Ep 168: Fly Fishing in the High Uinta Wilderness, with Shawn Larson
Shawn Larson has been on the show many times (episodes 63, 67, 138, and 155). In this episode, he is back to talk about his recent trip to fish an alpine basin in the High Uinta Wilderness. We talk about the planning, terrain, species, and gear of the trip, as well as resources he used to gain more knowledge about the area.
Utah Planning Resources: link
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing in the backcountry. This is episode 168 with Shawn Larson on fly fishing in the High Uinta Wilderness. all right cheers cheers real beers this time and not a fakey one right that we had to open last time because you opened yours too early. I did. So yeah, I don't know. How many times have you been on the show now? Like four or five? So you're like my go-to person when I need to talk to somebody. I'm like, hey, Shawn.
Shawn
I think this might be number four. So thanks for having me again.
Katie
Yeah. So you just got back from, well, you've gotten back from a couple trips lately, Alaska, Utah, but today we're talking about your Utah trip. Yeah. And I know next to nothing about it. You sent some photos, but I couldn't get into the folder you sent me. So I actually didn't get to see any of them. So I will, I guess, let you take it away and kind of introduce, you know, when were you there? How long were you there? What inspired this trip to the Uintas?
Shawn
Yeah. So this year I went, it was around the third week or so of August or sorry, of July. And we spent eight days in the High Uinta Wilderness. And it was a return trip. I had gone, I think it was four years ago. And there's so much water in these basins that I couldn't get to all the water that I really wanted to fish. And so I really wanted to go back and I didn't get a chance to fish the stream at all. So I really wanted to fish the stream and hit a couple of lakes and one in particular that I wasn't able to get to because it's a pretty long hike. So that's kind of what prompted me. And I went with a couple of friends, one that you know and have had on the show at least once, maybe twice, John Hill. Shout out for John and Yellowfin Rods. So, yeah, he and another buddy, we do a trip every year. And this year I convinced him that, hey, we should go outside of Colorado and try the High Uintas. Did not disappoint. They had an awesome time and it was a new experience for them, new place. So it was great.
Katie
When you say High Uinta Wilderness, I assume this is a capital W wilderness. This is just your description of the wilderness of the High Uintas. It is. Yeah, it's an official wilderness.
Shawn
I don't know the details of the size, but it encompasses a significant portion of the Uinta Mountains, which are fairly unique. I'll just start with the description of that area. It's kind of in the northeast corner of Utah, and it's the only mountain range in the contiguous U.S. that is oriented east-west. Oh, yeah, I've heard that before. East-west instead of north-south. So it's very unique. It's pretty cool. The two times I've gone, obviously, you know, to the same, been in the same drainage, so I haven't explored beyond that, but I would like to, you know, explore some more places. It is relatively close to Salt Lake and Park City, so the eastern and southern portions of the range tend to get more traffic because they are close to Salt Lake, kind of like the Front Range is close to Denver, so it just tends to be busier. The northern part of the range where we were is not as busy. And, I mean, you're driving through an hour and a half in Wyoming, and there is nothing between the closest town and the trailhead. Although this particular trailhead was super busy just because there's a peak that everybody climbs from this trailhead. So it is pretty busy. But we didn't see that many people. Actually, we were there for two or three days before we saw a first person.
Katie
Do many of the trails go the whole way up over? Or is it kind of divided where like the southern people coming from the Salt Lake area are coming up that way, but then they're kind of like blocked by the divide? Is that... There are trails. Are they able to hike up over it and get to the north side if they...
Shawn
Yeah, you can. But I don't think most people do that just because of the way it's oriented. So, you know, the trails go up and they do go up and over, but I think most people go up into the drainages, whether to the lakes or there is kind of a route that you can take from one end to the other so you can, you know, navigate the entire mountain range. But, yeah, most people were just going up the drainage, turning around and coming back. So there weren't, we didn't see any through hikers. So, but I think some other drainages could probably be, you know, even less populous on that north side. But that's another trip in the future.
Katie
I'm kind of surprised that you went back to the same place. I know. In some ways I'm not because I know the feeling of like we went somewhere, we didn't get to do everything there. And so, you know, you're just like itching to go back and check those things off. But with so many like places to go, I feel like it's hard to, like I always go like one drainage over. So I'm like, well, if it sucks, I can go back to the one that I know.
Shawn
Right. Yeah, I did think about going to the drainage, the next drainage over. But the hike in to the lakes was significantly further. I mean, we went about seven miles into kind of the first area where there's some lakes and camped. And then it's even further up the drainage to get to all the rest of the lakes.
Katie
So there's multiple lakes in the same drainage.
Shawn
Yeah, there's, and we didn't fish all of them. But I want to say there's probably 10 to 12 lakes in the drainage that you can fish. That's a lot. Yeah. And, you know, 12 miles of stream.
Katie
Yeah. I feel like a typical drainage, there's like one at the top or there's one at the top and, you know, maybe one below. Or there's like a set of three that get a little higher and stack up. But like that many of the same drainage is unusual.
Shawn
Yeah. It's a very unique because, you know, you start pretty high and it's fairly gentle all the way up into the drainages. And it's unique. It reminds me a little bit, if you know what the flat tops are like, it's a little bit like the flat tops on steroids. So it's very cliffy, kind of flat on top in a lot of places with very long glacial valleys.
Katie
The flat tops I feel like are, at least where I've been in the flat tops, it wasn't super drainage-based. It was almost like it's kind of like flat with flat top mountains coming up out of that, like kind of flat and rolling.
