Bonneville Fly Fishers and HCFF River Fishers enjoyed a combined outing to fish the area around Beaver, UT on March 14th & 15th. A dozen fishers signed up for the trip initially, but forecasts of snow and freezing temperatures scared about half of us off. In the end, 6 people made an overnight (or multiple nights) trip out of it and one person day-tripped. The weather cooperated: we had beautiful sunny days on Friday and Saturday with temps near 40 degrees or higher; the crazy wind and blowing snow started Friday evening delivering several inches of snow by Saturday morning, only to have it all be over and gone by 9:30 a.m. for another beautiful day on the water.
We met on the Beaver River below the Minersville Dam on Friday morning about 10. We’d planned to gather here and then spread out for more room on the river. But the fishing was so good within a short walk of our starting point that we all fished this one pull-out all day. We tried a variety of flies from dry midges and blue wings to small nymphs. We fished 3 and 4 weight rods and several of us took the opportunity to use our Tenkara rods. We had really nice blue wing hatches. And we found plenty of rising fish that were willing to play. Most fish on this stretch of the Beaver are small ranging between 10 – 14”, but several people tangled with fishes 15-18”. One newish river fisherman told me that this was his best day on a river yet.
On Saturday morning, we tried the Beaver River above town, where there was lots of snow and ice and plows on the road. We fished there for a few hours, but only found fishes in one short stretch. So we had lunch and returned to the Beaver below the dam for another afternoon of good fishing there.