12th Day of Fly Fishing – March 30th 2025
Sportsman’s Paradise, AKA White’s Ranch has been popular with members of my fly fishing club – Bonneville Fly Fishers for some time. It’s essentially a private water in northern Utah. To fish there, you have to have a membership or go as a guest of a member. When I was still new to Utah, I decided to to join the Sportsman”s Paradise, and was a member there for several years.
Sportsman’s Paradise is actually located in Paradise, Utah! The property is absolutely gorgeous! A stream meanders through the property and there are a few natural springs as well. Running along the west side of the property is the little bear river, with big, beautiful trees along the banks. Plus, the stream feeds fresh water to several ponds, all unique in size and how they fish. Another very cool aspect of this property is that the majority of fish in the stream and ponds are raised right on the property’s very own fish hatchery!
The presence of fish does attract predators. There is a resident pair of bald eagles for instance. You will also see many other wild animals: deer, foxes, geese, ducks and wild turkeys. In fall and winter, White’s Ranch also offers pheasant hunting. They don’t raise the birds, but rather bring them in and have them distributed throughout the property in advance of the hunt.
Gameplan
Most fishing days I have a gameplan and this day was no exception. My big hope was a hatch, BWO preferable, but I would have been fine with a solid midge hatch. The water was very off-color. It was in fact, thick chocolate milk. However, I have seen rising trout in conditions like this before. The fish will sit just under the surface, literally 2-3 inches below. So first priority is always fishing dries, but today was not that day. I decided to make my next priority Euro nymphing. My last time out with my Euro rod, an Orvis Recon 2wt, pared with a Galvan reel. So this rig would back-up my dry fly setup.
Today I rigged my 4wt Scott G2 with a dry fly to fish the chair pond. Midges were present but no baetis. So I tied on a mother shucker and cast to the far bank, which is where cruisers often feed. They swim back and forth on a 50-80′ path. You can easily lead them. That was NOT happening today. Just a few random rises. Made a few guesses as to where to land my fly. One key on the Chair Pond is you have to let dry flies sit. After a painful minute, I start twitching the fly to hopefully draw attention to it. No dice today. After about 20 minuutes, I packed up and drove up to the hatchery.
Euro Nymphing the Hatchery
Seeing no cars as I rounded the last bend was a welcome delight! I would have choice at the hatchery. The hatchery has two large tanks holding fingerling to 15″ trpot. Most are at the small size. One tank, the larger one is rectangular in shape, the smaller tank is round. Both have spring water running through them. The fresh springwater is key to keeping the fish healthy. These fish are pellet fed and it is wild fishing the outflows of the tanks at feeding time. Today was my day for that. There are pools under each tank, where the outflow enters the stream. The upper outflow pool is chock full of trout. It is so because lots of pellets escape the tank above and at feeding time, there is a feeding frenzy! I was not fishing a pellet fly! But I did manage a few fish on a black stonefly on the Euro rig.
Back to the heading at the top, is this real world? Fish raised on site with pellets in the outflow at the hatchery. Maybe not.
Meandering stream
Much of the fishing at Sportsman’s Paradise is the the stream that enters the property at the southeast corner. From there the path has been laid out in a way that it covers a lot ground. At the northwest corner, it unites with the Little Bear river. It between there are thousands of trout, mostly rainbows. Most of the rest of my day involved working various sections of the stream. In most places the stream is less than 10 feet across and rarely more than 3 feet deep. Today, becasue it was so off color, we could not spot fish, so it was blind casting and drifting flies. Later in the day I put a balanced leech in the point fly position and drifting that worked well. With the Euro rig, I was always seeking out current in order to keep my flies suspended. With an indicator rig, the indicator will suspend the flies and you don’t need as much current.
Summarizing the Day
My best days fly fishing for trout happen when there is a hatch and unfortunately this day did not have a hatch. And although I tried to coax a dry fly eat, I was not rewarded for my efforts. Now that said, I did manage 10 fish, all on the Euro rig. The biggest was this fish below. Although I like White’s Ranch, I only like to fish it a couple of times a year. Is it real world? Not really, but it is still fly fishing. Happy to have fishing friends who are members and grateful to have that occasional invite to fish there.
