In Pursuit of Utah's Cutthroat Slam by Gary Lewis
Four subspecies of Oncorhynchus clarkii in four distinct watersheds. Could we do it in three days?
- by Gary Lewis
On a rainy afternoon in January in a little bar, drinking ice water and eating fish tacos, Jesse Riding laid it out.
Our mission: catch four subspecies of cutthroat trout in four different watersheds in Utah.
Jesse wanted to know: did we want to fish for the biggest cutthroat in lakes, which would require more driving time and boats, or should we prospect for trout in the high country, taking our chances on access and weather?
To accomplish the Utah Cutthroat Slam, an angler can approach the project from many different angles. Attack all four species in one day, which would take a considerable amount of planning, fuel and luck. Or try to do it in a week, a month or a year. A person could try to get each of the species in stillwaters or headwaters, or all on dry flies, or all on terrestrials, or whatever. The point is each of the species must come from a different watershed and must be documented with photographic evidence.
Given the various options, we elected to try to accomplish the task on rivers or headwaters in three days, although we would have a fourth day in case something went wrong.
Riding said three of the fish could be found within 90 minutes in one direction or another from Salt Lake City. These were the Colorado, the Bonneville and the Bear River cutthroat. To get the Yellowstone subspecies, we had to drive almost to the border with Idaho and Nevada, into the northwest corner.
Sam Pyke and I arrived in Salt Lake City on almost simultaneous afternoon flights and we carried our bags out to the curb and found a bit of shade. Jesse Riding and Paul Mason, of Rainy’s Flies, picked us up and we drove into the foothills.
Our friend Brooks Hansen joined us in Park City where we plotted strategy over sushi. Hansen, Riding, Mason and I had signed up with the Governor’s office in our quest for the Utah Cutthroat Slam. To qualify, an angler must register with the state of Utah, catch each of the four subspecies and document each to its river of origin. There is no time limit, but we had a self-imposed three days.
In the dim light of the sushi bar, Riding traced his finger on the map up a tiny ribbon of blue where we hoped to tease up a Colorado cutt. From there, we would head into the headwaters of the Weber River.
Colorado Cutthroat
Way, way up and, seemingly, over the spine of the continent and down again, we followed a narrow ribbon of blacktop. When fir trees and granite gave way to groves of aspens and little meadows, Riding hooked a hard right turn onto a gravel road and we left a thin dust cloud trailing behind as a tiny river came into view. Down below a few cows fed in small openings. Beaver dams and patches of willows marked the course of the stream and morning sunlight winked off the surface of the dark water.
When the road began to offer us wide spots and turnouts, we stopped. It was a matter of moments to don waders and assemble rods.
Jesse pointed with his rod and mumbled something about where we should go, a length of tippet between his lips.
As much as I love fishing small streams, this one came with a singular challenge.
We hoped it would produce my first Colorado cutthroat. It was intimate water where the vibration of a person’s footsteps would be transmitted to hidden trout. Errant shadows cast across the surface would spook them as would the threat of a long fly rod with the sun at our backs. So too, would a clumsily cast fly.
To start, I practiced on water I guessed would be less productive, getting the timing right for pinpoint casts with my two-fly rig.
I’ve often equated fly-fishing, especially dry fly fishing with prayer. I found myself on my knees again to keep my silhouette low when I cast a hopper/dropper under some willows.
Two feet of drift, the dry plunged and a fish flashed. The fish tore out line and I dropped the tip of the rod downstream to turn it before it went into root structure.
Turn it, turn it again, turn it again.
“Net!”
Jesse Riding splashed in behind me. The fish, a 15-inch Colorado cutthroat in its spawning colors, slashed across a sandbar and Jesse plunged the net in front of it. My knees down in the water, I cradled the fish for a few moments to let it get its equilibrium back, then let it kick away.
It was Brooks’ turn next and soon he could count a Colorado cutt to his credit.
Upstream was a beaver dam and a large pod of cutthroat in the waist deep water.
In these headwaters on their spawning runs from somewhere further downstream, the cutthroat find their way through the myriad willow-woven beaver dams to complete their annual cycle. Although the 15-inch cutthroat proved to be the trophy of the morning, it was by no means the biggest trout in this section of stream. Hansen said he had seen many more in that one pool that would have gone close to 20 inches.
Bonneville Cutthroat
For a time, Utah’s state fish, the Bonneville cutthroat was thought extinct or genetically compromised in all of its native range. That turned out to not be the case, and remnant Bonnevilles were found and protected. Today, Bonneville cutts, what Utahans call Bonnies, are back.
The state counts over 40 streams, lakes and reservoirs where Bonnies may be bewildered and bemused by fly-fishermen. As we wanted to stay in the Uintas, we dropped over into the Weber River drainage, stopped for doughnuts in Kamas, then angled up a canyon where we found a path down to the water.
Again, a dry and dropper was the go-to rig. To run deeper, I used a Hot Spot Pheasant Tail Nymph beneath a bushy dry. A nine-inch brook trout was first to tumble to my offerings, taking the dry. Another fish sipped and when it flashed, I saw the tall fin and the blue/green shine of the scales that told me I’d surprised a grayling.
With both knees wedged into rock, I worked the dry and dropper from the waterfall down, saw the dry plunge and set the hook into a fine Bonnie. This one measured nine inches, with vivid parr marks along its body and, characteristic of Bonneville cutts, had black spots scattered from top to bottom with orange slashes.
This small plunge pool about the size of a hot tub had produced three species in less than ten minutes! A brook trout, a grayling and a Bonnie!