Shawn
There's a few drainages on the west side of the flat tops that are really long. And the South Fork of the White River is a really long drainage. So there's a few in there that are pretty long. But just the topography reminds me of the flat tops. It's red rocks. You know, it's layered like a cake. And it's very abrupt. I mean, you're going from flat and then there's a cliff.
Katie
So when you say drainage here, and I know like, you know, technically a drainage is just, you know, where the water's funneling to and out of. but most of the drainages I think of in Colorado are steep-sided you know it's kind of like a valley when you're saying drainage is it more flat like the flat tops it is and that's okay so that's why there can be so many lakes there because I was just wondering like how do you fit that many lakes in a steep-sided valley but that's because I was I'm using the word drainage kind of colloquially to mean those valleys that we get between the mountains
Shawn
yeah it's a very wide drainage and it gets wider as you go up into the into the top it looks like a giant lollipop I mean it's probably three miles across at the top something something like that I'm just guessing but
Katie
well that makes a lot more sense than why you went back to the same place because again in my mind I'm picturing this kind of like steep-sided valley where there's a creek down the middle and there's like a lake at the top two lakes at the top yeah yeah which is typical yeah but yeah what you're describing now I'm like oh it's it's more of a big wide area kind of big playground right so that I could totally see like wanting to go back and hit the spots you didn't get to hit
Shawn
We didn't run into, I'm trying to think, we ran into one family that was up there from Wyoming with kids. And they were the only ones that were fishing and they were fishing at the little lake where we were camped. Other than that, we didn't see a single person fish.
Katie
Is the trail going to one specific place or are there trails to all the different lakes? Are you doing a lot of off-trail travel?
Shawn
There's both. So there was a fair amount of off-trail travel that we had to do to get to the lakes. There's some social trails and or game trails that we followed, but a lot of it was just, you know, pick your way through. But it's very easy down in the valley because it's, you know, it's about the upper part of the valley. It's just tundra and willows. So I literally used a satellite to pick a route to this one lake that was a pretty significant hike from where we camped to avoid the willows. Because there are just huge masses of willows that you do not want to get into the middle of. So I managed to pick a route from a satellite image through, marked it on Onyx, and we just followed up. And it was super easy. It was just long. It was a long day, but it was very easy.
Katie
Yeah, when you're describing like the flat tops, I was thinking, I remember doing like off trail travel there. And it was so nice because it's like, well, it's just kind of like flat grass. Yeah, yeah. But willows will ruin that really fast.
Shawn
Yeah. And they have the same problem there that we do here with beetle kill. So a significant portion of the forest is dead. And so there's a lot of down timber. Fortunately, the trail, you know, went through the areas where there was timber and we didn't have to navigate too much timber. But, but yeah, it's, it's, it was pretty easy hiking really.
Katie
It sounds really nice. It sounds like a, like a pastoral mountain, mountain scene.
Shawn
Yeah. Well, the next drainage over, I think it's about 12 miles into the lakes.
Katie
You said yours was about seven?
Shawn
To the beginning. And then it was another, I think, four miles to the upper lake, four plus miles from where we camped. So that's, you know, 11 miles to get to the furthest lake.
Katie
Were people passing through where you were to hit that peak that you were talking about? Or did they kind of veer off a different direction?
Shawn
No, because we took, there's a side bench with a couple lakes where we camped. And so we went up there because I knew that, you know, everybody's going to be on this main trail down at the bottom. And so we didn't, we didn't run into people up there. Plus the lake we were at was totally off trail. I mean, you have to want to be there to get there. It wasn't necessarily easy to, to get to unless you really wanted to be there. But yeah, it's, I mean, we saw some people, but, and the weather turned really, really bad right before we got there. And so there was an unbelievable number of people that were coming out and they kept saying, Oh, good luck, good luck. And we did get rained on, but it, it wasn't bad. And the weather there is kind of funky. It wasn't as weird this time as it was the first time I was in there. But I think everybody left because the first time I went that upper part of the basin, there were probably at least 12 to 15 tents. And this time there was literally zero people up there.
Katie
Was it just like a thunderstorm that came through?
Shawn
It was like a six-hour rainstorm.
Katie
Okay. And they all knew it was coming? How did they know that this long weather pattern was rolling?
Shawn
I think either their equipment failed or they were just wet and tired and they were done.
Katie
Oh, and it already started? Yeah. It was driving them out?
Shawn
Yeah.
Katie
Oh, okay. I thought you meant they were coming out being like a storm's rolling in.
Shawn
No, it was the night before they had gotten rained on. Gotcha, gotcha. And they, I mean, just looking at a lot of Boy Scouts, and they weren't really prepared with great equipment coming down the trail. And a lot of church groups. So, you know, kids and a couple of adults, you know, there'd be 10, 12 kids in a group. And so everybody just cleared out because of the weather. I think, you know, they had leaky tents and they were done.
Katie
Yeah, I mean, that'll ruin it pretty fast.
Shawn
Well, especially when it rains for six hours.
Katie
Yeah. You're stuck in there.
Shawn
That's a long time.
Katie
Were you close to tree line or anything? Was it a safety thing or a comfort thing?
Shawn
No. It wasn't a safety thing. So we were camped at about 10, 7.
Katie
Oh, that's higher than I would have guessed, actually.
Shawn
Yeah.
Katie
How high do the peaks go in that area?
