19 August 2010
We awake to cloudy skies at 0630 but by 0730 the heavens are crying. There is serious rain falling by 0800 followed by thunder and lightning storm activity all around us. Maybe we upset the fishing gods yesterday or something – perhaps an offering of something sacrificial would be in order?
We first elect to try to sacrifice good judgment but having wide range discussions on taxes, social security, finance, government regulations, etc all of which contribute only to the expanding entropy of the universe. Since this doesn’t stop the rain (or anything else for that matter), we elect to sacrifice some time and chicken parts by having breakfast at Blondie’s – there is a somewhat limited selection of cuisine options in Cokeville although the folks at Blondie’s have been very gracious. (And they have a CFS version for breakfast apparently – I am wondering if CFS is characteristic of the places we choose to eat or if it is a siren song which pulls us into different establishments?)
After more detailed planning, we elect to forge ahead in the poor weather and visit Fossil Butte National Monument (http://www.nps.gov/fobu/ )on the way to the Ham’s Fork, a watershed we had not visited last time. Fossil Butte is a cool place to visit briefly on days when the weather is crummy – we had a good talk with John Collins, a National Park Service ranger, who gave us the low down on the history and status of this dried lake bed from 50 Million years ago. Turns out turtles still look like turtles from a long time ago! And, fish still look fish….JR picks up a nice fossil fish replica for his Daughter Margaux and I bought the bride another fossil replica for her collection of crystals and fossils as it seems more relevant to get them from their source than just from another shop down the street.
From http://www.nps.gov/archive/fobu/expanded/fos.htm
After a small amount of getting lost, we find the main road toward the Hams Fork reservoir – heading upstream, we plan to look at the area between the Upper and Lower Reservoirs. As is usual in new and somewhat risky situation, we send in our scout party, ie GK. Armed with a fishing rod, he heads down a gated road and into the areas below the upper dam spillway. As we watch, several huge deer scatter in front of him as they are roused from their daytime beds. After reaching the water, he makes a few casts but declares the water to be weedy with only a narrow clear central channel. There may be big fish in there but their access is pretty limited right now. Thank goodness for radio technology! As GK returns, his walking noise kicks out a cow moose close to us but unseen by him. After making a variety of noises to attract the attention of the moose, she decides we are harmless (which is unfortunately all too true!) and returns to her bedding station.
Packing up again we head upstream in the Ham’s Fork drainage trying to move into US National Forest land – we have heard the better fishing is downstream from the Ranger’s Cabin. So our hopes are high as we all thinking this might be another Upper Ruby River watershed! I won’t go into detail, but at no time did we worry about where "downstream" might be……it was obvious, no?
Heading upstream we leave the Reservoir behind and move away from the drainage onto gravel roads across a plateau. While there are many barbed wire fences, we see no other signs of civilization. Coming around a corner we are confronted with a shrine of some sort comprised of stuffed animals and a white cross. Now we are in "sort of" rattlesnake country and accordingly elect not to probe the stuffed animal pile – but we cannot figure out for whom the shrine was intended although we speculate that it may have involved the untimely demise of a young child…we just don’t know.
Moving on upstream, we cross the US Forest Service boundary and start looking at the river water structure. It looks pretty inviting with defined corners and pools and easy to cross riffles. Finding the Ranger Cabin (elevation 8,000 feet) we begin to look for water access points back downstream to see if we can improve our fish-in-camera situation relative to the Smith’s Fork from the evening before. The skies have cleared and although it is cool, the threat of rain has passed – blue skies – must be a good omen for fishing! Ahhh, the hope of the never-ending optimist…..
With everyone geared up with light rods again (4 weight, 7’-6" L.L. Bean, 7’, 4 wt. Cabela’s & a custom 5’-6", 5 wt.), we had images of fast and furious fishing in mind….however, the fishing is so-so with lots of little (even by our standards!!) fish (brookies, cutts, and rainbows) – there are supposed to be brown trout (maybe big browns?) but we didn’t catch any.
The brookies were long and skinny which doesn’t bode well for stream health or food abundance although it looks like it should be fine. We are somewhat puzzled by the Ham’s Fork lack of productivity but then we were surprised by the Smith’s Fork reluctance to yield big fish as we had caught earlier.
Heading back at around 8pm, we figure we can make it back to Blondie’s for Thursday night prime rib if we hurry. We have a plan to cut across the ridge on Forest Service Roads which should take us directly back to Cokeville….ah, the optimism of "the shortcut"…!!
Heading back upstream past the cabin, we are on the lookout for Moose and the cutoff. Finding the latter we head up into the hills and up a ridge, and then back down again into a valley but not the Smith’s Fork drainage – there is a stream drainage in between. Heading back up the road, we are glad we are not carrying a big trailer behind us although we see those guys in the backcountry areas like this. We come to the proverbial fork in the road – on the CB, the question is asked which way – right or left? Since AM has the only atlas out, we look at it in the dim light of the backseat, and say "Left" as that will take us to Nugent Meadows (must be named after Ted?) with the road dropping right into the backside of Cokeville – which is not too far from any side of Cokeville. As the skies darken, our time for making the prime rib is diminishing and people are asking "Where are we"? We pass through Nugent Meadows on the road – apparently the only road although by now I am hearing echoes of Robert Frost – ie, the one less traveled. We have to really slow down to avoid huge rocks in the road – we can see downed trees which only recently have been chain sawed back….where are we? This is taking a long time…..should have been there by now – we finally come to a T junction (the prime rib is certainly history by now!) and look at the sign- Meadowcreek to the left and Big Pine to the right? Where are we? JR runs up to our rig Gazetteer in hand and points out that not only was this the longer of the two shortcuts, but by following my "shortcut" we missed a critical right turn somewhere in Nugent Meadows which drops you into Cokeville. Instead we have been following a "dashed line" road (read – "bad") running parallel to the road to Cokeville – we see that Big Pine is the ski hill just outside of town so we elect to head that way and hope the road doesn’t get worse. It doesn’t get worse, we find the ski area, the road becomes paved and we zoom back to Cokeville – much, much too late for prime rib. However, the Flying J is open for greasy turkey legs, fried chicken strips, and a variety of packaged fast foods designed to shorten mammalian life as we know it. Catching a night cap along with the 10W40-laced food, we complete our first full day in Wyoming with MS still having the Bonneville cutt in his pocket. None of us can figure out the Ham’s Fork fishing situation which "should have" been better – more research may be needed although this is the kind of thing we often find on new waters – it just takes a couple of visits to figure it out. There is also a popular movement which must be quelled to give me a new nickname involving "shortcut" but as I point out that what I really said was "turn left" which is more akin to a political statement by me than compass direction advice.