Little Bear River

Today I finally made it down to the Little Bear River at the very southern end of Cache Valley. I've been wanting to make it down there for some fishing for a while now, and I thought today was as good a day as any.

The Little Bear is the smallest "river" I've fished, and the fish were easily spooked. I spent a lot of time on my hands and knees, crawling from hole to hole to avoid being seen by the fish. Despite all the stealthy precautions I took, I still spooked all the fish, but I still had a lot of fun sneaking my way through the water, trying to hook into the finicky fish. After about three hours of crawling, casting, and changing fly after fly, a light hatch of tiny midges broke, and the fish started rising, and I managed to hook into a feisty little brown trout. The the sun went behind a cloud and the fish and the midges were done.

After I'd had enough of the fishing, I got my camera out and photographed some of the spots that caught my eye as I made my way up the river.

Photo Dump

It's been a while since I've updated the blog. Here are a few images I've made over the last few months:

Falls River

This weekend I got to go up to Idaho and see the family, and do some fishing on the Falls River. When my dad, brothers and I all got into fly fishing, the Falls River was the first place I remember going after we'd all gotten our rods and reels, so it was good to return after having not fished that river in I don't know how many years. And it was all made better by the fact that my dad, and two of my brothers, Casey, and Riley came along as well.
On the way to the river, we drove past this burned and collapsed potato cellar, and I had to photograph it:

The stretch we always went to along the river was under an old rail road bridge. In the years we've not gone there, the bridge has been made far safer than it ever was. There are now cable hand rails, and an even deck on the ties, so there's no more danger in falling. I kind of liked the idea of risking life and limb crossing the bridge back in the day. It kept you on your toes.

After fishing the Logan River and Blacksmith Fork all year, it was a bit of a new experience fishing such a wide river again, and it really wore my arms out having to cast so far. After a few casts and a few fly changes, I finally caught a whitefish on an X Caddis. Then a little while later, after tying an Olive Serendipity to the bend of the hook of the X Caddis, I hooked into a nice Rainbow Trout. He was in the 14-ish inch range (I really need to get a tape measure), and fought like a mule. I finally landed him, and my dad got this photo:

After we'd finished fishing, we hiked back to the car, and I grabbed my camera and returned to the river to make this photograph:

Saturday, the whole gang got together at McCowin Park in Ammon for an awesome lasagna lunch, and to take some family photographs. If any of you saw pigs flying this weekend, or saw the weather report from Hell and saw it had frozen over, the reason is because I finally made "people" photographs. This is what the Duncan Clan looks like as of October 16, 2010:

Logan Canyon

This weekend I went up fishing on the Logan River. The stretch of river I wanted to fish was already taken, so I went downstream a few miles and fished a stretch I hadn't fished before. Sometimes when I'm out fishing, I see parts of the river that I need to photograph, and this trip was one of those times. I went back there tonight and came away with these:

I don't know how this car got to the bottom of the canyon (this stretch is about 100 feet below the highway), but it made for a good place to hold fish. I saw a few rise this weekend, though none were interested in anything I cast to them.

Fall is in full swing up the canyon, and the leaves are turning yellow, red, orange and all shades in between. It's really quite gorgeous up there. Here's just a sample:

This hole was pretty deep. I had my tripod fully extended, which go up to about 6' 6" not including the head. I worried the current would shake the camera, but the photograph is as sharp as any other, even though I didn't quite like how it turned out.

Right Hand Fork

Blacksmith Fork Reservoir

This week I heard through the grapevine that salmon flies were starting to come out up Blacksmith Fork Canyon, so I decided to head up there this evening after work to get in on the action. It turned out that I didn't see a single salmon fly, but there were tons of midges and mayflies hatching everywhere, so I tied a pale yellow size 18 F-Fly on, and started casting. It wasn't long until I had an 8" brown on, which I landed and released. A little ways further up the river I missed two strikes on the same fly. Then even further up I hooked into what felt like a pretty big fish, but he got away. Two casts later, same thing. I hooked into it, but he still managed to shake loose.

Overall, I'm pretty proud of myself, even if I only landed a small fry.

Afterwards, I went back down to the reservoir to make a few photographs that I'm pretty pleased with: