Double Thanks

The day after Thanksgiving, I guided two different groups on The Mid and had two completely different experiences, both of which were incredible.
In the morning, I went out with the Greendog brothers down by Legacy Bridge. These brothers are adroit nymphing specialists, but wanted to throw streamers today. Unfortunately, Brent took a spill into the current while trying to retrieve his fly from a log trout, putting ice water into the bottom of his waders. He was a good sport as he fought through the cold shivers of wet jeans the rest of the morning, and went on to catch some nice fish. Hats off to his stick-to-it-iveness.

A nice 18" rainbow took an egg-sucking leach in about 4" of water. The real adventure was landing this thing. He went straight into the current and downstream through a thicket of partially submerged branches. We weren't hopeful that we would keep him, but upon doing some river pruning by removing some logs, he was still on the line. I was doing the pruning, Scott was tracing the line to the fish, and Brent had the rod. This was teamwork at it's finest. I couldn't have landed such a wiley guy with just 2 hands; thanks to Brent and Scott for their help. As you can see below, he was even wiley while trying to take a picture of him!

We calmed him down after some rock flopping to the point that he finally obliged for a nice pose with me, before sending this hard-fought beauty back to his homewaters.

In the afternoon, I met up with Mark and Nate up near the dam. A cold front passed through, literally dropping the temperature by at least 15 degrees from the morning. Casting was tough in the cross wind, fingers were getting chilblains in the intermittent snow, and the fish seemed languid. Still, Mark managed to catch a couple of browns. With the ambient light so gorgeous in the later afternoon, I felt Mark was at least deserving of a picture showing his nice casting loops in the evening slant.

All in all, it was a fantastic way to give thanks on the beautiful Middle Provo in some volatile fall weather.