Wow, what another great trip to start off the year. This time (as the title says) it was Fishing at Flaming Gorge. I had never been to Flaming Gorge so this was a new experience for me.
This trip began last fall when I was making a website at work for a company called Conquest Expeditions. After completing the website, one of the boat Captains (Kyle) invited my co-worker Pam and myself to come out to Flaming Gorge and he would take us out for some fishing on his fishing boat. We decided to take him up on that offer and we planned our trip for April. After much waiting, April finally rolled around and off we went. For this trip, I invited my sister Christina and her husband Cory to come along.
The trip started on Friday the 18th. I got off work a few hours early and flew up to Heber to pick up Christina and Cory. We loaded up the Landcruiser and with a printed out Google Map in hand with directions to Flaming Gorge (Manila), we were off! The drive wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. It probably helped to have some company on the drive. Cory slept about half the time as he was pretty wore out from working in Boise the following couple weeks. During that time, Christina and I had time to talk for a while which was nice. Once we started pulling down into the Manila area, I was amazed at how many deer there was. They were everywhere. It was pretty cool to see. Using Google Maps, we drove straight to the cabin (Lakeview Cabin Rentals) we were going to be staying at. We were supposed to meet Pam at the cabin when we arrived but when I pulled up, we didn’t see her car. We started heading back to town as I thought maybe she had gone to the Market to get food or something. We gave her a call and found out that she was at the cabin but that her husband, Darren, had gone to town so we turned around and headed back to the cabin. Once we arrived, we unloaded our stuff and just settled in, had some dinner and hungout for the rest of the night just talking, watching Jackass and then headed to bed early as we knew we were gonna have to be up VERY early.
At 3:30 am the following morning, alarms started going off. It was time to get up to head out for some fishing on the lake. As far as we had understood, we were supposed to meet our guide Kyle at 5:00am for an early start. We figured 3:30 would give us plenty of time to get ready and go meet up with him. We headed out and by the time we got to our meeting place, I realized that I had forgot my camera at the cabin! Kyle wasn’t there yet so we headed back to the cabin real fast and I ran in to grab it. They were quickly learning that my brain doesn’t work that early in the morning. I had my camera in hand so off we hurried back to our meeting spot which was a restaurant/bar just across the Wyoming border called The Hub I think. Anyway, we got back and saw that our guide still wasn’t there. Pam thought that maybe he had just headed up to the marina we were going out of so we hit the road for the marina which was probably a 20 minute drive from where we were. Probably 10 or 15 minutes up the road, we decided we should probably give him a call so we looked up his phone number and called him. We found out that he was still at home and that we weren’t supposed to meet til 6:30 am and that were were supposed to meet at the marina that is just outside of Manila (Lucerne Valley Marina). At about this same time, I had realized that I had left my fishing license at the marina yet again reminding everyone that I don’t do mornings. My brain was still asleep. We cruised back to the cabin so that I could grab my license and we just hung around for a few minutes and then headed out to the marina to meet up with Kyle at 6:30 am. Wow, what a morning and what a way to start the day.
We got to the marina and met up with Kyle (great guy by the way) who had just finished launching his boat. We loaded our cooler and ourselves on the boat, filled out a paper giving our fishing license numbers and off we went. I won’t really go into details about everything that happend out on the boat. I will tell you we had an amazing time. Kyle was a FANTASTIC guide. He took care of everything. When I say everything, I mean everything. Even after finishing a drink and crushing a can, there he was with his hand out to take my can to throw it away for me. What service. I was totally impressed in how he handled everything. He worked his butt off. He was driving the boat, putting out the bait, watching the pole tips for bites, changing boat speed, watching the depth finder, all at the same time while also talking with all of us. I was extremely impressed. We were out on the boat for probably 5 hours trying to specifically catch the big mama fish that are around this time of year. We are talking the 20-30 pound fish. The catches you remember forever. Unfortunately they are a little tougher to catch. By noon, we hadn’t pulled anything in. We had one get on the line and Cory pulled it all the way in to where you could start to see it in the water and then it got off. I think we had a couple other bites and another one that snapped the pole right in half which is unheard of. Unfortunately we hadn’t pulled anything in but that didn’t matter at all since we had such a great time out there. Catching something would have just been a bonus to the trip. Unfortunately there is always the chance of coming up with nothing when fishing. Can’t make them bite. 
Anyway, noon rolled around and we started back for shore.
Once we got off the lake, we thanked Kyle and headed back for the cabin. Once we got back, we soon discovered how tired we were and all of us CRASHED. We all (except Christina) slept for a couple hours. Once we all got up, we decided we wanted to do some more fishing so we headed back to Lucerne Valley Marina and did some shore fishing right at the boat launch area. There was plenty of good sized fish right there. We pulled out 3 good sized fish which you can see in the photos below. We had kept these fish thinking we could take them home but on our way out, we realized that nobody had brought a knife or anything for cleaning the fish so we ended up giving our catch to someone else that was fishing in the same area. After some fun fishing, we headed to go get some dinner. We went to some little diner and got there like 15 minutes before they closed. The lady came to take our order and ended up talking us into going to another restaurant which was for the better. We headed over to the restaurant for some burgers and just chilled a little bit. After dinner, we headed back to the cabin, hungout for a just a few minutes and then everyone started heading to bed one by one. I ended up staying up the latest watching Grandma’s Boy.
Throughout the night, the wind outside picked up a lot. The cabin was small enough and the wind was blowing hard enough that we could actually feel the cabin shaking from the wind. It was a weird feeling. Anyway, got up around 7:30 and just laid there for a little bit and then Cory and I headed down to the Lucerne Valley Marina again to do some more fishing. Unfortunately we got skunked. After some morning fishing, we headed back to the cabin, packed up all our stuff and headed for home. We weren’t that sad to leave as the wind was still blowing very hard. This made for a head wind all the way home back to Utah which kinda sucked. Even got a little bit of snow on the way home.
Overall this was another great trip. I had an amazing time just hanging out with everyone and also the fishing of course. Kyle was a fantastic guide and I hope to get to go back out with him on the lake again soon. If you are ever headed to Flaming Gorge for some fishing, be sure to go out with Kyle at Conquest Expeditions. You won’t regret it.
