The anticipation of catching a Bonneville Cuttroat had the YG up early today. While the sun was just coming up at 7 am and the sky was clear and blue, the minivan was covered in ice this first morning of the trip! Also just one day into the trip and our minivan was already a packing disaster, with suitcases, fishing gear, a cooler, snacks, cases of Gatorade and water piled every which-way. AM & JR took the opportunity to reorganize the van; we were beginning to wish we had our pickup trucks. We missed the extra room. However, we now all knew that to be successful we would have to make an effort to keep the gear organized.   We said our good-byes and thank you's to Bill Hammond for a great place to stay - we recommend his place if you are in the area.

This place was across the street from Bill's - it does not carry the Yellowstone Gang Guarantee of Satisfaction and therefore we cannot recommend it like we do Bill's place.

Another quick stop at the Flying-J for breakfast then up the road to the Clark Country B&B to check-in.  We quickly off loaded our bags into the bunkhouse and asked Eva & Lowell for their recommendation on a fishing spot. We were sent up the dirt road a couple miles, through a gate into a hay field with a short drive down to the river. We were also warned about the Bull Moose that lived in the willows near the river.

The Smiths Fork was a beautiful meandering stream about 40 feet wide with deep green pools and cut-banks that wander through lowland willows. There was evidence of beaver activity all around with gnawed willows, beaver damns & beaver lodges throughout the area.

Quickly gearing-up, we headed through the willows and arrived at the river bank at 11:00 am – truly banker hours for fishing!! AB made the first cast with his 4 wt. Sage to a flash behind a bolder using a rubber-legged, orange Stimulator with a bead-head Pheasant-tail dropper. A large trout came to the dry fly immediately. AB quickly set the hook ……swing & a miss! A couple more casts through the same drift were ignored totally. Moving upstream to several nice looking riffles & pools, each angler was looking for that first Bonneville Cutthroat, but no luck.

AB waded across the river to an area with a long cut-bank section flowing into a large pool. While sizing up the area for a first cast a trout flashed under the cut-bank, quickly followed by a second fish flashing. Humm….feeding on nymphs. With one false cast the fly was placed right next to the grass on the edge of the cut-bank. In an instant there was a flash at the Pheasant-tail bead-head. A quick set….and another swing & a miss!! A second cast to the same drift produced the same reaction, but this time AB had figured out that the hook set had to be delayed until the trout grabbed the fly and turned away. It worked….a beautiful 16" Bonneville Cutthroat! JR assisted with the photo documentation & a high-five.

Per our pre-planed Cutt-Slam strategy, AB holstered his fly and became "support staff" for the other members of the YG. We intended that each member of the YG would catch each of the Cutthroat subspecies and after one angler caught a sub-species, the plan would have the successful angler move to the position of guide, photographer, netter & "retrieving flies from trees" support person for the remaining anglers.

JR was the next to hookup, another nice trout from the same cut-bank area. AB did the photo honors with another excited high-five!

GK was fishing with AM and was next to hook up. A nice Bonneville was brought to hand..

 Three down, one to go, and it wasn’t long before AM also had a nice Bonneville on the line by 1:00 pm.

The YG was ecstatic! We had all caught the first and most difficult of the three remaining Cutthroat subspecies we needed to meet the requirements for the Wyoming Cutt Slam in 2 hours! Our research lead us to believe that the Bonneville Cutt would be the most difficult to catch because of the limited size of their drainage in Wyoming. Only a few Wyoming rivers & streams held the Bonneville Cutt, where the other subspecies lived in much larger drainage basins.

The rest of the afternoon was spent catching many nice Bonneville Cutts. We were particularly surprised by the size of the fish. We’d mentally prepared ourselves throughout our winter research period prior to the trip to reducing our size expectations of the trout we might catch on this trip. On previous trips in Montana and the greater Yellowstone area we had caught many nice sized fish. The purpose of this trip was to catch all the other Cutt subspecies in Wyoming, but we fully expected those trout would be in the 10" to 12" neighborhood. What a pleasant surprise to find many Cutts in the 16" to 20" category!

Driving back to town we dodged the many large, water filled ruts in the road and were relieved to reach the blacktopped section of road. Interesting how small things like a blacktopped road can be something to look forward to. A real departure from the "hustle & bustle, traffic jam, big business decisions, rush-rush" life in Seattle. I think that’s the point of these trips, where a blacktopped road becomes something to look forward to, and enjoying the beauty of simple things in life.

Back at the bunkhouse, we rested a bit, had lunch, watched an old John Wayne movie ("Undefeated") on videotape, then headed out to fish the Smiths Fork. The river meandered through the ranch property and was within a few hundred yards of our bunkhouse. We fished the many large pools & cut bank areas and all caught several nice Bonneville Cutts and whitefish on dry flies & nymphs. GK tried his spinning rod with a brass-colored Mepps spinner on a large pool and after a couple well placed casts had a smashing strike. An exceptional battle pursued and he landed a beautiful 22+" Bonneville, the largest Cutt caught on the Smiths Fork! All right by the bridge over the river leading to the ranch.

Note: The YG highly recommends changing the hooks on all spinning lures from the treble-hook that traditionally comes with the lure to a small crimped-barb Siwash hook.

The single, open-eyed Siwash hook is simple to install and is much easier to un-hook from the fish. Please consider using this fish-friendly alternative with your spin fishing lures. In any case, we highly support barbless hook fishing with any flies or lures used on these beautiful fish.

Other tips for protecting fish include: a quick battle, not wearing the fish to exhaustion; wet hands and nets when touching the fish; if laying the fish down, keep it in the wet net &/or water to protect it from the soil; a quick picture, placing the fish back into the water, if there is any delay in picture taking; and finally taking time to rejuvenate the fish by placing it heading into the current and allowing sufficient time for the trout to regain its’ strength before releasing it. Although we are not always perfect, we try to abide by these fish friendly techniques and encourage other anglers to do likewise.

Dinner that evening at………you guessed it…..the Flying-J. After the usual sumptuous grease bomb diet, we headed through town (not a long drive) to look at Bear River itself, the parent drainage in which we were fishing. It was a slow, meandering river with overgrown banks and very, very mosquito laden. A tough river to fish and not get malaria. We did see a few rises leading us to think that no one ever does fish it and that there might be such real lunkers in there. We found a deceased local denizen (porcupine) that agreed to roll over and play dead for a picture with AB.

 On the way back to the ranch, in pitch dark, we could only travel at 20 mph or less. There were so many deer along the road everyone’s eyes were glued to the road helping warn driver AM of the next deer about to jump in front of the van. Suddenly the whole view out the windshield was filled with a huge Great Grey Owl! The owl, standing next to the road, flew up into the headlights and directly over the front of the van. We were now proceeding at 5 mph and wondering what was coming next!  Reaching the Clark's B&B, we fell into bed exhausted from a great day of activity.