So an old fishing buddy and I connected at Salt Lake City airport and with our trusty brand new Toyota Corolla rental we head east for the Green River and Trout. (the Corolla happened to be the first car each of us owned in the early 1970s. Then it was like sitting behind a lawn mower engine wrapped in tin foil and plastic. I can tell you that new technology can be a good thing)
The road trip brings you into Wyoming for a short while and then back into Utah. From there you head south to a very remote area of the state. This area is where Butch Cassidy and his Hole in the Wall Gang used to hang out in the late 1800s. Today, this is an area of mixed land use. It’s a high plains desert so there are mountains and interesting colorful rock formations. Where irrigation is possible, some farming can be seen from the major roadways. And when you get to the far eastern part of Utah (seems counter-intuitive for an east-coaster) the area becomes mountainous and vegetation more sparse, except for the sections where rivers still flow. In these areas, cattle graze. There is also hiking in the area that can be done at Dinosaur National Monument and Canyonlands National Park. But the vast majority of recreational activity is fly-fishing for trout. (Brown, Rainbow, Cutthroat, and the mixed species, the Cutbow trout.) There are hatcheries in the area that sit next to the rivers, but in an effort to ensure a health stock of trout, the fish spawned from the hatcheries are shipped to other parts of the country. They are not released into the local Utah rivers.
Just before arriving at our accommodations for the next four nights, we can see the Green river from the mountain top roadway. There is also a dam on the Green river that looks like a miniature version of the Hoover Dam. It was built in the 1950s creating a recreational area and prevents washouts of the river.
We drive up to the Dutch Trout Resort where we’re initially greeted by set of gasoline pumps that can handle large trucks. Their main office is located in a small, single story, strip mall-like building. Just inside the main entrance it looks like what a 7/11 carries, lots of candy, tobacco products and old hotdogs and burritos are cooking. At one of the end building is a full service fly-fishing store with just about every item you might need. But more importantly for the moment, we are very pleased to see that the other end of the building has a sign lit up that says, “Steak House.” It’s 6:45PM (8:45PM for me)and we’re both starving. We decide to sit down to eat “a steak” before checking in…that and the restaurant closes at 7PM. The proprietors of the restaurant let us that as much as the restaurant will be closing shorting, they can service us in the kitchenette area as long as we’re ok ordering from the counter. We’re fine with that. They could have told us we’ll be eating off paper plates using chopsticks. Our main focus is getting high quality protein into our systems to reenergize. So we’re standing at the counter, menus in hand and pick out our desired cut of steak. We’re promptly told that they do not have those steaks on hand. Disappointed but keeping a positive attitude, we review the menus again. Before we can make our second choice, we’re told by the woman behind the counter that they are currently out of “all” steaks. We find that hard to believe as the neon sign on the outside of the building still screams, “Steak House.” We’re told that they are (we are) dealing with a delay in their steak shipment. We respond that along the road we past any number of cows that could solve the current supply and demand issue. Could be we were not the first people to suggest this as they did not find it amusing in the slightest. The woman, trying to cover all her bases also tells us that they are out of onion rings too. Another restaurant employee walks by and upon hearing this contradict our liaison telling her, “Oh we do have onion rings.” Not to be demeaned in front of customers she retorts, “No you’re wrong, we’re out of onion rings.” They almost come to blows and decide to take this critical discussion back to the fry cook. He works behind a concrete wall that has a small window. The window is large enough to pass a plate through, but you’d need to be a real good shot to if you wanted to throw the plate back through it. Couple of minutes go by and the one woman who was so sure there were onion rings to be had, came out with her tail between her legs and in a low tone, enlightened us that there were no onion rings available. Our original order taker reemerges, now completely vindicated. We still have a, “what is there to eat issue” to deal with. We settle on burgers, figuring it’ll be a somewhat close cousin to the steak. Based on the chisel marks on the burgers it looked as if they have been frozen together for centuries. And once we convinced them to scrape off their special sauce, they tasted that way too.