Now we were ahead of the game and could have tried for the third subspecies. Instead, we stopped for a shore lunch – chicken cordon bleu – on the Camp Chef stove and went back downstream to fish up again. Because we could.
And then it was time for dinner, or so I thought. But when my fishing partners were consulted on the subject, I was outvoted. We would start again a third time and see what other fish we could find that we had not touched in the last few hours.
Back down to the creek I went solo, this time without waders, and instead of working main runs, I sought out the braids a person could step across at almost any point. Looking for a good cut bank, I found a spot where the roots of a tree were exposed over a dark piece of water about four feet long.
Knelt down on the opposite shore, I dapped a fly along the outstretched roots and was rewarded with a splash and grab. With rainbow stripes on both sides and cutthroat slashes on the undersides of its jaw, it gave a good battle on the tiny Douglas 3-weight.
Bear River Cutthroat
To get our Bear River cutthroat, we started out of Park City before dawn. Our goal was to reach a small tributary of the Bear River. It was cooler this morning, but the mosquitoes were warming up. We could hear them as we stepped into tall grass at the edge of the trees.
Down through the meadow, we stepped in moose tracks and entered the stream at a shallow riffle.
I opted for a Yellow Sally dry and a Casino Royale on the dropper. It was apparent I did my best work on my knees. As soon as I’d stripped out line, I knelt in gravel at the water’s edge.
The first fish was a brookie. I moved up around the corner and again took the position of the supplicant, casting a pair of prayers upon the water. Wonder of wonders, the Yellow Sally disappeared to a yellow flash in the water. A cutthroat danced on the end of my line and Paul Mason swooped in with the net and we had our first Bear River cutthroat.
It was still early in the morning when we could count each of our anglers’ Bear Rivers toward the Slam. Three out of four of our cutthroat subspecies had been brought to hand.
Here was a moment, at 8:16am, when we could have sprinted for the vehicle and powered up to Yellowstone cutthroat country. And we flirted with the idea. But we opted instead to make the most of our time in this high country.
Downstream we fished a fork of the Bear River, teasing more brook trout and Bear River cutts out from under the cut banks and adding them to our memory banks.
After a tailgate lunch at the back of the Ford, we crossed a ridge and found ourselves in a new watershed where, after shaking two years off the life of Riding’s F-150, we caught more brookies, Colorado cutthroats and a couple of mountain whitefish.
Dinner we caught off the highway in a truck stop on our way up to Yellowstone cutthroat country.
It was well after 10:00pm and still over 90 degrees when we rolled into Brigham City looking for a hotel. There in the courthouse lawn was a 40-foot Christmas tree and tinsel and lights and people singing Christmas carols. Yes, it was still bloody hot outside, but there was two inches of snow on the ground. And then we saw the movie cameras, filming a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie.
In the morning when I walked up the street to get coffee, the snow had all been rolled up and the Christmas tree dismantled and put in a trailer, ready to head off to the next location.
Caption: This grayling was the first fish to grab a bushy dry in a pool that contained multiple species.
Yellowstone Cutthroat
By mid-morning day three, we were way up in the northwest corner of Utah, in mountains again. These vistas offered miles of wide open country with strips of timber on shaded slopes and tiny trickles of water in only a few canyons. Cattle country.
Topping a ridge, we began to catch glimpses of our destination from the gravel road. Black Angus stood out against the yellowing grass.
Now we began to see marshy areas and stands of willows, but still not enough water to keep trout alive. We topped another finger ridge and rolled down the windows to breathe in the summer smells. Down into another canyon, our course began to follow a narrow ditch, which looked suspiciously like it might also be a creek. And then, after another mile upstream, yes it was a creek. And there was our pullout at the culvert.
The sun was high in the sky and the day promised to be hotter yet, maybe even in the mid-90s here.
Sam Pyke climbed out of the back seat of the F-150 and looked around. Pyke grew up on the Metolius and has rafted the Deschutes since he was a toddler. Fly-fishing water did not look like this to his way of thinking. His expression read,
‘We drove 200 miles for this?’
About the width of a piano bench, ankle deep, and warm, it didn’t look like fly water unless maybe it was a place where mosquitoes bred. He said, “The only thing we’re going to catch here is giardia.”
Quickly, I tied on a Muddler Minnow. I wanted to get a fish out of the culvert. A culvert can hold trout because it may have all the elements of habitat a trout needs like water, oxygenated current, a food funnel and various things like logs to break the current and provide a place of rest. Above all, it provides safety from winged predators and... SHADE, all day long.
Jesse Riding saw the Muddler, and sniffed. A fly snob, he thinks there are so many better choices than the Muddler, and he is right, but a Muddler will still catch a cutthroat. And culvert cutthroat are not highly educated.
I let the current take the streamer in until I judged it was halfway under the road. WHAM! The fish was big enough to break my leader. And swam off with my Muddler.
So much for getting my Yellowstone culvert cutt.
To keep my shadow off the water, I went to my knees downstream of the culvert and offered a streamer - Empie’s Deadly Shiner - completing my Utah Cutthroat Slam with the Yellowstone.
Before ten minutes more had passed, each of our anglers had completed the slam.
It was one of those days when every fish we caught was bigger than the one before, and even Sam Pyke became a believer when we found a pod of 30 or more Yellowstone cutts nosed into a coldwater spring. Sam knelt, keeping a shoulder of land between him and his target.
Utah cutthroat are hard on the knees.
- Written by Gary Lewis
For a signed copy of Fishing Mount Hood Country, send $29.95 (includes S&H) to Gary Lewis, PO Box 1364, Bend, OR 97709. To contact Lewis, visit www.GaryLewisOutdoors.com