Fly Fishing the Utah Backcountry with Side x Sides

foreign holy what the gosh oh no dude [Music] thank you [Music] this week we are traveling Tony Utah's most impressive mountain ranges [Music] instead of our typical mode of transportation however we're taken side by sides thank you [Music] having moved to Utah last January I was excited to explore the trout fishing opportunities that awaited I've been fortunate enough to fish in various regions across the west but have done little fishing in my new home state so after doing some research there was one range in particular that caught my attention the uintas [Music] the Uinta mountain range was established in 1897 marking the state's First National Forest it extends over 460 Thousand Acres making it the largest Wilderness Area in the state there are well over a thousand natural lakes and over 400 miles of streams on top of that it is the highest region of Utah but what's really interesting is it's the only major range in the contiguous United States with an east to west orientation this uplift was caused by reverse faults that meet below the range on the North and South on average the uintas receive over twice the amount of precipitation compared to the rest of the state and for most of the year they're covered in snow during the last ice age most of the large stream valleys that are present today were filled with Long Valley glaciers with elevations of over 13 000 feet its climate is classified as sub-arctic this type of climate offers some of the most extreme seasonal temperature variations found on the planet and here there is no dry season there are many fish species that populate the uintas most have been stalked by humans over the years but there is one species that is truly native to this range the cutthroat and this is what we're after But ultimately our goal is to travel safely through the back country by staying on Trails respecting wildlife and leaving it just as pristine for those who come after us joining me on this trip is none other than my buddy Adam fish Whisperer and the master Behind Blue Line flies so we left our gummy bears and the bed of the Polaris yesterday and now we have gummy bear amalgamation then we've got my buddy Colby a Utah local and certified trout junkie who knows more about the fishing in Utah than anyone I know you'll get these bigger guys they build these big huge cases out of rocks and coming along to document it all is my talented filmmaking friend will Phelps with the crew assembled it was time to get to it we are rolling up to uh Ridgeline rentals right now we're gonna pick up two side by sides for this week but you'll see they haven't touched dirt yet dude those are badass so they are ready to rip and roll to our luck we'd be the first ones to drive these brand new Rangers [Music] with our gear packed and the side by sides on the trailer we're ready to hit the trail [Music] so we just rolled up to the parking lot where we're going to leave the truck in the trailer and then we're just going to take the side by sides from here but this is a fee area where we have to pay to park so we're going to fill out these make sure when you're pulling into spots like this that you stop and read a lot of these signs uh they'll also have as you kind of see behind me they'll have like a spot to put notifications and things like that so it's always good to stop and just make sure that you're following all the regulations since the regulations do sometimes change from spot to spot foreign from here we had roughly a two hour drive to the valley we planned to fish so with the truck parked and the side by sides loaded up it was time to have some fun well I think it's a hat backwards kind of day it was [Music] thank you [Music] thank you we're getting our first eyes in the water right now finally up close so hopefully we find a campsite here soon and uh be ready to fish tonight [Music] one of the important things when you're coming out here you know to find a campsite and everything there's no human development out here and it's pristine Wilderness and we don't want to do anything to disrupt that so we're just gonna look for a spot that's already been set up for a campsite and uh try to leave the least amount of impact on the place got a nice little setup already got some chairs out here some nice Cut logs we got some clean running water right here it's as good as you I think you can get it smells good I'm told that's me oh never mind Colby's here so that one's got a two-seater for Adam oh yeah that's they even made one for Husky daddy right here just my size [Music] [Applause] we've been looking at this trip for a long time and we've been scouring the internet both with a couple different of the mapping apps and there's like three drainages here that we're really excited about to have rivers in them but one of the coolest things that we've got these side by side so that we can just kind of rip up and down the road to be able to figure out different areas different stretches of water that are holding fish [Music] thank you day one at our first spot kind of been covering the water pretty good since there's three of us fishing we've got uh one of us is running some drives really high on the surface we've got one of us who's kind of bouncing bottoms with uh nymphs and then we've got another guy that's running streamers or like little Bait fish patterns and uh we haven't had any luck yet we drove really far up this uh Canyon so I'm not sure if the water is like a little too cold maybe it just hasn't been hot enough so maybe these fish are a little further down river from where we're at like typically you can trying to find some aquatic insects the bottom of these rocks in the river but something of any any bugs right here being that it was still early summer the water levels were high and the bug life was minimal Colby managed to find a small brook trout but that was the extent of our luck we had come pretty high up the river system so we planned to head Downstream