"My good friend, fishing and travel partner, Scott Heywood, and I spent the weekend exploring some little known water on the west side of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. Anytime Scott and I get together, fishing or guiding clients, our time is sure to be filled with lots of laughs, inquisitive fishing insights, shared knowledge, photo sessions and memorable experiences! For many years now we've been exploring waters near and far and this weekend was no different. We started the trip fishing a secluded piece of water I recently discovered. We each began with one rod, but my five month old chocolate lab and guide dog in training, Finley, managed to break one of the rods almost immediately.
Not to worry though, we had a fabulous time taking turns fishing likely looking runs and sight fishing to rising browns that were feeding on a nice March Brown hatch.
What I had envisioned as a two hour excursion turned into five hours of fantastic fishing for 15-20" browns on this small meadow stream.
Afterwards, we made our way to Ten Sleep Brewing where we enjoyed a few deliciously cold Outlaw Amber while engaged in a heated battle of Jenga!
On Easter morning, we thought we were out of luck for coffee and breakfast. Just as our hopes dwindled we found a great cafe with friendly service, a hearty breakfast, good coffee and superb pastries. Fueled for our next adventure we headed out again. We drove to the mouth of a limestone canyon and after securing the necessary information and permission, we prepared rods, loaded our packs and grabbed our camera gear. The creek was small and holding water was initially very scarce. I was confident we would find fish, but we had to cover ground in this rugged canyon in search of the perfect pools.
Eventually, we found deep structured water that held one large, territorial brown per pool. The canyon walls were spectacular, rising high above the narrow creek with interesting, unusual formations, in vibrant reds, whites, tans, creams. I came upon a deep, rocky hole with overhead brush and thought to myself "if there's not one here then there aren't any in this canyon".
After a couple of well placed casts in the narrow pool my dry snapped under the surface as a healthy brown took my nymph. As I fought the brown, Scott made his way upstream to shoot some photos. A short while later I came upon Scott hooked up to another very nice brown who tugged his line under a large boulder on the far side of the emerald pool. Scott coerced the gorgeous brown out of the hole and into his hands for some quick photos before releasing it back to its home. We continued searching holes and leap frogging each other, catching a few more wild browns on large attractors and droppered nymphs before deciding to return to the truck for a late lunch and a beverage. After refueling our tired bodies, we finished with a brief trip in an upper meadow where we both hooked a couple of solid browns including a 20 inch plus brown on Scott's final cast that jumped twice and threw his hook! An exciting finish to a beautiful weekend with a great friend!"