The next morning we head back to the main building and decide to try our luck with their egg burrito and coffee. It was a gutty move but the gods seemed to be with us as no repercussions were had. We have beautiful clear skies and for mid September in this part of Utah it’s warm. It’s more than warm, it’s hot. We connect with Carl, the fishing guide we’ll be using the following two days. Aside from suggesting where to fish on our own for the day, Carl also gives us some recommendations on where to get digestible food for dinner. We each stock up on two liters of water and a couple of packets of fruits and nuts. We’re headed to a section of the Green River called Jones Hole. We pack up the Corolla and get some final pearls of wisdom from Carl. We ask how long is the drive. He asks us what we’re driving. We say, “A Rental…” He cuts us off and replies, “Ok good. You can make in under an hour.”
The temperature climbs quickly into the 90s. It’s a high plains desert so there is no humidity, but when you’re in the sun it’s toasty. You play this game of trying to walk in the shade even if it takes you off a path - anything to stay out of direct sunlight. As we’re walking in the brush we came across about a dozen pronghorn sheep. They’re very close and your initial thought is to try to pet them. Then thankfully the more sane part of your brain takes over and tells you, “Hey Einstein, these animals are not pets and could easily butt you off the side of this mountain.
If you’re right on the river you often need to walk through briar patches to get down into the river. The scratches from these bushes are sneaky in that when you’re first scratched, outside of the initial scrape, it’s no big deal. Then about 30 seconds later, like the delayed reaction from a Jalapeño on your tongue, your skin begins to itch to the point where you want to scratch it off. With that, in spite of the heat, I decided to wear my chest high thick rubber waiters the whole day. I walked around in my own personal sauna for 6 hours. Knowing that we’d never have the will power to not inhale both liters of water if we brought them with us, we each left one in the car. At the end of the day we finally get back to our car that’s been sitting in direct sunlight all day long. The water bottles we left behind for an end of day refreshing cool relief were hot to the touch. My friend accurately remarked, “It’s like drinking hot tea.” Lots of lessons learned that day.
The next day we’re with our guide. Carl grew up near us on the east coast in the Pocono Mountains. He’s been a professional guide for decades out west in Montana and now Utah. Having a guide is a great experience. Let me rephrase that, having a good guide is a great experience. First, he has all the fly fishing gear you need. No worrying about the one crucial gadget you left home that every fly fisherman needs. He has it all and more. And he has a three-person rowboat specifically designed to handle the fast moving waters of a river filling with temperamental and athletic fish. The guide sits in the middle of the boat and each fisherman stands at the ends of the boat. The boat is shaped like a miniature Viking attack vessel with the ends curling up. This feature makes it easier for the fisherman at each end to lean against something as you’re standing in a fast moving boat. Without it, the heaving fast current would easily toss you overboard. The captain of the vessel sitting in the middle is expert at steering the boat by maneuvering the oars and muscling the boat into the best trout-casting position possible. There is no motor on the boat, it’s all skill and strength.
So between the two of us, my friend is about an eight on the fly fishing skill Richter scale. I sadly am a three on a good day. As much as back home I’ve had a professional put all new sets of lines on my rod, and I’ve watched a couple of knot tying YouTube videos (multiple times each), I still suggest to our guide that if you’re going to offer up any special pearls of wisdom about fishing on this river, my friend is the guy who’ll get the most out of it.
So we launch into the river and as much as I’m hopeful, I’m pretty sure that the fish on this river are smarter than me. And with my meat and potatoes approach to fly fishing I set my expectations for landing large trout on the realistically low side. Fairly quickly I get a hit - I’m stunned. I land a respectable size fish that we think is a trout. (And to be clear, our guide scooped him out of the water and took the hook out of his mouth, which bothered me for all of about three seconds) Turns out it was not a trout. It was a Mountain Whitefish, not of the same royal lineage as a Trout. I still feel pretty good about the size of the fish, and the fact that a fish, previously on my hook actually made it into the boat. Soon after I hooked another large fish. But this time as the fish jumps through the air, miraculously still on my hook, the guide alerts us that this is a large brown trout. (For those not educated on the various species of trout, one puzzling detail is this: Brown Trout are not brown at all. They’re really a bright gold color. They look magnificent, which is another reason we try our best to preserve them. I was dying to ask someone for a point of clarification on this detail, but out of fear of potential ridicule I opted not to.) My adrenaline kicks in - batten down the hatches and lower the sails we’re in for a fight! The next couple of minutes become a pre-beginners tutorial on fly fishing in a boat. Instructions from my guide range from how to stand, where to stand, how to hold the rod, what angle to hold the rod at; and where to put my fingers on the line. After landing this trout and taking the requisite picture, I would have been satisfied with the whole trip if I had not caught another fish. But the reenactment of the beginners guide to fly fishing went on all day as I caught one trout larger than the next. At one point our guide, trying to keep from laughing said to me, “You’re doing everything wrong, but just keep doing it.” Unfortunately due to the rural surroundings, not a lottery ticket could be had for purchase.
