Whale of a time!!!

Finally, a successful fishing trip. This is one of the first overnight fishing trips with more than 2 persons in a long time. Tuesday night Ty, Kyle Lallis, and I headed to Cliff dwellers Lodge in Marble Canyon. We had a great dinner at the restaurant and talked with a few of the locals about the fishing. We then got our fishing gear ready in the room, and later I taught Ty and Kyle how to play poker.

That morning we got out of fly shop with our licenses and lunches around 7:15. We got on the water I imagine around 8. We drove the boat through the canyon slowly at first unaware of the underwater boulders or logs. We luckily didn't see any and a couple miles in got the idea of how to drive the boat like a pro.

We fished first at duck island. We had no luck, but saw fish rising in unreachable water by wading. In the winter and summer the dam releases more water in a given time due to the high demands, so in the morning the water was rising very quickly until about 11. Therefore, the fishing was best to drifting boats in deep currents. Being beginners with the boat in the river we were unsuccessful with the drifting. We did waste some time trying though.

At 11:30 we got to a little bank near the dam and ate our lunches. By now the water was down and the fish were coming to shallower waters again. My first 5 casts in the water here i had fish on and landed 2 very quickly. The fish were a healthy 15-16". I landed another in the same spot. Ty had a couple fish in the area too. Kyle had one on that got off. We posed for a couple quick pictures in front of the dam. Ty caught a picture of me just in time while landing a 16" in a deep run by our lunch spot. We were catching the fish on San-Juan worms, zebra midges and a special worm pattern i tied before the trip. We then headed down river and fished couple different gravel bars. Ty was very successful at one of the riffles and landed a couple more. I had a few bites, but didn't land any.

We tried drifting down and throwing dries and nymphs, but didn't have any luck. We got back to the boat dock just at dark. We had great time fishing and feel like we learned a lot of how to fish the river for future trips. LANDED Kyle Ballard=5, Ty Bringhurst=4, Kyle(ZBAMFZ)=0.

We hope to be going again near the week of Christmas. Possibly the Saturday before.