With all the docks off the lakes, I can't launch and retreive my boat alone and couldn't find anyone who wanted to go to Strawberry so I dug out my flyrods after 10 years of gathering dust and headed for Diamond fork.
My grandparents owned a ranch at the mouth of the canyon until the early 50's and this is the first stream I ever fished some fifty years ago. It has always been one of my favorite streams. I can't begin to count the fish that have been caught on the fly and the ducks I have taken here.
A boat spoils an old man, but makes him able to fish when he might otherwise not be able to. The last ten years have been spent on salt, fishing for billfish and tuna. The last three years I started to re-discover Utah lakes with my boat and set the fly rods aside. What a mistake that turned out to be.
It was one in the PM when I arrived on the stream. I slowly drove up the pavement as far as Three Forks looking for the barracade that is suppose to segregate the cutthroat from the real trout fishery, but I couldn't find it.
I drove back down the canyon until I found the slower water, not wanting to get knocked over by the currant. Certainly a consideration when you are old.
As I prepared to go, I realized that there were only dry flies in my vest but decided what the Hell and rigged up. The stream was clear. I walked along the bank looking for a suitable place to get in without falling. As I stepped from the bank I startled a 14-16 incher from his lair under the bank and another in the tail of the hole. "good sign", I thought.
For the next hour I slowly fished upstram. The rythm of the long rod began to match the harmony of the river and I was once again a flyfisherman.
Five brown trout were caught, admired and softly admonished not to be so foolish next time and released. They were small, 12 to 15 inches but beautiful in their fall finery.
As I returned to my truck I drank deep of the mountain air and the scent of the river. I bid it an old mans farewell with a promise that I would be back
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Very well written report. Nice job.[cool]
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Thanks for the report pezvela. Purty country to be in this time of year for sure.
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[cool][#0000ff]From one oldster to another...welcome aboard. Enjoyed your report and your prose.[/#0000ff]
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It's been a good 20 years since I fished the Diamond, your words make me want to return and see if she still produces what she did back then.
Great report.
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Nice post. I also went fly fishing yesterday for the first time in a while. There's just something about fishing a stream in the Fall that seeps into your soul.
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Pezvela thanks for the post, I love fishing Diamond fork. Maybe you should change your BFT name to Hemingway or Papa the way you write. The new fish barricade is just a bit above 3 Forks maybe a quarter or half mile and is visible from the road.
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I will take the time to seek it out, this barrier that can keep the cutthroat from integrating with the real fish, "Salmo Trutta", the brown. Surely this can't be a bad thing.
The trophy cutthroat of strawberry are one thing. This is the perfect habitat for them and they have given me more enjoyment than I can recount. But the state and federal bureaucrats would eliminate the rainbow and browns from this Diamond Fork fishery if they have their way. They justify it by rationalizing that the cutthroat is indigenous and its ranks are getting smaller.
I can only ponder, How long does it take to become indigenous? What will become of the mustang, chukar and the ringnecks? They are no more indigenous to the state than I am even though I was born here. The brown trout has been in this fishery for over 50 years that I know of. What will become of them? Some common sense is in order. I rant, like old men often do. excuse my bad manners.
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Love diamond fork! Thanks for the report!
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Well darn. I liked your report but the why did you have to diss the bonnies? C'mon dude, there are salmo trutta in dang near every stream and ditch in the state! No love for the natives? I helped the DWR with the grunt work of hauling those babies in on my back over miles of stream and tribs last halloween and I was honored to be a part of it. Diversity I say! Now a single drainage will contain natives up top and browns and rainbows in the 10 stream miles down below (not to mention 6th water). What's not to love? Win/win.
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You are entirely correct. There is a place for all trout. My whining is that I suspect that the powers that be will not leave the lower stretch of the river alone and ultimately the whole drainage will be devoid of browns.
Some years ago, the government via imminent domain took all of the bottom lands from the landowners. This was part of some ill conceived plan that included creating a "world class cutthroat fishery." along the length of the river.
Perhaps the taste of bile in my mouth is not so much over the possibility of cutthroat being the only specie on the watershed, but the way the government handled the landowners.
I noted in my original post that my grandparents owned the ranch in the bottom of the canyon until it was sold after massive flooding in the 50's. I was only a few days old when I moved to the Mt. Rose ranch. The river and the land is part of me. It's water flowed in my childhood blood. My first trout came from her water and I learned to fish with the long rod while wading her riffles and pools.