Shawn
The highest peak in Utah is in that range called Kings Peak. And it's 13.5 something. So, yeah. But it's, I mean, it's beautiful. There are a few horse packers, but not many. We did run into a herd of sheep. So there's a sheep herder up there. But the dog, fortunately, was very nice. We had some run-ins with some very cranky sheep dogs.
Katie
You can't be a cranky sheep dog when you're on public land.
Shawn
Oh, my gosh.
Katie
That's my view on that.
Shawn
Yeah. But this one was very nice. He followed us for quite a ways.
Katie
How did you find this drainage? I know you have some like resources that you want to share later. I'm not sure if those were part of finding this drainage or if that was just a, you know, supplemental material that you brought. But how did you narrow down this location?
Shawn
I'm trying to remember how, I think I read a magazine article initially years ago about, you know, a guy that lived in Utah and spent 40 years fishing the Uinta Mountains, the high Uinta wilderness. And it just kind of intrigued me just looking at some of the pictures. And I started looking at this particular drainage that has, you know, it's very red rock. And like I said, the rock, the peaks just come out of the base of the valley and just go straight up. So it's very dramatic. And I just kind of got a wild notion that, hey, I need to go fish this place. And just started doing research of, okay, where can I go someplace where there's multiple lakes? and maybe a stream to fish, and I just landed on this particular drainage. But there's others, you know, on either side of it that you can go either longer or shorter distance. So there's a ton of terrain up there to fish. So next time it'll be a different drainage. And then I bought a book that was written by a gentleman, or actually three brothers, I think.
Katie
Yeah, I saw one of their last name is Probst, and the first one's name is Jeffrey. And I like to think it's the same Jeff Probst that hosts Survivor. I like to think that this is his.
Shawn
Oh, Jeffrey, Brad, and Kyle Probst.
Katie
Maybe he moonlights as a High Uintas fly fishermen when he's not hosting Survivor.
Shawn
So I did buy this book and I started just going through it, trying to find where's a logical place to go and discovered that, okay, if you want to avoid people, avoid the south part of the range and the west part of the range. And so that's why I picked the north side. Gotcha. So, yeah, that was kind of my decision making. It wasn't, I didn't read an article specifically about that drainage, just through my research. And Utah Division of Wildlife for their natural resources, they have a great website that shows stocking reports across all of the entire state of Utah. And you can access, you know, all the name lakes, what they're stocked with. And there's a bunch of information in this book, The High Uintus Fishing by Jeff Brad and Kyle Probst. So that was another resource they used. But the Utah Natural Resource website is great. They do much better than Colorado.
Katie
And what species are you fishing for?
Shawn
So there are, in this particular drainage, and I think pretty much throughout the entire Uinta Mountains, there are cutthroat, brook trout, and tiger trout. So tiger trout, because we just don't have many of them in Colorado, was kind of what we were focused on. You can find brook trout pretty much everywhere. And we have plenty of cutthroat here. But, so we were focused on tigers and, you know, my experience the first time I went was that the, the brook trout and the tiger trout, you know, while they weren't necessarily long, they were very, very healthy fish, very fat. So just, you know, nice plump fish. And so we were kind of after tiger trout.
Katie
And what size roughly were you catching?
Shawn
Anything from like, I don't know, 12 inches might have been our smallest. And we caught some that were 20 plus.
Katie
Wow.
Shawn
Yeah.
Katie
Okay. That's way bigger than I thought you were going to say.
Shawn
Yeah.
Katie
Tigers specifically or all?
Shawn
Tigers.
Katie
Yeah. I can't imagine the brook trout were 20 inches, but what were the other species size wise?
Shawn
The brook trout, we caught some decent ones that were probably, you know, up to 14 and some decent, there weren't many cutthroats. The lake that we camped at had some very small cutthroats. which was different from my first time I was there because they were bigger and there were more brook trout but there weren't hardly any brook trout in that lake they were mostly cutthroats and they're all pretty small
Katie
do you know what subspecies of cutthroat?
Shawn
I think those are Colorado because that drainage goes into the green which would go into the into the Colorado So I think they were probably Colorado River cutthroats. So, but yeah, some of the cutthroats were 14, 16. And we didn't catch very many of them. But I was actually shocked because I didn't even, I didn't think there were any cutthroat in one of the lakes. I thought it was all tigers and I caught two cutthroats.
Katie
That's an odd combination.
Shawn
Yeah, it's a very odd combination. And I looked at the stocking reports and going back to 2002, they hadn't stocked a single cutthroat in that lake.
Katie
So they've survived that long.
Shawn
And yet they were there, and then they stocked some more this summer.
Katie
Oh, okay.
Shawn
But they were only two inches long. So somehow they got in there, and they have been propagating because, you know, 2002, back to 2002, they hadn't stocked any in that particular lake. They were stocking tigers, but they were not stocking cutthroats. So they've been self-populating.
Katie
That really surprises me. I mean, maybe tiger trout are sterile, so they're not going to overpopulate the cutthroats on their own. But I just think of them as being a more aggressive species that would just take cutthroats over. But brook trout, I feel like, will take over. But I feel like they do it more from just like, we're going to choke this place out. We are going to fill this place to the brim with ourselves, and there's going to be no room left for cutthroats. maybe the tiger trout because they're sterile. Like maybe they just kind of, as long as there's not so many that they've eaten all the cutthroats, they can't overpopulate them.
