25th Day of Fly Fishing – May 16th, 2025 – Water temp 37 degrees
One of the great things about being part of a fly fishing club, especially one with extremely passionate, active members, is that you get the benefit of everyone else’s knowledge and experience. Many of our members know a lot more about fly fishing places in Utah than I do. You know, I’ve lived here over 10 years and still go mostly to the same 5 places. In fact, I feel like I know more about fishing southeast Idaho than I do Utah. That is about to change. A lot of the newer members of our club are also retired like me. Having recently joined the “retired” contingent, I now prefer to fish weekdays, and so do many of my retired friends in the club.
So on Friday, May 16th one of our club’s trip leaders had made plans to fish a popular lake that had iced off a few weeks ago. As is so often done by our thoughtful trip leaders, is they pre-fish or scout things out ahead of time. In the process of doing that, another lake that was much higher, at 9,000 feet was just icing off. Well, we had all had so much fun at the Strawberry Ice Off in April, everyone got excited, and several of us decided to head there instead of the original destination. I was one of them along with a new member, Lynn (male) who was also interested.
This trip took us south, up into the mountains of central Utah, an area I knew literally nothing about. I was so excited to explore new water! The drive turned out to be less than 2 hours from my house, near Salt Lake City. It amazed me that this beautiful mountainous area was so close and I knew so little about it. Lynn and I had a great drive together, talking about fishing! He spent several years in southern Wyoming and had fished many waters that I knew little or nothing about. I could feel my horizons expanding!
When we arrived, we couldn’t find our people, but we parked right off the main road and a lot of my friends know my truck, so we figured they would find us. Sure enough they started to trickle in. We were on a long bank where the ice had pulled off about 40-50 feet, perfect for Ice Off fishing! I had initially rigged my Scott G2 4wt, which is my go to for throwing small streamers, in this case balanced jigs. After about 20 minutes on the water, I was coming up short of the ice by about 10 feet. This was mostly due to the wind that had picked up. So I hustled up to the car and switched my 4wt for my 5wt. My 5wt is suited to heavier flies and I use a Cortland Line called “Big Fly” line. It has a heavier head and you can really feel it load. This loading enabled me to shoot that extra 10 feet and reach the ice.
Ice Off – Fish On!!
Lynn’s cast was shorter than mine but regardless, he hooked up first. When he brought the fish in, we were both scratching our heads. I said to Lynn, with those spots, this fish has to be a brook trout! We were both excited, because it was a decent sized fish! Later, we learned that the lake did not have brook trout in it. It was actually a splake, which is a cross between a brook trout and a lake trout. I’d never never experienced a splake before, so a new species!
The Splake
Not long after, I hooked up as well. I was using the balanced leech, casting as close to the ice as I could get and reaching it often, particularly when the wind was at a lull. My first fish was anice tiger.
As the day progressed, we continued to catch fish. As we varied both cast and retrieve, we realized that the fish were not not always on the ice edge. Several times we were rewarded by staying with the retrieve until almost to the leader. Other times, they were right out at the ice edge. But, I noticed that I was getting more eats on the pause and definitely more eats with a painfully slow retrieve. These fish clearly did not want to chase a fly. With the water temp at 37 degrees these fish were clearly sluggish!
After we took our lunch break and connected up with others in our group, we had some weather move in. We decided it was great day and we were happy to be done, so we packed up and rolled as the snow fell on my truck!
Lynn ended the day with 11 and I landed 7. It was just another great Ice Off day! This time at 9,000 feet! So great to spend time with new friends. I’m happy Lynn and I got to spend the day together and we got to know a bit about each other.
