Friday, July 5, 2013

Camping along Green River in Wyoming outside Seedskidee National Wildlife Refuge

 There is nothing quite like camping right on the river so you can hear the splash of jumping fish and the slight ripple of running water. Howard and I drove the 3 hours from Salt Lake to the Green River, outside of Kemmerer Wyoming to hit the Green River and the Hamm's Fork again since we had such great success back in June. It was now mid October and much, much cooler. The perfect month for camping. As always I found myself in one of the country's greatest places the week of my birthday. Thanks Sara!

Howard has this amazing Cabela's Outfitter's tent that we used this time around. I have to admit, we had a great set up. Each had a cold weather sleeping bag on a large cot with a table between us. We even had a coat rack and side tables. It got below freezing at night so we also had a propane powered Mr. Buddy indoor heater. It made all the difference too. It was turned on about an hour before we got up so the tent was warm enough to not need a jacket for breakfast. All we had to do was swing our legs around.
 We even had a front porch of sorts. This was perfect because Wyoming is always windy and this protected us while cooking on the stove. Because of the cooler weather, there were no mosquitos so we could leave the door wide open.
 This particular bend in the river was wade-able but pretty featureless. Fish were caught by some bait fisherman but we didn't try hard enough to succeed.

 The other side of our tent consisted of what most of Wyoming looks like, sagebrush, antelope, pheasants, and coyotes.
 Even if we weren't here to fish, this was a great place to start a trip and spend a few evenings.

Monday, July 1, 2013

The rest and the BEST of Hamm's Fork

 The next day we found "one of those spots" that you would never tell people about if you lived close and fished often. It was great.
 Howard and I caught lots of fish in nearly every ripple. These rainbows were huge too for the size of the river. It was only about 25-30 feet across on average and just about two or three feet deep consistently with many pools. The fish we caught got up to 22 inches long with real girth too.
 We fished together to allow for a good number of picture opportunities.
 Howard caught many just under the 20 inch mark.
 I also caught many this size and this one that measured 22 inches. I caught it right up along a bank on a size 18 bead head pheasant tail. I saw it taking something off the surface and must have tried about 30 drifts before taking her. She pealed away right away too and put up a great fight.




 After all this action we decided we would definitely hit this stretch of river on this privately owned ranch again the next day.
 Dinner that evening was exciting with talk about the days fishing and hefty expectations for the next day.
 By the end of the next day we were both already sad to leave this gem of a river. I even caught this baby fish to show Max. He told me this was his favorite.