Shawn
Yeah, they can't overpopulate. And actually Colorado has started to put tiger trout in certain waters where there are a lot of brook trout to try and keep the brook trout population because they will eat, you know, the other fish for sure. Because they're, I mean, it's a cross between a brook trout and a brown, in case anybody doesn't know what a tiger is. But it has to be a very specific, and I can't, I always forget. It has to be of one and a male of the other in that specific combination.
Katie
Right, right. I mean, obviously it's a female of one and a male of the other, but it has, I don't remember which one it is either. Yeah. One species has to be the male.
Shawn
The male brook and a female brown are the other way around. It can't be, you know, one of the, it's got to be just that specific combination.
Katie
I wonder why that is. I've never like bothered to find out why it has to be, because I don't feel like I've ever heard that with, well, actually, I don't know, with things like, you know, a horse and a donkey to make a mule. Is that, is that the same way?
Shawn
I don't know.
Katie
That's a good question. No, I'm curious.
Shawn
Probably not. Probably not, but I don't know that.
Katie
I just wonder what the mechanism would be behind me. I did know that about tigers, though, that it has to be one or the other in that specific combination.
Shawn
Right. And surprisingly, there are no browns.
Katie
In that area?
Shawn
Yeah.
Katie
That doesn't surprise me.
Shawn
In the stream, because when you get down to the lower part of the stream, it looks like it would be, if it was here, I would say, yeah, there's going to be browns in that stream.
Katie
Is it low enough?
Shawn
Yeah.
Katie
Okay. I just don't think of browns as being high elevation fish in any way.
Shawn
Yeah, it's like 9,700 feet, 96, 9,700 feet.
Katie
I still feel like that's higher than I think of for most brown trout.
Shawn
Yeah. Yeah, I suppose. Not that they can't. It feels lower just because of the terrain because it's very sagebrushy. You know, you got the Platte River that runs through, you know, the southern part of Wyoming that's relatively high.
Katie
Sure.
Shawn
So, I don't know. It just feels like there should be browns in there, but there were not. It's all cutthroats.
Katie
You notice any differences in the behavior of the cutthroats versus the brook trout versus the tiger trout in terms of fishing for them and, you know, what they would take and how they would like rise or not rise or anything like that? Or is it kind of like a, you know, you just catch what's in there and you don't have to change up your technique?
Shawn
No, not really. I mean, like I said, I was, we were, we were fishing for in this one particular lake, which was the uppermost that I hadn't gotten to the first time I went. We caught, it was a, it was an incredibly windy day. I mean, the winds were gusting 30, 40 miles an hour or so, and we were casting into the wind for the most part. So it was challenging fishing. But, I mean, the fish were hitting literally like six, eight feet off from shore.
Katie
Well, that's nice.
Shawn
So, yeah, we didn't have to cast very far. And, you know, you're stripping it in. And we were using, you know, black leeches. Okay. And they were hitting it. Now, the other two guys, John and Tom, they did not catch any cutthroat. I was the only one who caught cutthroat out of that lake, but they all took the same thing. So, you know, there's the lake that we camped at. The first time I went, there were good sized cutthroat and brook trout. This time, like I said, we saw a few small brook trout and there are a lot of small cutthroats. And it didn't matter what you threw in there, you're, you know, catching something. So I didn't feel like it really mattered. But most of the lakes are very specific. Some of them have, you know, two species in them, but no more than that in this particular drainage. I think there's other drainages where there might be three where they might have cutthroat brook and tigers, which is an odd combination to me. Yeah, how many places have those three species? Yeah, not many. Certainly not around here. But yeah, I was very surprised to get a cutthroat out of there because I looked at, you know, the stocking report, 24 back to 2002, not a single cutthroat. I was like, okay, well, there's tigers. and I had seen some videos on YouTube of guys that had hiked up there and specifically to, you know, catch the tigers. And so I didn't even think about catching a cutthroat. So I was super surprised when I got one.
Katie
Did you say that you've heard that Colorado is starting to do more tigers to try to reduce brook trout? Yeah. I haven't heard, I mean, I haven't heard that specifically, But I've only caught tigers. I've only gone to one place in Colorado where tigers are like a reliable thing you can catch. I was with Jon actually when he caught one by chance. Yeah. And it's way more fun when you catch a species by chance like that. Because you're like, you know, where did this come from? Like was it stocked way upstream? I know it's very rare for them to occur naturally. But like, you know, did this one occur naturally? Because they're not supposed to be here.
Shawn
Right.
Katie
Yeah, it's possible.
Shawn
I mean, the only place I've seen one caught naturally was in Wisconsin. when I was in the Driftless. I didn't catch it. Paul did. But yeah, there were both brook trout and browns in this one stream. And lo and behold, it was a natural tiger. That would be so much more exciting to me. Yeah. Oh, it was very exciting because they definitely do not stock tigers in any of that water.
Katie
Yeah. And I don't know why. I think it's, I could be completely wrong about this. I thought it was something related to number of chromosomes, which is why it's so rare in the wild. That doesn't explain why sometimes it happens. Maybe some kind of mutation. I don't know. Again, I'm just kind of making stuff up. But I've heard it's something related to that that makes it rare. But I think it does occasionally happen. Yeah. Some fluke of something. And I wonder if that's what John... Because John caught one in a stream that we only were catching rainbows. Really? So we don't know where it... We're thinking it spilled down in from somewhere else. But I don't know what's upstream that has a bunch of tigers. Because it feels like where they are, there's a bunch of them. They've been put in there deliberately and it's like all tigers or where I've caught them. It's been tigers and rainbows and they seem to like live together pretty peacefully, which doesn't surprise me as much as tigers and cutthroats. I don't know why that, because cutthroats are so fragile. Yeah. They just seem to be like outcompeted by literally anything. Whereas rainbows, I feel like they're scrappy enough to.
