It was cold that night but it didn't frost. I was in my 0 degree Bass Pro Shop sleeping bag that I love for its huge size and rectangular shape. I slept great. We had our typical Shredded Wheat for breakfast and while we sat at the table in the morning, I turned to watch that ridge from the night before. Sure enough, I saw an elk and its calf coming down the hill. I guess some pretty places are irresistable to animals too and you should expect to see them in it.
We planned to fish all the public access points along the river that we drove past the day before on the way to the national forest. We had to cover about 15 miles of dirt road first though. We saw some more of th emoose I had mentioned before. I recorded them running accross the road and jumping the fence. They are truly not very graceful but they are neat none the less.
We pulled into the first access point and saw yet another moose down in the valley that we were to fish. This was a little unnerving know the bushes are dense along the river and the very real possibility of a mother moose around the bend should be enough to make anyone anxious. It was also very exciting. After I pulled my waders on I grabbed my pole that I rigged the previous evening and that's when I saw it. We had a flat tire. Darn.
Well, Howard started looking for the Lexus manual because he thought it might include special instructions. I started on the tire and before long, we had it off and the full size spare on. We headed to town to see what we could find in the way of a service station. We eventually found a small place with a guy that had the tire repaired in 5 minutes. We decided it was Taco Time afterwards. We watched antelope accross the street as we ate outside. Antelope were everywhere in this town. While eating we discussed our options. We decided we wanted to see the Green River where we were to originally fish. It was about 40 minutes east of town. Along the way we saw another moose. This one was the biggest. It was odd to see this moose out in the sage brush desert miles from any river. It made for a pretty shot too.
The water was still high on the green but it was nic eto see potential trips and where we would camp in the future. We drove back to the Ham's Fork public access points.
We fished one access point for about an hour and had little luck. We caught a white fish and a small brown. They were hitting small pheasant tails, about 16 and 18 size. We decided to try another. Along the way we saw a truck pulled off the road with two fisherman eating lunch on the tailgate. We asked how it was going and found out the tip of the trip. They were fishing a private stretch of river that they heard was great. It cost $10 a day per person and at our first thought was why when there are so many access spots. We kept this in the back of our minds though. We drove to another spot.
The next spot was on private property but the land owners allowed a trail to the river for fishermen. As we got out of the Lexus we thought, "My there are a lot of mosquitos." When we hit the river, we thought, "Holy crap there are a TON of mosquitos!!!" They covered us whereever skin showed and even coated the outside of my long sleved shirt sleeves. We tried fishing but the bugs were relentless. We quickly retreated and even ended up with the suckers in the car. It was getting late by then so we decided to call it a day. We ended with more soup and sat by the river for awhile. We decided we would use bug spray in the morning for sure and Howard had some citronella bracelets that we would try too. We also decided that we hadn't seen any river areas that could possibly hold larger fish so we thought we might try this private land area we heard about the next day. This made all the difference in the trip too.
