TRAVELINGWITHTOOLS

I’ve made it to Wyoming after a somewhat leisurely drive across the Great Basin in 100 degree heat. I had been eying West Wendover, NV for the first night, about five and a half hours out of Reno. But as I approached one of my regular stops, Carlin Canyon on the Humboldt River, I thought about what it was going to be like on the baking-hot casino parking lot. It sounded awful, so I took the exit to park next to a river for the afternoon.

Turns out, that wasn’t all that pleasant either, and I ran the generator to get the AC going, had a beer, took a nap. Then waded out into the warm, knee deep water for a refresher.

I was surprised to see that the mormon crickets are still crawling around the canyon in sizeable numbers. Twice when I’ve been through here in June, they were swarming across the roads, leaving two gross bloody stripes in the wheel tracks. Last year, I drove up into Idaho from Elko, and the motorhome had so many smashed bugs stuck to the undercarriage, that it stank like roast meat for the whole summer. Yum.

This time I opted to drive straight across Utah and to stock up in Evanston, WY. I got a license and groceries at Walmart, gassed up, and filled the water tank at the Bear River State Park Visitors Center, which had a free dump station and potable water.

A little more than an hour away from Evanston, I setup at a free campground on Lake Viva Naughton. There were fish rising just below my site and almost nobody else around. There were huge chronomids flying about, so I tied on a beetle and a midge emerger and set about casting to the rising fish.

Turns out, they were some kind of chub, not trout, but hey, I caught fish at the first stop!

The next day broke with a thunderstorm rolling across the lake, so I had a lazy morning. When the sun came out midday, I fished some more and caught more chubs, with no signs of the big rainbows that are supposed to be here. Later I unloaded the bike and rode back into Kemmerer, as I’d forgotten to gas it up before loading in California.

The Ham’s Fork is supposed to be an excellent tailwater fishery below Viva Naughton, a bottom release dam letting out cold water, but it is a very short stretch until the Kemmerer Reservoir, which is a top-release dam. I stopped to scout a stretch of the stream below the second reservoir, and a temperature reading showed 70 degrees, too warm for catch and release fishing. So I never even put a fly in the water, instead looking under rocks to see what bugs might be active.

Not many, it turns out! I don’t think Ive ever seen so few bugs on a stream that is supposed to be a top notch water, but I did see crayfish just about every time I looked down by my feet.

Getting out of the water to walk back up the hill to my bike, I heard a surprisingly loud POP from my left knee as I climbed the bank. Oh shit. All I did was take a step!

It felt a bit sore, but it didn’t hobble me too badly. Getting on the bike the way I normally do, planting my left foot and swinging my right over the seat, seemed like a little bit of a risk, if the knee wanted to fold up on me. I stopped again to look at the stretch of water directly below the Viva Naughton damn, and saw that it was about a half mile walk down hill to reach the water from the end of the road. I certainly can’t submit my knee to that climb back up. Damn it.

I wanted to go look at the river above the reservoirs, at higher elevation. I’d pinned a possible riverside campsite that was 16 miles up the road, so off I went to see if it might be suitable for the RV. The road north of Viva Naughton turned to well maintained dirt that had recently been treated, but 16 miles is pretty far for me to risk shaking the motorhome apart on any dirt road. It’d have to be a magical camp site. The river was far across the valley from the road for most of the ride north, and mostly private ranch land as far as I could tell.

The county road narrowed at the National Forest boundary and I found my spot shortly after. It was, in fact, a magical spot. But the two track into it had a steep dip in it that I’m sure would high center my RV. It had a big fire ring, with a supply of wood that someone had left, and they’d carved steps in the stream bank to easily walk down into the water. I only had 15 or 20 minutes of sun left, but I made a few casts to fishy looking runs with hopper and a parachute mayfly, but no noses came up to them.

Here’s an overhead map of the area just inside the forest boundary, there are a bunch of good looking spots just north of here:

I rode back to base, stopping along the way to scout the road that parallels the top of the lake, and it was overrun with cows and their calves. The brush overhung the gravel track on either side, and a calf startled and jumped out of the bushes right in front of me! Fortunately, I was going 10 mph, because I’d expected it would happen.

When I reached the bridge that Ham’s Fork passes under before entering the lake, I found the northern stretch blocked off with barbed wire, so no walking upstream to fish. The downstream side was open, but had maybe a half mile of stream before entering the lake.

Yesterday I woke to considerably more pain in the knee, and now I’ve got it wrapped in a brace from one of my prior injuries. I guess I’ll just let it rest here through the weekend and see how I feel on Monday. My plan was to go north up to La Barge creek, one of the other well known streams in this part of Wyoming, maybe stopping to fish the Green River below Fontenelle reservoir. I had intended to wind my way to Jackson to fish the opening day on Flat Creek on August 1, but I may let that date sail past. There is a lot of good water between here and there.

Today has been gray and wet all day so far. The clouds seemed like they were about to part, and as I started to gear up to go cast into the lake, another wave came and dumped more rain. This spot has killer 4G through my antenna and hot spot, even though the phone has so little signal it can’t send a text… so guess I’ll keep researching the next water.