Shawn
Yeah. Well, I mean, if they don't propagate, that's probably the reason why, because then it doesn't overpopulate.
Katie
Yeah.
Shawn
But, yeah, I'm sure you have some listeners that know the story behind a tiger.
Katie
Yeah.
Shawn
So maybe someone will make a comment.
Katie
Write in and tell us where we're wrong here.
Shawn
Yeah, exactly. Inform us. Which is fine because I'm always interested to understand it.
Katie
For sure.
Shawn
But, yeah, so it was an awesome trip. We hiked. We figured we hiked over the course of the eight days 50 miles. So we put in some really, really long days of hiking. but the hiking was relatively easy.
Katie
So you had a base camp at one of the lakes and you just did little spurs out from there? Yep. And what was a typical day like in terms of mileage? Did you hit multiple lakes? Did you just go to a specific spot and hang out for the day?
Shawn
Yeah, it was anywhere from three or four miles to 10 miles in a day.
Katie
Round trip?
Shawn
Yeah, not one way.
Katie
Okay, I was like, you'd be hiking the whole way out of the drainage at that point.
Shawn
But yeah, it's, you know, we, when we went to that high lake, I can't remember the mileage now, I should have written it down, but I think it was four and change, maybe close to five. But then we came back because there's three lakes up in this upper part of the basin. And we skipped one and went over to another where there were tigers. And we skipped over the cutthroat lake that has only cutthroats in it and went over to another one that has brook trout and tigers in hopes of finding some more tigers. But we only caught brook trout.
Katie
As you do. I feel like any time there's brook trout, it's like that's what you're going to get.
Shawn
Yeah. And then, you know, the weather was not great that day. And, you know, it started out, it was fairly clear and just super windy. And then it got kind of nasty in the afternoon. So we bugged out. But a ton of wildlife. We saw on that particular day, we saw bushwhacking out a herd of elk and followed their trails to get out through all the willows and lots of moose. Didn't see any bear. I think we might have seen one bear sign, but we didn't really see any sign of bears per se. But yeah, tons of moose. It's very moosey just with all that flat land and lots of willows.
Katie
It's funny you mentioned that because Mike and I always say that we see more moose than basically anything else. And I think it's because we're in fishy areas and moose and fishy areas are one and the same. But my cousin came out a week or two ago and he's hiking the Colorado trail right now. And we did. I took him up to go fishing for a day before he went out because he had never fly fished before. And I told him when he's on the trail, because he was asking me, like, you know, what kinds of wildlife am I going to see and stuff like that? And I was like, well, you know, we could see a moose today. Like, that's what we see the most. And he's like, really? And so I was like, you know what? While you're hiking the Colorado trail, I want you to keep track of how many moose sightings, elk sightings, et cetera. Not number of animals because elk are in herds and moose aren't. But how many times you see each of these things. So he's keeping a tally of moose, elk, deer, and bear. And he's already seen several moose. I don't think he's seen any elk yet. And I was like, yeah, I've only seen a handful of bears in Colorado. I know they're there. I see a sign, but I just don't see them a lot. And day one, he sees a bear. He sees one. Yeah, he sees a bear. But yeah, I just feel like people think of Colorado and elk. There are a lot of elk out there, especially numbers-wise. But I see moose probably like three to four times as often as I see elk, unless I'm elk hunting and looking for elk and putting myself in a place. It's elky. Yeah. But it must just be because of fishing because it's like, I feel like I see moose like every other time I go out.
Shawn
Yeah. Well, and elk are so, for being such a large animal, they're so skittish.
Katie
They are. They slink around. Yeah.
Shawn
I mean, at the snap of a twig, they're gone. Or if they smell you coming a half mile away, they're gone. But a moose will just stand there and look at you.
Katie
It doesn't care.
Shawn
It doesn't care.
Katie
It knows that there's nothing you can do.
Shawn
Right, exactly. We did have several deer that hung out around our camp all week long. They would come in in the morning and the afternoon and just hang out around camp. So it was kind of cool.
Katie
Any marmots?
Shawn
You know, I don't think we saw a single marmot. I don't even know if we heard any. Maybe we might have heard one or two, but we didn't see. Yeah, I was kind of surprised as rocky as it is.
Katie
I assume there's marmots there. I guess I don't know, but I don't know why they wouldn't be there.
Shawn
I think there are, but I don't recall. I don't think we saw one. We might have heard one, but yeah, I don't think there's a lot of marmots.
Katie
I assume the gear you took fishing-wise was nothing crazy. It sounds like anywhere between a four and a six weight is kind of like what would be appropriate there.
Shawn
Yeah, so John and Tom brought, I think they brought their six weights just because of, you know, potential of catching big tigers, which they did. I actually brought a four weight, which was a rod that John had just built for me, a fiberglass. So it was fairly stiff. I thought that would be fine. And it was. And then I brought a Tenkara rod for the stream. And I brought the wrong Tenkara rod. It was way overpowering the fish that were in at least the section of stream where we were fishing. I think the fish are bigger. We fished kind of the upper two thirds or so. of the stream. And so they were all cutthroats, beautiful cutthroats, but they were all pretty small. But we did get into some larger ones. And below this big waterfall, there were some bigger fish, I think, downstream. And there's five miles of untouched river.
Katie
Is it like meandery mountain meadow or is it more like cascade-y?
Shawn
Both. So the upper portion meanders a bit. and it's in willows. So, you know, it's willows over your head. So you're in the water or tromping through willows. The bottom section is a bit more riffly and, you know, pocket water, rocky. And there's some steep gradients, you know, where it drops. It's, I mean, it's beautiful, but it's for several miles is really not close to the trail. So you can't just step off the tray and fish it. And where you can see it, you know, it's 60, 80 feet down a pretty steep embankment just to get to it or through a bunch of deadfall. So I don't think it gets fished much.
Katie
Like I said, we never saw anybody fish it. Do you think this drainage is pretty representative of the rest of the Uintas? Based on when you were looking for a place to go, if you were looking at multiple drainages, did this look like a pretty representative drainage for the area?
Shawn
I think on the north side, I think it's one of the longer drainages. I think the drainages on the south maybe are a little shorter and not as many lakes. But, you know, it's probably fairly representative of the mountain range.
Katie
Regarding Jon's six weight, is it you or Jon who swears by the six weight? It's Jon, right?
Shawn
It must be him.
Katie
There's one, and I think it's Jon, who doesn't fish anything but a six weight.
Shawn
Yeah, he does. He only fishes a six weight because he's afraid of losing the fish or being overpowered by the fish. But after he built my four weight, he said, I'm going to build myself a four weight. And he used that four weight that he built for me. I let him fish with it for a while. And it was amazing in the wind. I couldn't believe it outperformed my other four weight just because it's a stiffer rod, so faster action. And it cut through the wind really well because it is pretty windy up there.
Katie
I have started using a six weight more, less because I am convinced by John's logic and more because my six weight is a four piece and my five weight is a two piece and I've never bothered to replace that five weight. So now I just use a six weight, but I do like it. It does cut through the wind nicely. Oh, yeah. But I often take, so I've got a very light three weight rod, really like a seven foot three weight for like perfect for a little willow water. I've got the six weight. And if I go to a place that has like big water and this little like willow water, I'll take both and going from the three weight to the six weight is really really jarring yeah because like once you're used to a little like feels like you're flicking a toothpick around yeah and then you pick up the six weight and it feels like you're casting like a tarpon rod yeah even though it's it's like barely you know stronger than a five weight it's a big big difference it's hard between the four and the six
Shawn
yeah it's it takes a lot more effort to well especially if you're fighting the wind it's it's much better to have a six weight than a four but I was I was shocked I did not expect the four weight to do as well as it did. So his four weights are good.
Katie
Yeah. Shout out to Yellowfin again. Shout out to Yellowfin again. I'm building a two weight right now.
Shawn
Oh, are you?
Katie
Yeah. A glass two weight. We'll see. I think it's like six feet long. It's like bordering on like a children's rod.
Shawn
Nice. I have a two weight, but I hardly ever use it.
Katie
Yeah. I don't know when I'll use this, but I'm building a rod for Mike for Christmas. So while I was at Jon's place, I was like, yeah, let's throw in a fun project for me.
Shawn
Yeah. Well, they're perfect for small, you know, little streams and beaver ponds. Yeah. Because you don't need to cast very far. That's exactly what it's for. And you want something that's short because you do have willows all over the place typically.
Katie
Yeah, like the shorter the better. Yeah. At some point, I'm going to be casting like a reel with like a stub on the end.
Shawn
Yeah.
Katie
Just to get it out past the willows.
Shawn
Well, that's where I made my mistake when I brought the wrong tenkara rod. Is it like 13 feet long or something? 12 foot rod and you know it's a very small stream and I was like ah dang I wish I had my 10 foot tenkara rod instead
Katie
you gotta stand like a mile back from the stream
Shawn
and it was just it was just it was like you know casting a six weight when I should have been casting a two weight you know that kind of thing so it was way overpowering and it was way more rod than I needed
Katie
fortunately you know they don't take up much room so it doesn't matter too much any notable non-fishing related gear that is worth mentioning like every time we talk I like to just check like any anything you tried out and learned or was it a pretty standard, you take all your normal stuff?
Shawn
it was a pretty standard trip to be honest I don't think we had any I didn't have any new equipment my pack was super heavy I haven't had I haven't done an eight day trip in a really long time but food yeah eight days of food was crazy yeah my pack weighed 61 pounds going in which is way too heavy and john and tom's were like 58 and 59 something like that and I think my food weighed 12 pounds so a little under two pounds a day yeah so it was yeah it was heavy
Katie
yeah for for elk coming up we've we're going for 10 days and I think we've decided that we are going to come out and get food halfway through the trip to not bother carrying because we could be in there for one day I'm not going to count on that yeah it's probably gonna be closer to the 10 days but you know to carry 10 days worth of food in there and then like you can tag out on day two and then you're like now I have to carry all this stuff back out so I think we decided it's you know that not the end of the world it's not a grueling hike out that someone and by someone I mean mike is just going to suck it up and hike out and get some food. He can restock some toilet paper. I don't know. Maybe visit the vault toilet while he's out there and treat himself. But that's a good idea. Yeah. You can't really do that as easily when you're seven miles in and staying in there.
Shawn
But yeah, we did. We did. I should say we, Jon, packed in steaks for the first night.
Katie
Well, that's your, there's your problem with your pack. I wasn't carrying it. He was carrying them and he was carrying beer too. I was going to say, did you bring alcohol?
