I realize I’m not a local anymore, but FATC played a big part in my development as a fly fisherman so I wanted to send you a recent trip report.
I roped my wife (one of Bob Moore’s daughters) into fishing with me for 2 half days in the Dixie Mountains (about 1.5 hours north of Zion National Park) at an area called Aspen-Mirror lake. There is a small stream coming into the lake and a small stream exiting, which is where we spent the entire time fishing.
The water was crystal clear, ranged from 1-2′ deep, and was 6-9′ wide with trees frequently bumping up against the banks. Almost everything we did was sight casting, which is always fun, but particularly more enjoyable for my wife as a beginner. These mountain streams don’t get as much pressure as more popular streams near Salt Lake (The Provo, Weber, etc.) so the fish are much more…cooperative.
We caught rainbows, brookies, brown trout, and some tiger trout (first time catching one for me since I moved out here!). We ended up getting about 20-25 between the 2 half days. We primarily used beadhead gold ribbed hairs ear, red copper johns, tan and red san juan worms, chubby chernobyls and stimulators.
Three fish were particularly enjoyable. The first required some crawling to avoid shedding a shadow and spooking them and then casting from my knees. We fished a hopper dropper the entire time and with the water so clear I was able to see the fish move slightly and grab my red San Juan Worm. I set the hook as soon as I saw it inhale it and netted it quickly thereafter.
The second fish was hiding under some logs and I let my rig drift under the overhanging logs. With the position of the logs I wasn’t able to set the hook straight up, so I did a slight strip set to the side and hooked her, just to be broken off moments later on the logs. I let her sit for a bit and reset and then tossed a red Copper John and just let it hover under the logs and hooked up again and was able to get her to my wife to net.
The third fish was actually 3 fish, but since they all were caught in under 5 minutes, it felt like one experience! I caught one rainbow on a red copper john and then after the release I flicked my line out to prepare it to drift back into their feeding zone just to have a tiger smash the hopper pattern on top harder than any top water take I’d ever seen. This 10″ tiger made a size 14 chubby just disappear. The final was another tiger that did a much more subtle take underneath that just made the hopper dip slightly and not even completely submerge (made me think of Kenny yelling at me to set the hook whenever in doubt after missing some takes on my graduation trip).
Almost all the flies I caught fish with were courtesy of WoolyBugger Fly Company as well.
