Yesterday at 6am Steve, Cameron, Blaine, and Myself set out of a fishing trip of a lifetime. We loaded up the back of my truck with all the needed gear and coolers and through on a trailer with 4 ATV's. We set out for Antimony Creek. Still being fairly new to the fishing scene in Utah I was excited to get some time out with my fly-rod. We reached our ATV drop point at about 8am at which time the real adventure began. Going from about 8000 ft above sea level to about 1250 in an hour on ATV's, on trails that are just wide enough for the ATV and have boulders everywhere to clime over. The trails were "gnarly," as one of my cohorts put it. We arrived at our destination around 9:30am, we had no sooner gotten off our rides scoped the place out and the heavens opened their wrath upon us with penny sized drops of rain and nickle sized hail. If that wasn't enough there was lighting so load and close that it caused grown men to cower and scramble. One strike was so close there was no delay in the crack of thunder from the flash. One of the other guys said he saw it hit about 200 yards away from us. The storm eventually calmed down enough that we all felt like getting our gear out and seeing what we could catch. Antimony Creek is a typical mountain creek crystal clear water and it is stocked full of native broke trout and brown trout, so much so that at any point along the creek you can see a dozen or so swimming along. Fishing started off slow for some, Cameron started hitting them as soon as his line hit the water. This was Blaine's first time fly fishing so we tutored him at first but he was quick to pick it up and Steve, well this was his spot so he went right to work catching them as well. I had a slow start on the upper side of our camp, but as soon as we moved to the lower side and I switch to a better fly I started slaying them. So much so I put an 8 fish per hole limit on my self before moving along the creek. It was a blast. After fishing the creek for a good 4 hours, all this time being rained on mind you, we headed back to were we had parked the ATV's and Cameron our outdoorsman had built us a little fire under a pine tree away from the rain. It was dry and warm!! We stay under that tree for probably an hour and the storm finally broke at which time we decided to make a break for our next fishing spot Antimony Lake. Now never being in this area I made some assumptions about what Lake ment. So when we pulled up to it and it was not much larger than Kanab Creek Pond I was a little surprised and worried about the fishing potential. The creek didn't even run in to it. It was a snow run off pond. But I was assured that the DWR stocked it every spring. We all pulled out our fly rods and began to fish this pond, I had a fish on my first time in the water and a few missed hits after that but it was really slow after that. They just weren't hitting the surface. Fortunately Blaine and I had packed our spinning rods. As soon as I pulled out my favorite trout lure I was hitting them again. About every other cast I had a fish on. It was awesome! As the sun began to dip down past the mountains to the west we began to realize that if we wanted to get off the mountain before we lost light we had better move quick. Just as we packed up our things the rain came again which made for a very muddy very slippery ride down the rocky trails. We made it back to the trucks just as dusk was settling in loaded up the trailer and began our trip home.
Here are a few pictures to tell the story;
Thanks Blaine for not making me ride this one!
The end of a beautiful adventure!
The boys!
Warming our self's up under a tree, Thank Cameron for the fire, I am glad one us brought a lighter.
Cameron and Steve consult a map to find our way, Blaine supervises!
Herding cattle along the trails, yeeha!!
Ready to Go!
