I finally got out to do a little fishing yesterday. My wife has been on bed-rest for the last 3 weeks (she's 7 months pregnant and the little one is trying to come out to soon...) so any free time I have (and I have lots of vacation saved up) has been spent taking care of her and watching my 2 little boys. So I've been itching to get out. I had my fill of chums last month and figured it would be a few more days until the winter brats were in, so I decided to hit the yak. I've never fished it in the winter time so I was looking forward to the experience - fish or not.
I did some white knuckle driving over the pass and got to my spot (top end of the canyon) just before 9am. Some lite snow was falling and no wind. A very nice day really.

I stuck to streamer patterns and within a short while I noticed the large gaping mouth of a trout sticking out of the water chasing my fly as it skipped along the surface at the end of my retreive. I dropped it back down and quickly hooked up with a beautiful 12-14ich cutthroat. A few casts later a nice 12-14inch bow. Followed by another cuttie and some more bows. Hooked a monster that I horsed too much and lost about 15ft from me - easily over 20 inches.
I hiked and waded downstream and found a few more productive spots for these agressive and hungry bows (no more cutts). I was in my own winter wonderland as I watched fish after fish go airborne on the end of my line. Man can those fish fight! Some of the hits were very subtle and I really had to concentrate, but then out of the blue one would just nail it and scare the heck out of me as my 4wt suddenly lurched nearly out of my hands.
I ended my day around 2:30 - final score - 21 hookups, 16 landed (and tons of bites). Smallest fish was about 10 inches the biggest landed was 20 inches (I actually measured this one with a tape) - most were 12 to 16inches. Easily my best day on the yak (I only fish it once or twice a year). Other than blizzard conditions on the pass and stong winds on the west side, the river was perfect for winter fishing. And I didn't see another angler the whole time - not even a drift boat.

Here are a few of the shots that turned out halfway decent - still getting used to my new digital camera...

Cuttie # 1:


Cuttie #2




pretty 18 to 19 incher:


another shot of the 18-19 incher:


Nice 20incher:


Amazing fighter and jumper for only being 14inches: