Fishin’ with the Boys at Strawberry
We arrive back to the Fruitland cabin after our afternoon of golf in Park City and dinner at The Hub in Heber. My brother, his two friends, and I have a late night cocktail before hitting the sheets so we can wake up early to get the boat on the water at Strawberry for a morning of good fishing. The night sky is dark and clear of clouds so I set up a time lapse to see what I may capture in the Milky Way universe above…..
I brew a pot of coffee for some of us, other crack open a Monster Energy drink as we slowly wake up and get the boat loaded with our poles and tackle. There is no wind, only high puffy white clouds to keep the temperatures down as we head down the highway to our favorite boat launch. Spirits are high as we head across the lake to my brother’s favorite spot to drop anchor and start fishing. Strawberry Lake has rainbow trout, Cut throat trout and Kokanee Salmon. The regulations though are kind of crazy, you can only keep cut throat trout that are smaller than 15 inches or larger than 22, but they are genetically modified to only grow between 16 and 21 inches. Kokanee Salmon you need to troll for, and my brother isn’t into to trolling on his boat. We have too many in our party anyway. So we fish for Rainbow’s, and throw back any small ones. The limit in Utah is four per person, so we hope to haul 20 fish in total, if luck is on our side.
We also put in some money and give away for First fish, biggest fish, and most fish caught the faster. I won first fish, much to my surprise. The fishing was hot this morning, and we pulled in and had our twenty fish in about three and a half hours. I also was the winner of catching a beautiful Cut throat, but of course I had to release it back into the water.
We get back to the Fruitland homestead, and one of us fillets the trout while the rest of us clean and prep the boat to be put back into the garage. We got done cleaning the boat early, so I was able to watch and learn as the trout were being filleted. So much easier and way less of a mess than the traditional method of gutting fish. I hope to try to fillet myself on our next fishing trip.
We brine and smoke most of the trout later that day after we get home, but I do have a few fillets that I pan fry for dinner. My first summer after retirement is off to a pretty epic start, although I suppose I should pace myself.
