Easter Tigers

[LOAH]

Despite forecasts of foul weather all over the state, my buddy and I decided to go and try our luck for some big tiger trout. The last time we visited this lake, we both left quite disappointed, vowing to return with a vengeance. Sunday was the day of reckoning and we arrived with one thing on our minds: big tigers.

We started by throwing spinners and nothing came to hand after at least an hour. Holdsworth stuck to his guns and I started throwing all the tackle I had. We'd also switched locations, and that seemed to help, as Holdsworth pulled in 2 smaller tigers within minutes of each other.

Even though they weren't large, they broke the silence of skunkiness that loomed over our heads from the previous week and that was more than welcome. Soon, it would be my turn.

After trying all the conventional methods, I ended up trying something weird. With a spinning rod, I threw out a heavy black sculpin pattern with a killer caddis dropper. It didn't fly very far, but I only needed to get out a few feet.

Surprisingly enough, a few slow retrievals later, I had my first fish and it was pretty nice.



It measured 22.5 inches and weighed 3lbs, 11oz. It took the dropper and nearly fought the hook straight, peeling off a good chunk of lip in the meantime. Finally! It felt good to have a nice tiger in my hands again.

Shortly after my catch, Holdsworth connected with something worth taking a picture of:



Nice pattern on that one.



The Blue Fox strikes again!

Using the same spin/fly setup, my second beast was on the line about 20 minutes later. Basically a twin of the first, this one took the sculpin and let me get some video footage of its fight, after round 1 was over, of course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh2COYN-NWA

Another 3lb, 11oz tiger, just a hair shorter than the first.



A short while later, I had gone back to throwing hardware and hooked up with a smaller tiger on a chrome/orange kastmaster.



So with that, we'd had our fun at the lake and thought we'd check out one of the creeks on the way home.

The lower stretches of the creek were flowing over the banks and very muddy, flooding much of the surrounding area. No use trying to fish that, we figured, and continued up the canyon. Though the flows remained high, we eventually found some good clarity, several miles upstream.



Holdsworth had the lucky hand here and caught a few while I decorated some bushes with my favorite lures. Here he is with a brown.



Not bad for this creek. Nice way for him to end his fishing trip and I was still buzzing from the angry tigers.

Notice the hint of blue sky in that last shot? The weather was supposed to be awful, pretty much anywhere in the state of Utah, but we somehow managed to stay just outside of the storms. We only got sprinkled a couple of times with rain and some snow, but enjoyed comfortable temperatures and quite a bit of sunshine throughout the day.

Once again, we went home satisfied.



Happy Fishing, Humans.

[ibenick]

Maybe you should have called this 'easter whales'. Those are huge!

[Dr. Nebz]

Sick! Looks like you landed some monsters! Nice work! 10/10 on the report as well!

This just confirms for me that I am staying with my spinner/fly rig and small bubble I have been backpacking with the last few years.

[accadacca]

Holy fetchin', fetch! Nice work!

[Deadeye008]

Wow! Those are some nice Tigers! Mind sharing the location? You can PM me. If not, that is understandable. Really nice fish!

[JONBOYLEMON]

WELL DONE!!!!! Glad you got the skunk out of there. Has me itching to go back where I think you were, this year to see if we can do better than the skunkapalooza we had last fall up there. Still smarting from that one.....