When a hunter or fisherman considers the related costs of an outdoor adventure in a remote area far from home, it may behoove him not to cut corners. As with the effort to establish a food plot, for example, skipping an expensive application of fertilizer can render the entire effort a failure. Similarly, the adventure of a lifetime can also turn into a learning session that can only be useful on a future trip. Licenses, gear, travel, and accommodations can pile up fast and hiring a professional guide may seem to be too much to bear financially. A natural reaction may be to “wing it”, but unfamiliarity with a strange land can also add up to a recipe for an unfulfilling experiment.
Flaming Gorge Canyon
When time is limited (when is it not?), as is the case with working people on vacations, a professional guide can mean the difference between success and failure. A recent fly fishing trip for trout in northern Utah became a trip that will be replayed mentally for a lifetime because of my guide’s expertise.
Guide Lyle Waldron on Green River, Utah
The Flaming Gorge and Green River are known for breathtaking beauty and native brown, rainbow, and cutbow (cross between cutthroat and rainbow) trout. Artificial lures and spin casting rigs are frowned upon; fly rods and dry flies are in order. When senior guide Lyle Waldron took one look at my fly rod, he remarked that my choice of rod “would beat me up.” It was a bit short in length and without hesitation, borrowed a longer rod from fellow guide, Kevin.
Lyle tying yellow Sally fly
Lyle, as it turned out, had been guiding drift boat trips on the Green River for some 25 years and when he learned of my inexperience in the art of fly fishing, he shifted into teaching mode. As soon as we got in the water, he demonstrated various techniques that would prove helpful the entire day. He was in no hurry to get down the magnificent waterway, but to my delight, we finally began the trek downstream. His ability to operate the oars seemed effortless, as he expertly positioned us for attack. “See where my oar is pointing?” he’d ask. “Over there beyond the nervous water in the eddy. “Beautiful!” he’d remark. But, when he’d finish with “That’ll fish!” it was time to relax and drift alongside the floating fly.
Typical brown trout caught and released
Lyle not only knew exactly where all the semi-hidden obstacles were just under the surface of the water, he cited their names and the names of boulders sitting prominently in the current after falling from elevated positions. And, best of all, he knew the names of the flies appearing out of nowhere on the water. After a shore lunch in a bit of shade at the water’s edge, Lyle was rigging a yellow Sally fly on the leader. He witnessed them hatching and figured it was worth a try.
Within minutes after our lunch break, three rainbow trout were tricked from the security of an eddy into the landing net. No novice would have done that!
Fish after fish that day, Lyle landed them, removed the tiny hooks and carefully resuscitated them before release. Their very lives were in Lyle’s hands, as was my trout fishing trip of a lifetime.
