Throwing Pala's on the Provo River

Last Thursday Shifty invited me to join him on the Provo River and throw some Rapala's for shallow water browns. The Provo River is a revered flyfishing blue ribbon fishery. So when we go for the browns on the Provo I always crush my barbs down so it is quick and easy to release the fish. The Blue Ribbon designation puts a slot limit on the river of 15 inches to 22 inches released back to the water. I rarely if ever keep fish from the Provo so it makes sense to debarb the hooks.

Shifty and I met up at his place around 9 am loaded up and left for the river.  The Provo is in our backyard and only takes us a few minutes to get on it. We started fishing at about 9:30 after getting in our waders and all other warm clothing we could get on, yes it was chilly!  I stayed out of the water as much as possible so as not to disturb the river bottom and stay out of sight of the fish. Shifty, on the other hand, went directly to the middle of the river, he is used to nymphing the river so he rarely stays on the bank.  He started out with a brown pattern and fished upriver from me.

I started out with a Purpledescent. The river is in the low winter stages of flow and the grass was very thick in spots. Finding open rocks to bounce off of was tough. I fished the Purpledescent for a while but tired of it and moved to a ghost/pearl pattern and thru it for a while and got the same results, nothing but grass. I put on a brown pattern and thru it a few casts into some rolling and gulping fish and hooked up. The fish wasn't big by any means of the word and inside the slot. Pretty colors on the brown trout for this time of year. I landed it and got a few pictures with the aid of Shifty and released it quickly.

Shifty and I continued to move upriver trying different patterns.  The entire time I was wishing I had my dry fly set up and fishing for the rollers hitting the hatch. It was fun watching all the fish surfacing and gulping the midges that were on the surface. I would purposely watch one midge at a time to see if it would survive the float, some did and some fed the hungry fish from below. An incredible morning on the Provo River, not many fish in fact only the one was landed Shifty had a few hooked and lost them and I lost a couple as well.