So I've done Wyoming Cutt Slam before, but never in one trip. So I decided to change that. Halfway through, I also decided that I wanted to take it even further. I wanted to catch each subspecies of Cutthroat out of at least two bodies of water.

I started off with the Bonneville's in a stream I hadn't fished before. Well, technically, I fished way upstream from here last year and caught nothing. In this stretch, the fishing was still fairly tough. I had a couple of refusals from some 12-14" fish, and did catch one little Bonneville:



Then I moved over to another stream that I caught some fish out of last year. This was a pretty small stream, so when I fished here last year I used my 3 weight and didn't bring a net. That worked really well for all of the 4" fish that I was catching. Last year I came upon a hole and threw a size 18 generic black dry fly up into a little seam and a fish immediately rose to it. This was not a 4" fish! He got me into fast current, and I couldn't chase him downstream fast enough. With the light rod I couldn't control him, and without a net he was nearly impossible to land. After what seemed like 30 seconds (but was probably only about 5-10), the fly pulled out.

So this year I very intentionally brought my 5 weight and net. And it's a good thing I did. When I got to the same hole where I lost the fish last year I threw a little dry fly through there about 4 or 5 times to no avail, so I tied on a size 8 black wooly bugger. The very first drift through there the line tightened up! Big fish! He got me out in the current, but this time I was prepared. I chased him about 3 holes downstream and finally got him into the net.

I obviously can't definitively say that he was the same fish (in my mind the fish I lost last year was bigger, but that may just be my fisherman's imagination - then again, keep reading...). Either way, I definitely felt redeemed.



But like I said, keep reading. Two holes later the same wooly bugger hooked into another big fish. This one didn't put up near the fight that the first one did, but I'm still very glad I had my 5 weight and a net. In 10 minutes I caught the biggest cutthroat of my life, twice.



The picture doesn't do this fish justice. It was late in the evening, and I had to use flash, but this fish was absolutely gorgeous. He was a much deeper color than even this picture shows. Not to mention, this was clearly an old fish. His jaw was actually starting to hook around and was just gnarly.

The next morning I headed up to a lake which holds pure-strain Bonneville Cutthroats. This fishing wasn't as good as it has been in the past, but it was still a blast.



I caught somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-15 fish, and I saw all but one of them before I cast to it. The only exception was when I cast to one fish, and another fish that I hadn't seen raced to the fly and got there first.



One of the traits that supposedly differentiates Bonneville's from other Cutthroats is a more deeply forked tail. So there you go...