Green River - 03.22-23.2013

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derekp1999
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Green River - 03.22-23.2013

Post by derekp1999 » Mon Mar 25, 2013 1:41 pm

Took a trip to the world famous Green River below Flaming Gorge this last weekend, it had been a couple years since the last trip there (2010 I think). We had a couple straight years of bad weather and poor fishing so we vowed never to return in '10, but cabin fever got the best of me and I convinced my dad, brother, and two brothers-in-law that it would be worth it... especially since the weather had been so nice recently.
Well, the nice weather didn't stick around. We left home at 5:30am on Friday and despite a few icy patches between Ogden, UT and Mountain View, WY we made great time. Deer were plentiful throughout southwest Wyoming and they looked to have wintered well. The antelope looked great as well, with a couple decent bucks spotted right off the side of I-84 near the Kemmerrer Junction.
It was cold and the wind was blowing, when we stepped out of the truck at Little Hole the thermometer read a chilly 9°. We geared up and headed for Grasshopper Island, a short almost two miles downstream from the parking lot. We fished hard for several hours, throwing everything that we could think of and between the 5 of us caught 1 rainbow.
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On the way back to the parking lot we decided to parallel the river and ended up having to turn into mountain goats and scale a canyon wall to get out of one particular tight spot.
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Back at the Flaming Gorge Resort, we enjoyed a nice dinner (the people there always do a good job of taking care of us) and went back to the room to try and get warm.
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Saturday morning we woke to 2” of fresh snow at the front door and decided to try out right below the reservoir at the first A section ramp for a little while. Again, we threw everything in the fly box at them with Dad hooking into a nice one but got off after a nice little fight (gotta love barbless hooks). After an hour or so of that I was looking for a couple to take home for dinner, so we decided to head back down to Little Hole. There’s a spot right across from ramp #2 there that I can always find a couple of smallish rainbows willing to take what I throw them. It took a while, but eventually the river gave up her bounty. We caught about a dozen out of that spot, I caught all mine on a #18 pheasant tail below a glo bug fished about 4’ deep.
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The wind picked up & chilled us to the bone. Standing thigh deep in the river didn’t make it any warmer so we’d fish for about 15 minutes then get out to do some calisthenics to warm up, then get back in and fish for 15 minutes until it got too cold again. We did that for a couple hours and decided to head home.
On the way home we commented that in the 10-12 years of making these trips we had never seen any bighorn sheep. Lo and behold, we came around a bend in the road between Sheep Creek campground and boat ramp and there’s a group of about 30 sheep right off the side of the road. Several were decent rams (not that I know how to judge a ram), and they would rear up and butt heads every couple minutes or so. That’s a strange sound, even though they were not hitting hard it was still cool.
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I wish the fishing was better but we saw hundreds of deer, 3 or 4 big groups of antelope, and had our first encounter with bighorn sheep. It's very likely that we won't be back in March anytime soon... weather is just too much of a factor this early in the year. Perhaps a different time of year, maybe April/May for the cicadas or November for the brown spawn for a little redemption.
“The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.”
-Albus Dumbledore

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sawsman
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Re: Green River - 03.22-23.2013

Post by sawsman » Mon Mar 25, 2013 6:43 pm

Nice… Glad you made it out despite the cold weather. Always a memorable time when spent in the great outdoors with family. Great color on that rainbow!

That's cool you got to see a few critters too.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, dosen't go away."-Philip K. Dick

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hound_hunter
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Re: Green River - 03.22-23.2013

Post by hound_hunter » Fri Mar 29, 2013 11:13 am

Dedication! Nice report, glad you made the best of what some might call a "bad" trip. Sounds like it was pretty great, even if the fishing wasn't.

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