patterns!

Check out the colors!

Spake on the fly...

All day long!

21" Splake. What a hogzilla!

16" Colorado Cutthroat Trout