Cutty Country | 1/16/2019 and 1/21/2019

Wednesday, January 16th

Last Wednesday I was on my way to go snowboarding and had an hour to kill before the afternoon rate started. I decided to make the most of it so I made a pitstop and wanted to see if I could find some cutthroat in the mostly frozen stream that I had found a few cutties in before the winter cold came. Unfortunately in un-packing and re-packing my fishing gear from the day before I had left my fly boxes at home and only had the fly that was still on my rod, a 2/0 Fricks Fix.

The fly was a little ridiculous for the fishery but I was there and all geared up so I went with it.

To my surprise, it didn’t take long before a willing brookie shot out from under an ice shelf and smacked the oversized fix.

A little further upstream and then it happened, the first little cutthroat of 2019.

With my goal of finding a winter cutthroat accomplished I headed out to hit the slopes.

Tuesday, January 21st

After finding fishable water and willing fish I had to come back and check out more of the creek. I had done some research and found a large tract of national forest land that I could hike down into and fish. With the seemingly fluke success I had with the 2/0 fix I figured a smaller sized fix would work well so I tied up a few mini fixes. The fix size/weight combination that I had the most success with was a size 6 hook with a 7/32 brass dumbbell eye and lead wrapped body. I used my 11′ 3wt to be able to sit way back from the holes and hi-stick the fix deep into the holes and under the ice shelves. It worked pretty well…

It was awesome seeing the color variance in the different brookies and cutthroat. I do have to say though that I believe that not all of the cutthroat were of the same subspecies and 2 of them were most likely cutbows.