the next morning foreign [Music] [Applause] there's nothing to warm you up like some breakfast we've got some bacon and eggs we're gonna do breakfast burritos with so uh you didn't mess around we're gonna do that and then we're gonna go fishing [Music] [Music] big old tacos foreign spot and look for some good water some good riffles it's going to hold some good Cutthroat in it and uh find some good fishy water [Music] move Downstream today try a new section out Adam Colby and I are all splitting up right now and we're all fishing different rigs because you know when we come to a new place like this we don't have it figured out we don't know what's working we don't know what sort of bugs are coming off yet so we're just each trying something different and hopefully they'll help us kind of dial it in and kind of figure this River out [Music] so he's finished that we're chasing up here are some native cutthroat trout it's pretty cool because there's four different subspecies of Cutthroats here in Utah I believe these are the Colorado strain so the strangers that were on eventually ends up somewhere in the Colorado River these fish that I really tend to like a lot of this colder water they'll they'll survive elsewhere but these high Alpine streams and super super cold runoff Rivers that's where they thrive oh no dude that might have been cut I don't know I can make stuff up Scotty there you go a white fish are actually really good indicator species of streams so that's always a good indication for the Cutthroat population or whatever other trout that are in their stream and if you start running into Whitefish usually it's a good sign that you're in the right spot so we've been sitting on this area for a minute I kind of slowed down started watching the water a little bit looked for what they were eating started noticing some fish Rising I was gonna cast like up this way down but oh there was another one they're all in here dude there he is First cast baby yeah it's a cut look at those colors man [Music] thank you automatic yep [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] so we're flipping over some rocks here uh just kind of see what's in the water uh generally around this time of year in the area that we're at we get a lot of catas a lot of mayflies it's kind of typical for that early early summer hatches you can see here you can usually tell Caddis they build a case when they're in these little larval stages sometimes they'll use this like more of a stick material just a little tiny case Caddis and then you'll you'll get these bigger guys that uh they build these big huge cases out of rocks and whatever they can find on the river so pretty easy for the fish to spot and it's a great food source trout really key in on Caddis so yeah we'll keep flipping over some rocks and see what we can find and hopefully get these trout to come up to the top meet some flies yeah dude foreign [Music] between about Three Rivers within a mile and we just split out from the other guys Adam and I wanted to come down here and check out a new part of the stream you know today's been mainly a scouting day so we've kind of just been moving to a bunch of spots trying to get a feel for this area because there is so much River so instead of spending all of our time focusing in one area trying to make our bugs work we're trying to bounce around and uh see where the fish are [Music] thank you [Music] oh there we go [Music] foreign [Applause] foreign [Music] I don't know if y'all had fun but we had we had it if you guys just saw our Alaska film we uh brought back some salmon and we got some moose meat while we were there as well so we brought some of that here tonight and uh we're ready to Chow Down foreign [Music] we've got some bacon that we're going to wrap our moose steaks in and then we also have some rice that we're going to add a little bit of chicken in to get that extra protein for that rice to fill us up we also have some veggies that we're going to toss in that rice as well [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] damn dude bacon wrapped mousse steaks yes yes please Big Time Biden if you can't control the fish control the food you can control the fish can't you I mean I can but some others others may not be able to now on my standards are lift have been lifted if it's not wrapped in bacon I'm not eating I'm not interested we're uh just finishing up dinner settled in for a nice and lovely evening and all of a sudden we started Thunder the wind picked up I mean went from zero to 60 like that the Wind and Rain are starting to pick up and uh doesn't look like this is stopping anytime soon [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] well so the storm that was rolling in last night ended up hitting us and uh pretty much rained all night we uh we're planning to get out and fish pretty early today but it is really hard to get out of a dry tent into the rain at like 6 A.M [Applause] [Music] just rode up to the river and we're about to go start fishing but I want to show y'all what we're using typically for a stream like this I like fishing nine foot five weight so we've got a nine five a five weight reel that kind of covers everything it's pretty Universal rod and you can literally fish this just about anywhere we're in a pretty simple tapered leader we've got one of the Blue Line leaders which I'll have linked below if you guys want to check it out it's basically just 20 pound to 15 pound to a swivel and then we're running 3x off of that to our first fly the last couple days we've been fishing some of these bigger dry flies some Chubbies some stimulators just kind of some attractor patterns just to kind of get a feel for if these fish are interested in coming up to eat anything on top and then as we've started to see more bugs we've kind of dialed it in you know started to downsize and actually start using some specific drives like caddises we use some parachute atoms and even some golden Stones what we've been fishing