It’s been just one year since I finished up my first Cutthroat Slam here in Utah, and when I signed up for a second run I didn’t realize I wouldn’t be given the 99 year grace period; In fact, it wasn’t until late May that I realized the newer Cutthroat Slam tag that I’ve had pinned to the fridge acted as an ignorantly misread omen, expires at the end of the coming June.
So I was able to pack the girlfriend up and our little dog too, and then we were off to the North-West to catch some small trout.
We ended up leaving on a Saturday morning, nervous about our chickens who don’t yet have an automatic door to keep them safe in the dark where the monsters live. It’s a small price to pay, but having a light-activated door sitting in the garage is a bit of a pain knowing I just need to get out and install the damn thing to have a bit more freedom with my weekends. Either way, we found ourselves rolling into the tiny town of Yost around 2 pm, and I started hitting the rivers.
In hindsight, my form was despicable. Like a thrashing behemoth rampaging down a small valley, I’d get to the water with so much eagerness and anticipation that I’m almost sure I scared off most of the trout before they ever saw me, or I them. The overhanging willows and brilliant notes of sage billowing down the small gorge gave a suffocating sense of claustrophobia that only added to my hasty angst.
I would encourage Taylor to keep moving upstream with me, driving some 200-400 yards up and then pulling over to fish a promising spot to no avail. She and Venus the husky were reading books and digging gopher holes respectively, willing enough to oblige my constant need to proceed.
As night fell and my luck waned without a catch in hand we decided to set up camp shortly after Venus was able to claim her own bounty, the fruits of an endless day of hole-digging resulted in a small chew toy used for approximately three minutes before being dropped and left for the scavengers. At our campsite some ways up the forest road, the pup found another little canine treasure, dining away on a nice chewy elk bone, which gave way to the nomenclature of this particular campsite, which I will forever identify as Dogbone Dell.
I’m typically blown away anytime I put on my glasses with just how much further and more clearly I can see, but when I put on the spectacles to engage in some star gazing I was utterly dumbfounded and the brilliant blinking blue that tarried away above us. While the clouds moved across Cygnus, satellites in all directions zoomed and burst like little bubbles of light fluttering across an inky black pool of oblivion. After a little too much tequila in a kuksa we dubbed “the Teller’s Tumbler”, we first discussed what we believe constitutes a good campfire story, and then began to share a few of our favorites: Taylor with stories almost entirely associated with a grim respect for large bodies of water, and my own tales of close calls with a modicum of a morale ending for good measure.
In the morning I was able to rally past the hangover and get to making breakfast, much more evenly paced towards more time in the creek. Something about this overcast morning with the scent of rain clouds rolling over pinewood convinced me that it was going to be a good day of fishing. With the peace of mind firmly established I was able to begin cooking what would end up being the single best camp breakfast I think I’ve ever cooked in my life, whose beauty comes particularly from it’s simplicity:
Scrambled eggs, cooked with garlic salt, chives and chopped mushrooms.
I still am in awe of just how refreshing the meal was, my typical campside meal almost always includes a healthy serving of bacon or sausage; much more on the light side than what I’d usually turn out, and it was magnificent.
Once we finished the meals and packed everything up, we headed back up and over the mountain, driving up a wildly steep 35º hillside that made me nauseous even rolling up in 4hi, but once I kicked the truck into 4lo I immediately understood how crazy that gear can get, only scratching the surface of what it might be capable of.
Rolling back down onto the other side of the range, we stopped in a spot not too far up the dirty trail, but this time my approach was far more strategic and respectful. After scoping out a spot for a few minutes, I crept into position as slowly as I could, eventually needing to slide down a small embankment with my rod behind me or face ramming it into some of the overhanging branches, or worse, getting hung up in them. From here I pulled out a 22 rainbow warrior and tried driving this in the current, but the stream was still swollen from the late spring melt, and visibility wasn’t the greatest. There was a larger tree trunk to the right of me that just felt right, never seeing any trout in the water but knowing there’d be some little guy hiding just beneath the overhanging bark.
I decided to do a hail-mary with a balanced Leech streamer that a good friend had given me (TroutHowler on YouTube, he’s a great guy that you should check out) and tied it on. There was a small clearing of branches I’d be able to cast through, but the way the stream was positioned I needed to use a very accurate bow cast to get it where I needed, so with a quick pull back and an almost zen-like efficiency, I released the tight line, landing the streamer exactly where it belonged. From here I just drifted the little fly for about 2 minutes, when I finally felt a very small amount of pressure on the end of my line, and pulled out my first Yellowstone Cutthroat for this attempt at the slam.
This all happened well within our timeframe to leave, so once I had caught the first fish, I opted to head on and get over to Logan where I’d catch my second fish of the day: a Bear River Cutthroat. Immediately after this on a stunning sunny afternoon, I was able to wet wade through the river, hooking into another four brown trout all on dries. It was a great way to end what felt like an accursed year of fishing, having gone out many different times this year but only hooking into my first fish halfway through the year. With a trip to Montana just around the corner and the Cutt Slam timeout just after that, I’ve got a lot of work to do if I am going to try and hit my goal of 100 fish netted this year.
