Provo Pigs

[LOAH]

The recent snowfall convinced me to keep it local this weekend and I decided to try a spot on the Provo that I'd never fished before. The special regs section of the Lower Provo always seems to have a lot of pressure and today I decided to go and see why.

After parking at the first pull-off upstream from the tunnels, I grabbed my spinning rod and worked a blue fox for about 45 minutes. Within a few casts, I had something thrashing at the end of my line. It put up a nice fight for a few seconds before it threw the hook. Pity I couldn't get a better look at it.

Another couple of minutes passed and I got nice brown of about 17 or 18 inches into my hand for a moment. It slipped away before I get my camera out, but it was nice to hold. I got a smaller one a little while later that didn't get away though. Not until I released it anyway.



The action slowed down for the next while, but I noticed several snouts slurping up some tiny bugs. I went back to the car and grabbed my fly rod, rigged with a griffiths gnat. Despite my best efforts though, the fish wouldn't even look at it. Eventually, I scared them off with some bad casts.

Perhaps more visits to this part of the river are needed. It was fun to fish, but I felt like visiting another spot on the river to search for active bruisers.

When I pulled up to the parking area, I noticed some other vehicles and hoped they weren't fishing where I intended to go. Luckily, they appeared to have gone the the other direction.

Well, the first few holes I tried looked pretty good, but showed no signs of life. About 100 feet upstream, I noticed some bushes hanging down into the water. My cast went right where I wanted it and the olive cone headed bugger drifted down. Stripping slowly, I dredged the bottom and a mess of fish darted out for it. All of them missed and I set the hook to nothing. I saw at least two nice fish in the mix and the rest looked to be around 13 inches or so.

I repeated my first cast and was able to coax a second frenzy. This time, I connected with the hog. What a fight! This guy took me on a hard run toward some clutter to wrap me up in and all I could do was try to "guide the bullet". He got into some branches and I thought it was over, but I managed to play him back out and eventually into my waiting hand. What a chunk!



So far, my best river battle to date and it was my personal best brown at 20 inches and stout.

Knowing about the other fish by the bush, I tried my luck again. I couldn't believe it when I saw another big boy come out and grab my bugger. Just like his buddy, this one took me for a ride into the twigs and I was lucky enough to get him out and onto the bank.



He was almost the same size as the first hog and had a lot of color. Gorgeous fish.





Again, there were more fish under the bush and I seemed to have their magic fly. I got a smaller one with the first cast and missed another big one on the second, before they stopped chasing. Talk about a productive hole!

Venturing further upstream didn't produce anything and I was already beaming with the nice hookups of the day, so I called it quits and went home very satisfied.

Happy Fishing, Humans.

[denaliguide]

sweet!

[mtn_trsh]

good to see that you had a productive trip.

[PolarXJ]

Nice fish. Amazing that you pulled out two nice fish from the same hole.

[Deathcricket]

Geeze!!! Those are some nice fish bro. We should seriously hire someone to film you on a couple of your adventures. You could adapt a fake australian voice and say "well looket this bugger here, he's a gorgeous one isn't he?" BAM! Instant syndication. As your agent I'm taking 20% and occasional fish btw.