is just as simple puffy Caddis like this I also like to run a smaller dry off the back just in case some fish are keying in on those smaller bugs so pretty much anywhere you go with trout fishing you know we're trying to imitate three basic aquatic insects Stone flies mayflies and Caddis so I think it's very easy to over complicate it in fly fishing and think you have to have all the right flies but if you can kind of just keep it simple stick to your Caddis you know have some smaller mayflies a variety of sizes and then have some Stone flies in your box that's typically what we bring and we don't you know go too nerdy on it if we get to some deeper holes and they're not keying in on these dry flies typically we'll cut this bottom part off add some tippet and we'll throw a dropper nymph on that way we can present some flies for some of the fish that are sitting down deep and maybe just feeding on subsurface insects so that's the rig for the day let's go hit the river foreign there we go over the trout textbook [Applause] I like this new spot we kind of scoped it out a little bit yesterday it's got a rocky bottom hopefully there's some slower water some pockets and pools that we can cast in it's mostly where we've been finding our fish so we've definitely got a lot of riffles keep the water oxygenated should be a lot of bug life in this Canyon keep working our way up fishing the seam off this main channel right here get up right below this next set of riffles all right there's a fish over here by this log you just know it came up and swiped it to dry it's always nice to slow down when you're on these Rivers tend to really work a spot from left to right or right to left make sure you're covering all the water you're not just casting the juiciest part of the hole there we go nice little cutthroat just as we found out the night before the weather in the uintas can change in a Split Second well we got some interesting weather moving in right now well so I think we're gonna head to a different spot we haven't been to yet a little further down the river system it is away from this rain so we're gonna head towards those clear clear skies and uh hopefully we can find some fish over there that's great shelter I just want you all together this is why you always have a raincoat on you in the mountains so we found a bridge it's gonna kind of wait out the storm and hopefully this will move through for too long here we go as quickly as the storm had moved in it was gone what would your be your take on sculpin here you think there's oh I wouldn't doubt it we re-rigged and found a trail that took us down to the river this whole trip we had been working Downstream and it seemed like the further we went down the more fish we ran into [Music] [Music] [Music] okay oh my gosh that was sick dude that is a that's a stellar fish I'm happy with that [Music] foreign [Music] placement is as good as it gets welcome Adam you're the chase right there yeah we're up here watching Adam fish and just come over with the streamer and it's absolutely tearing him up [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thunderstorm coming that is not going to let up until tomorrow evening I think we can get out of here we're gonna have wet gear regardless whether we stay or go but at least uh I think we could get out of the rain tonight it was clear skies like five minutes ago and this storm has just rolled in we just checked the forecast we got a little bit of service and it's not looking good into the storm right now that's where Camp is whoa holy what the gosh oh no dude oh [Applause] whoa dude here's where the root came out from the tree and that's our camp right there that literally would have killed somebody if we were in the tents [Music] wow we are we're super lucky that we were not here when that happened [Music] this tree could have fallen at any time including the night before when we were asleep as rattling as it was it highlighted how important it is to be aware of your surroundings in the wilderness it's easy to let the excitement of fishing distract you from taking proper precautions when setting up your campsite and in our case it could have costed us our lives well we are super lucky to escape this and no harm but man careful out there folks we don't want this to deter anyone from getting out in the wilderness but we do hope that you can learn from this so you don't make the same mistake that we did [Music] fortunately every storm passes and with our trip through the uintas getting cut a day short we thought it was only right to drive up a different Canyon and spend one last day on the water [Music] there he is there we go [Music] cutting on a drive by [Music] this trip really opened my eyes to how much there is to explore in my new home state [Music] three days in a Range that I'd never even heard of until I moved out here and the truth is we barely scratched the surface [Music] foreign [Music] on a trip like this you can only fish so many spots and often the ones you don't get to keep you curious and that is what excites me the most there's always another Bend to see and always another trip to plan [Music] and if any of you are wanting to plan your next trip whether it's in Utah or not please do your part in planning ahead look into the local regulations travel responsibly and do your best to leave no Trace so we can keep the wild places that we explore forever mighty

Channel: Wild Fly Productions

Views: 320,477

Keywords: fly fishing trout, north carolina, fishing, mountains, on the fly, brown trout, rainbow trout, brook trout, outdoors, outside, appalachia, blue ridge, boone, nc, trout fishing, wild fly, wild fly productions, huge fly fisherman, camping, backcountry fishing, spin fishing, jon b, googan squad, dry fly fishing, wildfly, fly fishing photography, fly fishing, salmona truta, jensen fly fishing, bass fishing, smallmouth bass

Id: l4pE9khEVdo

Length: 38min 36sec (2316 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 22 2023