I tried writing this post last night, but it didn’t really jell for me until I got an email from Shane over at The Quiet Pool.

Yesterday morning I fired up the motorcycle (I love this non-rainy weather!) about 8:00 AM and headed out. Generally I haven’t had a lot of success fishing the Blacksmith after about 9:00 AM, but it had been a week since I got tired of fishing, so it was time to do it again. The bike ride was glorious—perfect temperature and nobody on the canyon road at that time of the morning. It was one of those rides where I had a hard time keeping the helmet on. I always ride with it on, but sometimes there’s a lot of that inner-conflict: be smart, safe and feel restricted, or feel free, careless and dumb? What a choice.

[The box on the back of the bike carries my waders and boots with the fly rod case on top (four piece rod). Saddlebags contain other fishing paraphernalia. Where the meadow meets the edge of the trees, that's where the river is. (The grass hay is grown to feed elk in the winter at the Hardware Ranch, located just a mile upstream from this photo.)]

I hadn’t fished a section higher on the river for quite a while. It seemed that there weren’t a lot of fish in this section whe I tried it ten or so years ago, but I had often heard that this was the “best” area to fish. I thought it might be time to try this section again.

Walking to the river I noticed there was a trail of trampled grass along the bank and at each hole up the river there was a patch of trampled grass where a fisherman stood. I should know better than to fish on Monday, right after the weekend crowds. Note to self: wait until Wednesday to fish. “Most fly fishers would be in the water in most of these places,” I thought at the time. “This looks more like a bait fisher’s stance (or possibly a spin caster).”

There are lots of overhanging Western River Birch (Betula occidentalis) that can hamper casting, so roll casting and the famous dap and dab method (dangling the leader and tippet from the end of the rod) are pretty much the major fishing methods. (Contrary to popular belief, I find that a longer rod is more effective than a shorter rod in this situation because you can extend your reach over the swift current and into the swirly pools on the far side of the river. It hampers the roll cast, but enhances the dap and dab. I guess it’s just six of one, half dozen of the other.)

At the first hole I poked my head through the birch and saw a nice deep pocket of water with a back-eddy. I hunched behind the puny trunks and tangle of branches provided by the birch. After watching for about five minutes and not seeing any fish activity, I decided to use the always faithful beetle pattern. The current pulled my beetle through the swirls and upriver in the little back-eddy.  I tried a couple of casts like this paying out more line each time. (Funny thing, the terms “play out” and “pay out” mean the same thing.)

On about the fourth cast a darting shadow attacked my fly and I reeled in a 10″ brown. I tossed the fly in several more times then headed upriver. I fished for twenty minutes without seeing a thing. I finally found a hole that produced two more browns.

[I'm spending more and more time at the river painting. It's hard holding a trout with one hand for so long while painting with the other. (Okay, this is actually what we do with blurry photographs—Photoshop them into watercolors. My wife could do this with real watercolors, but not me.)]

Three browns, no cutthroat. It was beginning to come back to me why I didn’t like this stretch of river. I usually fish lower on the river and catch a couple of browns but a higher number of cutthroat. It seemed to stick in my mind that this stretch of river was of special concern and our local TU chapter, Cache Anglers (active chapter, but not an active website), tried to get the state of Utah to do something about it.

After searching through the past four proclamations, here is what the state of Utah is doing:

Lakes and reservoirs aren’t the only places fish get out of balance with their habitat and food. For 2005, a portion of the Provo River will open to “General Statewide Fishing Regulations.” This was done in an effort to allow anglers (including bait anglers) to harvest more brown trout. Growth has slowed because the brown trout are too abundant for their food supply. By harvesting more fish a balance can be maintained. These same population conditions apply on the Blacksmith Fork River near Hard w a re Ranch, the Ogden River between Ogden and Pineview Dam, and the Strawberry River below Soldier Creek Dam.

Anglers can assist the Division in meeting management goals and help maintain healthy fish populations by harvesting fish in the following locations — up to established limits:

Blacksmith Fork Brown Trout – 4 fish

taken from the 2005 Utah proclamation

Okay, so the deal is that since the “growth has slowed,” we need bigger fish. “As an angler, you hold the key to smoothing out these boom-and-bust cycles and making fishing for bigger fish more consistent across the state. Keeping all the fish you catch—up to your legal limit at the following waters—is the key to flattening these cycles. And that will make fishing even better in Utah.” (from the 2008 Utah proclamation) The issue they wanted to correct was trout size, not trout species. What they did was to get rid of the flies and artificial lures only regulation by opening it bait fishing and encourage taking home the already established limit of four fish with no size restriction.

And sure enough, for the next two hours of fishing, all I caught were browns (about 15 total) in the 9″-12″ range. There definitely is a problem in that stretch of the river, but the problem is species, not size.

At some point in time somebody out there thought that the German Brown Trout was a better game species. Brown trout were being regularly stocked in rivers and streams by the late 1800′s. Stocking and over-harvesting of the native cutthroat populations pretty much put the kibosh on the natives.

Why have browns (and rainbows for that matter) been seen as a better sportfish than cutthroat? Size is definitely not an issue, since we know some subspecies of cutthroat achieved incredible size. (Check out this article on the demise of the Bonneville Cutthroat – I would like some verification/sources on this data about the Utah Lake fish sizes—anyone with info, please pass it on.)

One of the issues is the gullibility of cutthroat—they’re too easy to catch. Or so the theory goes. Cutthroat seem to readily take to big, bushy flies. Again, so the theory goes. Sure, I have caught lots of cutthroat on a bushy fly (see last week’s excursion). Of course, that creek is stuffed with nothing but cutthroat. One of my favorite cutthroat rivers is the Grey’s River in Wyoming, where late in the summer grasshopper patterns produce some excellent fine-spotted cutthroat.

I have also been frustrated beyond belief, on the Blacksmith fork River, by rising cutthroat. Rising regulary to surface and sub-surface fare that I could not match. I remember one hole in which I spent 90 minutes and at least a dozen patterns trying to get a take from rising cutts. When I put a new pattern on the fish would rise to it, examine it for a couple of seconds, and then never give it another look.

Do browns behave the same when they aren’t surface feeding—are they susceptible to bushy patterns? During the next 45 minutes or so I brought about ten browns to hand, all on the beetle. None of them were rising except to my beetle. Just for fun I thought I would tie on my Splayed Salmonfly pattern. Although I had never seen the salmonflies that far upriver, and I didn’t see any exuviae while fishing yesterday, I thought I’d try it just the same.

The results?

I missed a couple and landed another five or so with that pattern.

Which are more gullible? Which the greater sport fish? Which belong and which don’t? Much like my inner-conflict with the motorcycle helmet, I think I know what the smart choice is.

Eradication of the brown (and higher up the brookies) would be a welcome fate for these trout in this watershed. I admire Shane’s passion and commitment to the native species of his home waters. Although his blog is titled, The Quiet Pool, he is anything but quiet when it comes to conversation of native species. Here is an example: Can I Super Size That For You?

Keep up the good fight Shane. I hope I can follow your example and be a better champion for our local cutthroat populations.

A couple of sources for native fish:

• The Western Native Trout Initiative makes a unified commitment to improving the effectiveness of management actions and increasing public awareness of and support for the conservation needs of these imperiled species.
• The Western Native Trout Campaign is committed to restoring healthy native trout populations by uniting biodiversity, wilderness, and fishing advocates in an action-oriented effort to comprehensively protect native western trout and their habitats.
• Trout Unlimited—Conserving, protecting and restoring North America’s coldwater fisheries and their watersheds.

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