IF4 Fly Fishing Trip 2015

Mike and his boys and I went up north to the International Fly Fishing Film Festival - IF4 back in March. This year, the festival took place in Provo, Utah. For those who don't know, this film festival displays professional short fly fishing films from independent film makers. Most of them are quite good and very entertaining to watch. Films feature anglers in exotic locations and many species of fish. There are also a ton of giveaways at the Utah show. In 2014, we were not so lucky. We came home with just a few stickers. Fortunately, this year I won a pair of Smith ChromaPop sunglasses, (which I love-gear review to come!). Mike and his boys won hats, stickers, buffs and a Tacky Fly Fishing box. It was a fun night filled with amazing films and lots of prizes.  

The next day, Mike and I headed out to a couple fishing spots we were itching to try. The first was a lake known to hold monster tiger trout. It's well hidden and sits in a unique desert landscape. Knowing there were numerous scuds in the lake, we geared our rods up with scuds hoping for a scud buffet from the fish. Upon further viewing, I happened to notice that the cutthroats in the lake were nose diving straight into the weed beds trying to eat scuds. This was a thrill to watch. Never before have I seen anything like that.

Moss bed through my Smith ChromaPop's

Scud Confident, and hopeful to catch a big tiger, I cast out my line. It took a while but I did start to catch some fish. Not the big tigers, but the willing cutthroats. After fighting scud hungry cutts, we headed out to a nearby tailwater. This water was new to the both of us, and proved to be one that we will for sure come back to. With only a few hours of light left, we hurried to the stream. Upon arriving, we switched out our rods in favor of some meat chuckin' arsenals. I absolutely love fishing big streamers whenever I get the chance. Knowing there were big ravenous browns awaiting, we tied on tandem meat. We did pick up a few fish with streamers, however, due to the low water, we found that a double nymph rig out-produced our bushy, flashy streamers. As nighttime fell upon us though, the streamer bite picked up again.

After a rough, and quite uncomfortable night, due to the fact that we slept on an enormous air mattress stuffed into a tiny tent, we were eager to stretch out and battle big browns once again. With the rising sun warming our cold bodies, and shaking off the nighttime squeeze, we were off. It turned out to be another great day. One hole, in particular, produced at least six fish. All browns, all over seventeen inches. Yes, you could say it was the "perfect hole."  Every fish was taken on Mike's trusty muddy water worm pattern. This pattern is heavy, gets down deep, and irresistible. With sore wrists (due to fighting these fish on a 4wt), and a heightened ego, we called it a day 

 The video/slide show posted below will give you a glimpse of the greatness we had. It shows a few brief pictures of the first lake we fished, followed by this tailwater river. Sorry for the lack of quality. This video was shot on a point and shoot Canon, and edited on a stock editing program. Anyways, hope you enjoy, and tight-lines everyone.