Tiger Trout

After catching my sweetest trout to date, which ended up being a tiger trout on a mouse pattern, Derek was way excited for me. He has painted a lot in the past, but has recently gotten into painting fish. He offered to do a watercolor of the fish to help me remember it. It turned out awesome and it is now going to be a part of my fly tying desk/room for years to come. Thanks Derek!

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Provo River

Gotta love Provo river fly fishing. Not really. I went out yesterday solo to see if I could find one of the few big trout in the Provo, I failed. I started low on the lower section, chucking a few different things without much success. I waded up to a few holding fish and decided to switch it up a little bit so I put on a small black zebra midge I had tied up. First cast I hooked up with this little guy, skinny skinny but nice colors. Next cast I picked up a smaller fish, next cast after that (all into the same small hole) and I hooked into another fish. I think I found what the fish were wanting to eat...



As I was walking up to one of the last stretches of river I was going to fish, I saw a lot of flashes in the water. I stopped to see what was going on, and it was just one fish thrashing around without stopping. I walked up right behind it and saw that the fish had some line coming out of its mouth and the line was stuck under a small log right next to it. I grabbed the fish, grabbed the line, and busted it off. So the fish had a huge worm hook deep in its mouth (size 4 or so). The fish had flailed around so much trying to break free that the line had deeply cut into the side of its mouth. Pretty crazy, first time I've seen that. Dang chucko.

UWG Fund

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Tigers, oh my!

Kyle came up for the weekend to do some fishing. After coming really close to bailing out on me for Saturday, he decided he was going to stick with being a man and go fish. We met up in Heber at 3:30 a.m., nice and early. We were on the water and fishing by 5. Man it was freezing. We were tossing mice, anxiously stripping them in waiting for the loud splash to come from the dark. I was using Mike's mutant mouse. After an hour and a half with only one hookup and no other strikes, we started to get discouraged. As soon as the sun started to rise, something switched on the tigers aggression. Both Kyle and I were getting lots of action, almost every cast would produce a huge wave behind our bugs and we would strip in line just waiting for the vicious take from below. After different stripping techniques, I finally got a solid hookup with a nice fish. I landed him, we taped the fish at 23", snapped a photo and we were back at it for more.


Not long thereafter, I had an insanely aggressive strike and was able to set the hook. After landing the fish, we taped it at 24" without any tail pinching or anything, so it was DEFINITELY at least 25 3/4", Kyle. My biggest to date.



A few minutes later, Kyle hooked up with a nice tiger and landed it. He pulled out the tape to get a measurement and the fish weaseled his way out of Kyle's hands before we could get a pic. We continued to strip mice, excited as 8 year olds on Christmas Eve. The mice action slowed way down so we switched it up a little bit. We each picked up a few more fishing, with me ending with this nasty, hook-jawed tiger. Mice+tigers=fun.

Paparazzi Up in My Stuff

On my birthday this year (May 21) I hooked up with a friend of a friend to do some fishing in So. Utah. His name is Scott Donaghe, California surf fly-fishing pro/photog extraordinaire. I decided it would be a lot of fun to hit a very picturesque skinny water ending in a beautiful slot canyon. The trip was awesome: great fishing and great scenery.

This morning, Nate texted me saying "you're famous." It turns out, Scott got his first photo published. It happened to be the cover of Southwest Fly Fishing and it happened to be me! Pretty awesome! Congrats Scott, hope to see some more of your stuff in mags in the future! Thanks Mike for the screenshot.