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nightfish

The Utah Scene

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Hi everybody,

 

I've been fishing since before I can remember. Family legend says the first fish I caught was at a small lake near the family cabin. My mom says I did really well reeling it in by myself, but when the fish came in sight, I dropped the pole and ran down the trail.

 

I've been getting my revenge ever since.

 

I started flyfishing with an old fiberglass rod with an auto reel that my dad found along a highway. It flexed somewhere around the reel seat & had a cracked, dirty level line that I was lucky to get out more than 20 feet. I found it worked better drifting worms on the small streams around SLC. It turned out to be good training for nymphing though.

 

I finally saved up for a "real" outfit, and a book on flyfishing basics. I pretty much learned on my own, with a few pointers by kind fishers I bumped into on the water. I eventually came into tying, and fell in love with that side of the sport.

 

My home waters are still those tiny, fast moving streams, but my "backyard" also contains the Provo River, the Green, some tremendous reservoirs, and the Uinta Mountains, with over 1,000 lakes, small streams all over the place, and many feisty Bonneville cutthroat & brook trout.

 

My travels have led me thru the west, and this year I've caught fish in 7 states, logging over 30,000 miles of fishing related windshield time. Most of that has been with my beautiful girlfriend, Stef, and it's been the best couple of years of my life with her at my side (& with her fishing the best spots). Some of the highlights for this year are a trip to Yellowstone for the Fly Fishing for Science program, running into a bear on Slough Creek, floating Paradise Valley in MT, building my first rod (actually, that's stilll in progress...a 6'6" 2wt), drifting the Green in a blizzard & having a family of otters swim up to the boat, and fishing for a day with Bob Jacklin.

 

Stef & I are involved with our local TU chapters, & she serves on the UT TU council. One of the projects of our northern chapter is relocating a population of salmonflys into a water that had a strong population for years, but mysteriously dissapeared about 30 years ago. We hope they re-establish, but hopefully we can at least find out why they dissapeared. We also teach tying classes for youth, and participate in demonstrations. A personal interest of mine is with our Urban Fisheries programs.

 

This coming year I'm looking forward to tying at the local ISE show, the Snake River Cutthroats expo in Idaho Falls, and at several shops thru UT & CO on our sales visits. We'll also be participating again with the Fly Fishing for Science program, and I'm going to attempt to fish every county here in Utah and raise pledge money for the Urban Fisheries. I'm also hoping to get to Alaska for my first time, and a fly fishing honeymoon should be in order in about 6 months or so.

 

Nice to have found this board!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Welcome to the Forum, nightfish. Sounds to me like we've got another fanatic fly flicker with us. You should feel right at home here. biggrin.gif

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nightfish,

 

Very cool intro, glad you could join us! Be sure to keep us updated on the salmonflys I am interested in seeing if you can get a population established, that would be amazing.

 

Hope to see you around often.

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Thanks guys,

 

Smallie, the first transplant will be in a few weeks. We'll be doing 2 per year, november & april, for 4 years. What's amazing is the amount of support we've gotten...basically anyone who could've squashed the bug project said go right ahead. We do have to do a few things like not transferring water between the 2 streams, but that's no biggie. The Utah State University bug lab is helping us out too, for species I.D., monitoring & documentation of the study.

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one in the same J.

 

You sure get around.

 

Actually I came here to try to get you to quit all that sissy steelhead fishing and pick up a real sport like midging for 12" trout.

 

smile.gif

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LOL. Nice to have you here Nick. Yeah, if I get Jay and James back here again, and get them into a few Steelhead, they may both just give up trout fishing. Know Jay was pretty jazzed over that one silver. LOL. Get them into a big nate steelhead, and they may be all done. LOL. Know James said something to the fact he'd move here. wink.gif

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Welcome to the site nightfish, be sure to get soem pic's of the show.. and the results of that science program.. cya around the site.. cheers.gif

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I was out in moab utah in april, beautiful state!! Hope to get back and do some fishing. Welcome to the Forum.

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