Diamond Fork and the Rowley Stone

Last fall I had a lot of success fishing the Rowley Stone on all the rivers I fished that have giant stoneflies. I also caught a lot of fish on size 10 and 12 Rowley Stones imitating drake nymphs on rivers that don't have giant stones. Turns out, it works just as good in the spring.

Diamond Fork is full of a variety of large stoneflies like this salmonfly nymph. Heavy stonefly patterns make the trout go silly!

Pocket water and seams along fast moving (well oxygenated) water are full of stonefly nymphs and trout. We had a great time catching trout from these areas.
We slid down the canyon a few miles to target some larger browns and lucked out once again with the Rowley Stone.

Weber River Sow bugs

The Weber River is full of sow bugs and large trout. No kidding! Brad, Phil, and I fished the canyon section just above Ogden early Saturday morning, and the bite was on. Almost every fish was caught on sow bug patterns, and despite the warm spring day there were very few fish rising.

On most rivers that have cutts and browns I automatically assume the big fish to all be browns or the odd white fish. Man was I wrong today! This giant cutt ate a sow bug just minutes after the big brown pictured below had taken one. Both were caught in the same riffle.
You can tell this fish had a long winter... skinny but a fighter!

Provo River Midges

I love to fish the Lower Provo in the early spring. Its this time of year when I see beautiful trout rise to take almost invisible bugs from the surface. What I really love to see are those same beautiful trout rise to take my tiny imitations from the surface then barrel and roll when they feel the prick of their lip, similar to the way this rainbow did.
Kohler had some nice fish take his 6X for a ride.
Adult midges were everywhere, and we even saw a few blue-winged olives, no doubt some of the first of the year.

The dries were fun to fish, but it was the pupa dropper below a cluster pattern that really hammered the fish.