Fly fishing is not like other types of fishing where you might either be on a large party boat with very comfortable seats, potentially having an adult beverage until someone hands you a rod with a fish on the end of the line; or where you might be on a quiet lake in a row boat laz’in around, chewing on a piece of hay, waiting to see if the bologna on the end of your line has attracted a fish which is generally validated when your bright orange bobber submerges. With fly fishing you will not be hauling in the largest fish on the planet. And as much as trout are generally beautiful fish, there are more colorful ones in the ocean. With fly fishing there is constant work involved. It’s man vs. trout. You need to be focused - always. Mentally drift for a second and the fish of your dreams will come and go and you’ll beat yourself up for days about what should have been. There is always ample frustration between snags, complex knots, low hanging tree branches, and falling into fast moving rivers. With fly fishing there is always a ton of exercise to be had. You’re never in one spot for more that a couple of minutes. You’re constantly walking in water while fighting the current. Or, trying to figure how to get across a river without being swept away while attempting to retrieve your “lucky” fly that’s hopelessly tangled in a briar patch. (Picture near the end of the movie, “A River Runs Through It” where Brad Pitt has hooked a monster trout and refuses to give up on him, even though he’s being carried down stream by Class 4 rapids) Temperatures range from the absurdly hot to numbing cold and then my favorite, cold with a steady rain. And there is always the never-ending parade of trophy fish that got away. You are constantly trying to improve your casting expertise, as that skill is foundational to having any chance of success. Being able to tie a decent knot is also critical and from there, the depth of your continuing education will depend on how good you want to get. You’re reward: Spending hours in nature, generally with spectacular views without interruption. If you allow it, you get a chance to experience and immerse yourself in something mentally and physically revitalizing. You get a feeling of accomplishment in finally being able to cast and land a fly exactly where you want it on the river. It’s very much like the weekend golfer who has a horrible round but makes two good shots on the last hole and feels it wasn’t such a bad day. And extremely important, being able to have a number of belly laughs over the tragic failures of the day. I’m expert at that part. The icing on the cake though: if you catch a large one that jumped through the air a couple of times and made you earn the right to land him. Those experiences will make a lasting impression on the gray matter.
At lunchtime we pullover to a small inlet at a quiet area of the river. My friend and I get out and stretch while our guide unloads his miniature grill and a couple of small folding chairs from the boat. He quickly sets up and cooks some very tasty chicken cutlet sandwiches with all the fixins. It was great to take load off and just sit, eat, and enjoy fishing related conversation.
Our guide has a good sense of humor that my partner in crime and I both appreciate. We ask him if he can tell us some good stories about some of his more famous or outrageous clients. He refrains from calling anyone out, but does tell us about some clients that seem to expect the guide to have scuba men beneath the surface of the river waiting to put fish on their hooks. And then there are other customers that refuse to understand that unless there is some effort on their part, the fish will not oblige. Many people see an Orvis commercial of a man standing in a shin deep pristine river, schools of trout appearing to perform synchronized swimming all around him. He’s preparing to cast and he has two football fields of fly line sailing up in the air going back and forth as he strokes his rod. It’s a great video and you really want to jump right into it. But realistically, trying to control that much line is a near impossibility for mere mortals. I once found myself in a similar situation where I had a good bit of line out and trying to control it only led me to release even more line out. It’s kind of like a gambler who can’t stop. He’s lost a good bit of money but figures with just one more large bet, all previous failures will be erased and the world will be great again. And after rinsing and repeating a couple more times, he finally crashes and burns in spectacular form. As my casting extravaganza progressed, for a very brief moment I was impressed with myself thinking I could be on the Wide World of Sports, or the new Netflix show, Trout Hunters. But by the time I realized I had no more line on my reel it was way too late. I had fifteen pounds of fly line dancing above my head. I had so much fly line up in the air it seemed dark, as if locust covered the sky. During one of my final strokes I felt something touch the side of my nose. But it wasn’t until I had already violently cranked the rod forward that I realized it was the fly on the end of my line, the fly with a hook in it. To make a long story short, my reaction time was deficient and the hook dug into my nose and pulled agonizingly snug as the line inertia finally caught up. Good news, whenever my kids have suggested that they might be interest in a piercing, I’d whip this story out and go into excruciating detail of what’s involved in putting a hole through your nose. It’s never failed me.