Perhaps it is change that causes the edginess in me. Knowing that everything is changing and the fear that my grandchildren will never fish for wild browns or perhaps even be able to know the river the way it is and has always been.
What a shame it will be when the browns and rainbow are gone.
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ScottyP, do you know how those bonneville cutts are doing? I'm all for putting them in but have wondered if there is enough water above 3 Forks to make it a reasonable habitat. You guys keep mentioning rainbows in Diamond Fork but I've never caught one among the many hundreds of fish per year that I've caught there. Has anyone actually caught a rainbow in Diamond Fork in the last several years? About 5-10% of the fish I've caught have been cutts. I believe they are a hybrid between more than 1 cutt subspecies. Sixth water was stocked with rainbows about 18 months or so ago and I'm sure some of those will start showing up in Diamond Fork eventually if not already but I've never caught one of those until at least a mile above the bridge to the hotsprings. Pezvela, I'm curious how Diamond Fork fished when you where growing up before the CUP was there to maintain summer flows?
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The river was, indeed, a challenge in the past. Springs levels were high and roily with freshets from spring rain and melting snow runoff and the annual onslaught of irrigation water. Many times I thought it was amazing the trout were not washed into Utah lake by the sheer volume of water. In fact many either chose to move downstream or were washed, as evidenced by the fish that were found in the highline canal after the irrigation ceased in the fall. Mostly browns but a few rainbow and cutthroat.
The river came into its own in late sumer and fall, When the grasshoppers were swept into the water by hot August winds. Oft times it was possible to catch fat brown trout one after another, each stuffed with hoppers until they were like sausage. Feast or famine.
As the water levels dropped and the river cleared the river would give forth her treasures in increasing numbers. Occasionally the evening caddis hatches were so thick they would be in swarms. Trout would slurp them and chase the emergers into the air like diminutive sailfish. At dark the bats would come to join the frenzy adding to the excitement I felt with this extraordinary hatch. Albeit nervous excitement with the bats swarming around my head as they fed on the caddis.
There are or were stonefly hatches as well, but I have never fished one, but the evidence of shucked casing would be found on the river rock.
Sculpins are residents as well and the muddler has proven deadly from time to time.
Rainbow populations fluxuated. Caused I suppose by the hatchery trucks. Deep inside their makeup something survived of the steelhead, or it seemed to me. If the hatchery fished lived in the river for the second and third year they became worthy advisary. Hanging onto life and refusing to be removed from their underwater lair with a tenacity that only the wild rainbow know.
It is interesting you mention sixth water. Last night a friend called. He told me that during the deer hunt his boy and himself had fished the water with great success. Stating, in a short time they caught over two dozen trout. He with a panther martin and the son with fly. Although he didn't enlighten me to which specie they were, I can only surmise that they were primary the rainbow that were planted some months ago.
I think I will head up there today and see if the water will be as generous to me. Should the river be generous, I will let you know. Watch out for goblins tonight.
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Good Luck today and don't forget to take some nymphs this time. I like size 8 -12 beadhead prince nymphs this time of year up there. The bigger nymphs always reward me with bigger fish. Thanks for sharing your experience with Diamond Fork from the past. It can still have the most incredible stonefly hatches on a good year. 2 or 3 years ago there where 3 types of stones hatching simultaneously and you couldn't keep the 16-22 inch browns off your hook. Managed to fish it twice in 3 days but then heavy rains put an end to the hatch as it was proceeding upstream.
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Thank you for your generous advise. I can not find my nymph box. The old woman, like old women do, has probably found it gathering dust near my vest and 'stored' it for me. God know it could not have been me. I'm not a bit absent minded. Let's see, I forgot where I was going with this!
Now I remember. While I await the disappearance of these ominous clouds I'll run to Sportsmens and buy some beadhead Princes. Thanks again for the advise. Be cautious if you fish tonight..Vampires will walk the riverbanks and they are not in search of stonefly.
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That’s some of the best forum writing I’ve ever read. I love Diamond Fork; my dad’s family had property up Wanrhodes Canyon until the 50’s. my brother and I would catch some nice cutts in the creek until the thing dried up in the late 80’s.
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