06-27-2016, 03:58 PM
If you're in to small stream fishing Utah has some killer salmonfly hatches. The Blacksmith Fork is well known and I generally avoided in favor of solitude elsewhere. through a lot of time on the water I found 5 streams in the Spanish Fork watershed with the capacity to have good to great salmonfly hatches. As these streams get little to medium pressure they usually require far more stealth than heavier fished streams however the less educated fish are easy pickings once you get that down. Truth is the salmonfly hatch might be the one time you can get away with being less than invisible to the fish as they feed with reckless abandon on the leading edge of the salmonfly hatch. All these streams pump out trout in the upper teens except for Thistle Creek were 18-19 inch was the biggest I've ever caught and fairly uncommon. THe rest have fair number of fish over 20 inches. . It might just be one in 20 or 30 fish but if your pulling in 2 dozen fish an hour that's not a bad return with time invested. My worst outing on an unexpected salmonfly hatch in full swing was about 50 fish almost all in the 15 inch range in 2 hours. It was up about 6800 feet- higher than I ever encountered them before and I didn't have any salmon flies on me- so I used a size 10 tungsten prince nymph. Still a great time fishing even if my preferred flies were a couple miles away at my car. Oh and I had it all to myself as I did 90% of my time fishing streams in Utah. There won't be any fishing reports summoning the masses so this takes an investment in timing and understanding where the hatches are likely to be productive. Far better to earn it than share an overfished hatch with someone that just flew in from NYC.
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