We finish lunch, pack the boat up and head back out. We look down river and can see a bull moose feasting on the vegetation along the riverbank. What’s amazing is that there is only 20 feet of greenery on either side of the river; the rest is rocky desert, yet it’s enough to support a large moose. The whole morning I’ve been at the front of the boat and my friend has been fishing off the back of the boat. I’ve been catching a lot of fish, my friend…not so much. We had talked about switching places for the afternoon, but my friend graciously suggests that we keep the same positions and tomorrow, our last day, we’ll switch. That afternoon I continued to catch fish and my friend…nothing.
Our last day of fishing brought us to a spectacular section of the river that had soaring high cliffs that surrounded the river on both sides. When we stopped for lunch we had a chance to look up at the top of the cliffs which are well over a thousand feet up. Eagles were gliding around the pine trees that lined the tops of the cliffs. Due to the significant distance away, we couldn’t tell if they were bald or golden eagles. Even with the iPhone camera lens cranked, they still looked like flying ants. At a certain point in the day, dark clouds rolled into the area. Shortly there after lightning bolts began to strike the tops of the cliffs. Due to the closeness of the strikes, the thunderclaps that followed were almost immediate. And due to the canyon we sat in, the amplified noise was something like what you’d expect Armageddon to be like. Initially I thought, maybe it’s time to pack it in and avoid being fried. But the storms came and went for a good part of the day and after a while they just became nuisance entertainment. Another point of having a seasoned guide, Carl suggested we pack our waders and a light jacket for the trip, just in case. Those items kept us dry and comfortable during the intermittent down pours.
On this final day of fishing we’re now doing a type of fly fishing called, “nymphing.” I had heard of it, but was always too embarrassed to ask what it was. So I found out that not only is their a fly that sits on top of the water, but there is also a small tiny black fly that has a separate line and sits on the bottom of the river after you cast. On this particular part of the river, it’s the nymphs that the trout are hitting. To understand what particular nymph is correct or to understand where and how to connect this separate line takes a some knowledge and skill, something way beyond me – air go the guide who was only more than happy to rig you up with new line and flies if you happen to snag your line on the bottom of the river. He explained to us that he’d rather loose some cheap line and a fly than have us snap the end of his rod off, which he repeated to me often.
So on this day, my friend who sat in the back of the boat the day before and caught nothing, was now in the front of the boat. From my rear position on this new day I caught more trout than I could have ever thought possible. Our guide ran out of funny quips and just reverted to shaking his head in disbelief and chuckling periodically. Unfortunately my friend’s luck did not improve. At one point we took a picture of him with a four inch trout he landed – a very good sport. But during the last twenty minutes of that final day, my friend switched to a traditional dry fly that floats on top of the water. He proceeded to hook a very large and determined brown trout. The fish jumped through the air a number of times but was still on the line. Every time the fish was reeled close to the boat, he’d miraculously become rejuvenated and bolt. This went on for what seemed like an eternity. At a certain point he planted himself in some thickets at the riverbank. We couldn’t get the boat next to him, so our guide jumped out of the boat with net in hand. As he approach, the fish spit the hook at him and raced to freedom. The landing to take the boat out of the water was about 100 yards away so the day was done. Carl felt bad for my friend (I had my mouth shut) and said he was really sorry about losing that one. My friend replied, “Not your fault. If it was, we’d be having a different conversation right now.”