Shawn
He brought beer. Yeah. I didn't bring any beer I was going to, but when I weighed my pack, I was like, nope, I'm not putting beer in there.
Katie
Does Jon know that steak and beer are not the best backpacking foods?
Shawn
Well, yeah. It was only two beers. I don't know. But yeah, we always For three of you? Maybe it was three. And they were big, tall coolers. I didn't drink any because I didn't carry them. So I didn't feel like I should be drinking a beer that he carried in. So I didn't. But it's a tradition for whenever the three of us go. He always gets, you know, little fillet steaks, bacon wrapped, and freezes them solid. And peppers and onions or peppers and mushrooms and saute them up. And that's our first night.
Katie
Man, I got to start backpacking with Jon.
Shawn
I know.
Katie
All I eat is dehydrated meals.
Shawn
Yeah, we always eat pretty well. And we only caught fish to eat one night, surprisingly.
Katie
Tigers or what did you eat?
Shawn
No, brook trout.
Katie
I was going to ask, I've never met anyone who's eaten a tiger. I was curious what the meat's like.
Shawn
I haven't kept one either and eaten it, so I have no idea. But, I mean, it's a browner brook trout, so it's probably good. But, yeah, the brook trout was good. But it just, water was a little bit of a challenge just because the, you know, it had been really rainy. And so the water was not super clear coming into this little lake. And there was one tiny little stream that we had to walk ways to get to or use the outlet stream. So the lake that was above us on the opposite side of where we came into it, the inlet was much cleaner. So we actually, I think, three times filtered water there and carried it all the way back to camp, which was about three quarters of a mile.
Katie
That says something about the need for it.
Shawn
Yeah. So yeah, water was a little bit of a challenge, but we did okay. It clogs up your filters when it's silty like that or full of stuff. I don't think we had any, I don't think we used any new equipment.
Katie
Do you guys share a shelter?
Shawn
So I typically, Jon and Tom typically stay in a tent together and they have a, John's got one that's a three person, which is, it's more like a two and a half person.
Katie
They're all like that. They're all half a person, less than what you'd say.
Shawn
Yeah, half a person. And then I pack my own. So that's another reason why I have, you know, heavy pack because I have to carry my own tent. But I have a one man, Big Agnes that only weighs like three and a half pounds. So it's pretty light. Might be less than that. Might be closer to three. So, and then we have a rain tarp that we always bring. Fortunately, we only had to use it once. So we had a couple of, the odd thing about, and it only happened once or twice on this trip, but it was almost a daily occurrence on my first trip. The weather in Uintas was very different from Colorado. Colorado, you wake up, it's sunny, it's clear. And by noon, one, two o'clock, whatever, you know, you have a thunderstorm and it's done by four or five. And there, some of the rainstorms are coming in, literally in the middle of the night, and it's raining at six in the morning. And so you get up and it's cloudy and it's nasty and then it clears up by noon. So it's almost just the opposite.
Katie
This sounds really familiar. And I'm not sure if somebody else told me this about Utah or if it was somewhere else that it was like common to wake up to rain. Yeah. I can't remember who mentioned it or where they were talking about. But I remember thinking like, oh, that would be odd. I wouldn't know what to do. Like, because if I woke up in Colorado and it was raining, I'd be like, it's going to rain all day. Yeah, exactly. It's just a rainy day. Yeah. That's just what's happening now.
Shawn
And the first time that I went, that's what happened. I was like, ah, it's going to, you know, if it's raining at six, it's going to be a crappy rainy day. Yeah. But it cleared up by noon and you get a beautiful afternoon.
Katie
That's good to know. Because I feel like if somebody else, if somebody in my position went out there and did that, I think I'd also wake up and be like, well, I guess we're not fishing today. It's just going to be a crappy day all around.
Shawn
So because one of the days, one of the days we woke up, you know, it started raining at like 6 30 or so but it was a short rainstorm and then we had some really late ones that were you know 10 11 o'clock at night but we did it now we did have some more of that normal weather where we had some thunderstorms that rolled in late in the afternoon and and you know hit us pretty good but but yeah there was some strange rain time frames too that cleared up in the middle in the middle of the day so it's kind of unique
Katie
well is there anything we didn't cover I didn't ask about that's worth mentioning before you, I wanted to check in on your resources again before we wrap up, but is there anything else about the trip that is worth mentioning?
Shawn
Um, no, I mean, if, if you've, you know, I guess you don't typically think of Utah as being a place to go fish in mountain streams and lakes. You know, typically if somebody thinks of Utah, you're thinking of Moab and, you know, the desert and the canyons, but you know, it's a fantastic place and it's kind of off the radar, off the map from the main places that people go. So, you know, if you get a chance to check it out, do some research and go check it out because it's a pretty cool place, especially if you're looking for a place to catch tiger. I'd say that's probably one of the better places to go. I mean, I think there's other places in Wyoming, but Wyoming is probably better known for, you know, If you want to catch unique species, goldens in the Wind Rivers. But this place has definitely got a lot of tiger trout. And there's a few surprises. We were very surprised when we were catching. And we didn't catch a lot, but, you know, 18 to 20 plus tigers.
Katie
Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fun. The place I've caught tigers, they were all like 6 to 14 or so. And they look different when they're little. Like, I mean, most trout do. But when they were lit, when the very little ones I caught that were like six inches, they, it's like the vermiculations don't like connect to each other yet. And they're almost spotted. Yeah. And then it's like those kind of, you know, mesh together at some point and become that kind of pattern. Yeah.
