Browns on "The Fork"

Well, I had been suffering from a severe bout of cabin fever. I knew I wanted fishing, since I have my "limit" of duck meat in the freezer and need to make some room for stuff the family will actually eat. Because of that, hunting was out and the season was over the day prior anyway. So... where to fish? I entertained thoughts of the Provo, a couple smaller creeks I know of or my old reliable, Diamond Fork. I figured, well, the Provo will have tons of folks, the smaller creeks may very well be snowed in and are harder gaswise to reach so the Fork it is. The temps were warm when I left the house but it didn't take too many miles of driving to realize I might have a heck of a Southeast wind to deal with... blowing right out of the canyons. When I got to Spanish Fork, it was especially brutal. Anyway, I drove the truck through the galeforce winds up to my turnoff. Much to my dismay, the areas I actually wanted to fish had no available parking. All of the parking areas had been bypassed by the plows and now, you couldn't even get off the road without driving into a foot and a half of powder. I finally pulled over into a spot that had been previously attempted by a braver soul than me.

I parked, trying to get off the road as much as possible and donned the waders. Can I just say... I love my breathables. They're so much more comfy than my neoprenes with one definite advantage... they're not full of holes. Anyway, Buddy (my dog) and I got rigged up and made our way down to the little bridge. I fished underneath the bridge and in the hole directly above with a minnow and got nothing.... oh well. It was bitter cold down on the river but thankfully, there wasn't much wind. A bit further up the river I figured I'd try a little different action on my minnow.... since the cold likely was making the fish pretty sluggish, I figured a dead drift might work better than the typical jerky, dying minnow look I try to emulate with my plastics. Sure enough, didn't take long and there was a big sag in the line. When I lifted the rod tip, I felt the throb at the other end that signified... FISH ON!! The fish came up and I was ecstatic as I saw it was a really nice brown, probably 17 inches or so. That excitement suddenly turned to bitter disappointment as the fish rolled his way into a current seam and because of the torque on his lip and the single hook, he came unbuttoned. For a second, I honestly thought.... that might have been the only fish of the day. As it turned out, that wasn't quite correct.

I fished further upriver, catching nothing. I did switch over to my go-to lure, the gold #2 Mepps spinner. That lure has NEVER let me down. If I'm having a bad day, I throw on the spinner and the fish magically appear. Anyway, I postholed my way upstream, taking advantage of several riffles to cross back and forth in the stream, while trying to keep my canine sidekick from getting in the water much at all. He looked like he'd been hooked up to a power line, as much shaking and shivering as he was doing over on the bank.... poor guy was probably freezing. He dried off eventually (thank god for Lab coats) and the powder didn't do much except clump in his fur. We made it upstream past a big rock wall and came to "THE HOLE". This was a spin/bait fishermans dream hole. There was a current seam running in on a line perpendicular to the hole. It ran up against the far bank and turned 90 degrees to run under the root wad of an old, old willow tree. The water here was deep, slow, and green. If you can find that kind of hole, there is ALWAYS a big trout that has taken up residence, usually along with several smaller trout as their entourage. I cast into this hole with that spinner over and over, trying to get the perfect drift and spin.... hanging up in the tree about four times before I finally nailed it. I felt the lure spin as soon as it hit the current, and it was swept right under the tree. I pulled it out and suddenly felt the electric jolt that told me something had just slammed the lure. I raised the rod and sure enough a big healthy brown trout came rolling out from under the tree. I worked the fish downriver until I could get my camera out and take some video. As I fiddled with the damn zipper on the camera case, the fish swam under the undercut bank and wedged my line against some ice on the bank. Damn.... didn't want to lose this one too. I finally got the camera set up and rolling and took a two minute video of the catch and release. Elation set in... the skunk had been banished for yet another day. I took advantage of the moment to capture some pictures of the river and the surrounding area. After Buddy and I took a short breather, we moved on to check out more water.

As we moved upstream, we got into some really skinny water. It became painfully apparent that we'd have to cover some ground and find the deep holes to get into fish using my spinner. They just weren't in the shallows or weren't looking to eat some golden metal that day. Along the way we flushed up some Mallards (I've got to keep that in mind for next season) and saw tracks from all sorts of critters. The only sound was the river and the crunching of the snow... peaceful, especially after escaping the smoggy, grinding, noisy grip of the city. I wound up finding a couple more pools with willing adversaries and although I didn't take any video, I did get some still shots of the fish. The sun had moved higher in the sky by then so I started looking for a way out to the road for the walk back to the truck. I came around a final bend and caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked closer and sure enough, there were turkeys feeding along the bank of the river. I told Buddy to sit, whipped out the camera and got some good shots of the toms/jakes wandering along. I don't know if they saw me, heard me, or whatever else, but they suddenly took a line away from me heading up into a campground and up the hill. Buddy and I forded the river, walked over and began the pursuit... I wanted to see if I could get some closer shots. As it was, we didn't gain any ground on them so I took some final pictures as they wandered up and over the hill. At least if I get a turkey tag, I know where to start looking I guess. I waded through the melting snow up the hill and started walking back to the truck when I realized, I couldn't feel my toes. It must have been colder than I thought.... As we walked back, we passed a family out creating a toboggan run down the steep side of a snowy hill. Another vehicle also pulled up and deposited a fly fisherman who went down the bank and proceeded to work water I'd passed not fifteen minutes earlier. I silently wished him luck and kept walking. As I got back to the truck, I regained some semblance of feeling in my feet... enough that I felt good about getting out of the waders and putting shoes on. Driving out, I almost hit a couple of does. One looked like a young of the year deer but I couldnt' be sure. I slowed down, took a snapshot and kept on driving. It was getting on in the afternoon and I knew my daughter would be waiting. As it turned out, she wasn't home so I spent an uneventful hour fishing the Provo river. It was really not even close to the same, as a shopping complex and a three story bank of condos glared down at my endeavors on a "city" stream. I honestly didn't put much effort into the time killer area.... it was actually disheartening to have to leave the peace and quiet of the mountain canyons for a polluted, trash riddled, overfished section of what used to be a very decent fishery. It sure has changed in the six years since I've lived there.... but I guess thats the nature of things these days. I bid goodbye to my old friend, the Provo, and headed home, trying to outrun the oncoming storm.