Sweet Revenge

My first experiences (last December) with fly-fishing were not very pleasant. I started fishing in the middle of freezing winter on the Provo. I went about a dozen times and caught two little fingerlings. It was terribly cold, slow, and I was by myself all but a couple times, trying to teach myself how to fish. It was rough. My wife and I moved south to be with her family because of our new baby, and I continued to learn how to fish on small, overgrown So. Utah streams. I started seeing a lot of success and grew to love it more and more each time I went. I vowed that whenever I made it back up here to Provo, I would fish the same place I went the most and kill it. Last week I had my chance to make good on this vow.

I arrived on the river at about 3:30. I started out with a nymph rig, secret fly with a sow bug dropper. Within 5 casts I was into a fish, gobbled down the sow bug, I was excited to get the skunk off so quickly at this stretch of stream that made me want shoot myself many times. I picked up a few more on my nymph rig, swapping the sow bug for a PT after two stomach pumps showed fish FULL of mayfly (PMD) nymphs. My buddy Nate tipped me off about some fish that may be holding on a bank because of the higher flows, so I threw on a parahopper and had some good success with it. The PMD's started coming off around 5 and I saw some rising fish so I threw on a small BWO (only mayfly I had in my box, how did that happen?) and started doing really well on it. All in all, I caught a fish about every 15 minutes, nothing of good size really, though. I caught fish on 8 different flies, pretty much everything I threw on produced a fish. I am happy to report that I made good on my vow and got my long desired revenge on the Provo. I must say, however, I was really disappointed with the size of the fish. All the fish I caught seemed to be stunted. The fish pictured below was the biggest one I caught. Is it just me or is this fish's head and tail way too big for its short body? Maybe next time I go I will help out the population and keep some fish?