Shawn
And these were very, the males at least, were beautifully colored. Just kind of a dark reddish orange color on the belly. And, you know, because I don't know if they would, both brook trout and browns are fall spawners. I mean, clearly these don't spawn because they can't, but maybe they change colors just because. Yeah. You know, that's in the genes.
Katie
Again, right in. If you're a tiger trout expert, do tiger trout have spawning colors despite not being able to spawn?
Shawn
Yeah, exactly. It makes sense. I mean, even though the gene is not there for them to propagate, maybe the gene is there for them to change colors.
Katie
Yeah, that's really interesting. Someone's got to know the answer to this.
Shawn
Someone probably knows the answer.
Katie
Well, what about the resources you brought? If someone's looking to fish Utah, it sounds like Utah has a pretty robust resource network to get you what you need.
Shawn
They do. So the Uintas, they claim to have more than 400 miles of streams to fish and about 1,000 lakes and ponds. And about half of those lakes are managed as a fishery. So if you go to dwrapps.utah.gov forward slash fishing, that is an incredible resource where you can drill down on any drainage. It'll name all the lakes, the streams, And there's a link on that page that you can download for that particular drainage that you're looking at all of the stocking history. And this particular drainage, and it's probably the same for the others, it went back from 2025 all the way back to 2002.
Katie
Wow.
Shawn
So it was a significant history of stocking, yeah.
Katie
Yeah, I feel like with Colorado, I find random reports here and there that you can dig into. And half the time I feel like I find one and then to find another one, I'm like trying to manipulate the URL where I'm like, okay, well, there's a 2025 in here. So if I change that to 2021, like I can't actually find a link to that, but I can mess with the URL and try to like guess what it would be to end up on a different report.
Shawn
I have done that.
Katie
But they don't make it that easy. There's the Atlas, but the Atlas is not very correct.
Shawn
I mean, this is very similar to the Atlas, but it's way better.
Katie
Okay. The Atlas, I've clicked on this off and been like, well, that's not what's in there.
Shawn
Yeah, that's not great. And, you know, this book is, I think it was published in 2000. How You Went to Fishing? Yeah, the How You Went to Fishing. The one that we said was by Jeffrey Brad and Kyle Probst, P-R-O-B-S-T. And I think it was first published in 2000. Yes, 2000. So it's 25 years old. So I did notice that what he, and he has some charts in here for every drainage. and there's a lot of information about whether it's good for camping, the size of the lake, what's stocked in the lake. And I noticed that the stocking reports from Division of Natural Resources was slightly different in certain lakes than what he had. So I'm sure they've changed up some of their stocking programs.
Katie
Yeah, books like that, I love books because they often go into a lot more detail than what you're going to find online, but they are a snapshot in time. Yeah, exactly. And it kind of makes it interesting, though, because you know that at one point what was in that book was accurate.
Shawn
Right.
Katie
But that does not mean that 25 years later it's accurate. But it's kind of nice to go and be like, well, there's probably fish here because it's in this fishing book. But there could not be or there could be a completely different species. And that way you don't know entirely how your trip's going to go. Like you get to go and find out how well it matches.
Shawn
And I always, all my books, for that reason, I've got things scribbled in there of updates. Wrong. Wrong. Or nope, didn't find that species, found this one.
Katie
That's a good tip. I've never gone in and like annotated my books with my update. I mean, I keep like online pins where I keep notes of like what I caught in there, but it would be good to go in and match those up with the book. So if I ever reference it and ask like, what was in there again? I don't just blindly trust.
Shawn
Well, I'm surprised that you haven't had anyone on that has fished. And you've talked about the, you went to the mountains just because you've had so many people on. So that kind of tells you how few people, I think, go there.
Katie
I've had a couple people from Utah who talked more broadly about cutthroats around Utah, like cut slam people. And I've got one coming back on again, actually pretty soon. And I'm actually curious to ask him how much he's fished in the Uintas specifically. But I've talked to people more broadly about Utah. I've never narrowed in on the Uintas. Yeah. But now that you've brought it up, I'll probably ask them.
Shawn
And I can't remember. I think there's five or six fairly major rivers that originate, one of them being the Bear River. And that is one of the cutthroat species is the Bear River cutthroat. And I think the Bear River is on the northwest side of the mountains. But don't quote me on that. But it does originate in the Uintas.
Katie
Yeah, I wonder if that species is available near where you were then.
Shawn
I don't know. Maybe.
Katie
Let's look at a map. I know the Utah Cut Slam has their maps of where all these are, the approved waters for where you can catch them. So it'd be interesting to see where the dividing line is between Colorado River and Bear River.
Shawn
Yeah, that would be interesting to see. I just assumed they were probably Colorado just because we were more on the eastern side of the mountain range.
Katie
Yeah, well, be sure to ask him about it and see if he has any experience in the Uintas. It sounds like a pretty cool place.
Shawn
Yeah, it is very cool.
Katie
Well, should we wrap it up?
Shawn
Let's wrap it up.
Katie
All right. Cheers again.
Shawn
Cheers again. Thanks again for having me.
Katie
Appreciate it.
Shawn
It's always fun.
Katie
Yep.
Shawn
Until next time.
Katie
All right. That's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes, you can find those on fishuntamed.com. You'll also find the contact link there if you want to reach out to me. And you can also find me on Instagram at fishuntamed. If you want to support the show, you can give it a follow on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. And if you'd like to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise, thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode.
Speaker 3
Take care, everybody. you
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