When I woke up yesterday morning, I wasn’t quite as excited to go fishing as I had been the night before because the temperature was an icy 6° F. But there was an excellent sunrise to the east:

Bear River Mountain Range:

I planned on picking up Dan at 10:45, and as I looked out my two study windows toward the west and south west, it looked like this:

Mendon Peak to the west:

This Wellsville Mountain Range (see picture below) is quite beautiful. Our valley floor sits about 4000′, and the mountains raise straight up to a height of 10,000′ (the highest peak is to the left). My house is almost directly below the center peak (9000′), which is the peak you can see slightly to the right of the barn in the picture above.

But as I started finalizing my gear, I looked to the east again and saw this:

Foggy Valley = Inversion:

Because of the small sized valley and the weather phenomenon called a temperature inversion, we can get some incredibly polluted days with the increasing population. And, the cold air gets trapped in the bottom of the valley. The temp was 10° F when I left, and I didn’t expect it to get a lot higher.

I picked up Dan and we quickly made our way for the 45 mile trip north. We zipped north through the town of Preston, Idaho (home of Napolean Dynamite fame – if any of you watched that) and headed east along the Bear River then north again into the Oneida Narrows.

Dan had fished the river before and I had as well, but about 15 years ago. There is an impoundment about 7 miles up the river from the turnoff. They release water sporadically to meet farmer irrigation demands below. But the water comes from the top of the reservoir. So during the summer the water temps on top can reach nearly 80° F. The river holds mostly stocked rainbow, a few wild rainbow, even fewer browns and a handful of cutthroat. The river bottom is mostly weeds and moss with an excellent stench each time you pull your foot from the muck. There are some nice gravelly portions as well. Better contolled water heights and water from the bottom of the dam would certainly make the river a better fishery.

We stopped at the campground and got ready:

Chris Thomas (president of Utah Trout Unlimited) happened to drive by. So we stopped and chatted for a bit. He works at Utah State University’s Utah Water Research Laboratory. He is currently helping with some research which requires him to be on the river nearly every day for the next two years. Fishing. Poor guy! Although, it is good to see some (I know, a very small portion) of our tax dollars to help support one man’s addiction:

Chris throwing a streamer:

Luckily Chris knows where the fish are and he pointed us to a few locations for some risers:

Dan & Chris:

They were rising to midges:

and my eyesight being what it is without prescription sunglasses (I have to blame it on something), I missed a few before hooking into this guy:

Scott’s rainbow:

We fished for about two and half hours. Dan landed 6 and I landed 2 (eyesight, I’m sure of it). Luckily the inversion wasn’t impacting the Narrows, so the temps were pretty decent and a couple of times when the sun poked out it got rather toasty.

On the way back down the Narrows road Dan spotted a bald eagle close to the water carrying something. It appeared to be a fish. Dan grabbed the camera and handed it to me. He took the wheel and I punched the accellerator to try to catch up with the bird and snap a shot.

I got a couple of shots like this:

He never realy lifted off the water very far. It appeared to both of us that he had a fish in his claws.

Look under his white tail:

He finally dropped the meal and I could see as it fell that it was a duck.

Eagle sans duck:

He quickly gained altitude then circled back around and landed in this tree.

Eagle in tree:

Bloody mallard duck:

Mule deer wondering what we were doing:

It was a great day for spotting birds of prey, as we saw at least a dozen hawks and harriers in a two mile stretch between Franklin and Richmond.

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