Fishing Logan River
By Julie Lofgron
UTAH OUTDOORS, July 2002
JIM BRIDGER COMES TO mind as I try to answer the question of why beavers build dams, a query posed by my 9-year-old niece and 6-year-old nephew. We are examining one of the structures, a house of mud and chewed sticks that dam up Temple Creek in Logan Canyon. Did Bridger ever make it this far up the trail, I wonder, because apparently this beaver’s ancestors escaped his traps. The best answer I come up with is it’s just what beavers do. Pretty lame, and I start to doubt what those seven years of college education did for me; in all that discussion about poetry, such a basic question was never answered.
It’s not much farther up Temple Fork Trail that we meet a fly fisherman. He’s doing his best to lure in some fish from the swift and narrow waters of Temple Creek. We chat a bit about like has caught anything or not, the standard fisher-people conversation. He hasn’t. I assure him that they are in there, I’ve seen them before, especially in the beaver dams. But today the deeper dam waters are murky and the fish are sitting low with full bellies on the bottom, especially this late in the morning. They can be lured up, but It’s not going to happen with a fly. I assume he doesn’t want a quick lesson on the value of a Panther Martin No, 9, or the Blue Fox No. 6 spinner, either of which will get the fish to rise on such a day. Lure anglers and fly casters are from different schools of thought; I ascribe to both, so I keep the information to myself. He’s enthusiastic and I don’t want to discourage him. But I’ve fished this canyon’s waters enough to know that this trip will probably get him a lot of casting practice -- I"m highly skeptical that the big one will be part of his luck today.
There has been many a summer day over the past fen years while living away from Cache Valley that I daydreamed of driving the short 13 minutes into my home canyon, to traverse Logan’s river tor a few hours of nature’s hydro-therapy. I've moved home and this morning I'm finally enjoying the privilege again by hiking temple Fork Trail, breathing the clean air of the land and water. Just last week I fished the waters of the Logan River with my brother [my most reliable fishing partner).
The crisp mountain breeze gently floated out of the canyon mouth. It was a typical summer morning in Cache Valley, the sun rising over the eastern ridge of the Bear River Mountain range, warming the valley floor and slowly working its way into the canyon halls. Perfect. We had a few hours before any direct light would break over the craggy cliffs of Logan Canyon to wash away the shady spots on the waters. We had lust enough time to refill on some clean mountain air, wade and get in a fair amount of hopeful casting.
The marker to our river access point is a few miles past the Guinavah-Malibu campground. My brother entered here last year with Dad. We are looking for a dead tree stump on the right side of the road and the closed campsite after it, vague I realize, but not surprising given that it is marker founded by Dad. We were indoctrinated that the first rule in fishing is...to catch the fish. OK, that may sound a bit obvious, but the theory is if you're going to catch fish you need to be on a section of the river where everyone else is not, therefore access points are never easy to find, or access for that matter.
Just around the bend from "the stump" should be an overgrown dirt road that leads to a closed campsite, which should provide easy access to the river. We turn our noses up and drive by the public river access points: River Trainhead, 2nd Dam, Spring Hollow Campground, and everything in between. Not far past Wood Camp, and after slowing down for about the fifth dead stump, I start to realize that my brother’s memory has faded over the winter. We finally find what we think is "the stump,” and right after it is a road. Seems right it’s not as overgrown as I would imagine a closed campsite trail to be, and halfway down is a locked gate on which is posted a strong warning sign to stay out of private property. OK, wrong stump. But we are not deterred; we can hear and see the river just down the hillside. We park on the side of the road, suit up. It’s time for the bush-walk.
The bush-walk is a family joke, since it’s always par for the course when fishing with Dad. The bush-walk involves lots of burrs and high grasses, more often than not barbed-wire fences with rusty ”No trespassing” signs attached to them, and tangled thickets of branches that catch your fishing line as you duck and whack your way through. But this is all part of the ”catch the fish" strategy. It's certainly exciting it usually results in some repairs to the waders later on, but more than not you have no company on the river and there are always fish. The Logan River tries hard to protect itself, but we are determined and experienced bush-walkers, we’ve seen worse. Its steep brambles catch at out waders and poles. My line gets tangled three times as I’m getting slapped in the face from the branches whipping back at me from my brother’s lead. We come to the water’s edge and finally...we are in.
Well, my brother is in. The river is swift and higher than usual this morning so he gets in first to test out the waters. Up to his waist, he makes a few casts to the other side while trying to maintain some footing on the unseen rocks below. We are hardy anglers, but fighting the river at the risk of our lives isn’t in our definition of enjoyment. My brother knows when to take the river seriously and retreats. We are resigned: anything above 2nd dam is swift and deep. If we want to fish now, we have to access below, near the river trail and not tell Dad that we entered at a public access point that included weekend campers.
We drive right up to the banks of the river and simply enter the water, a new experience. We start working it, casting to the side banks under the brush, off to edges of the rapids, in deeper, slow-moving pools where the water aerated. Bam, bam. We pull out several 12- to 18-inch German brown plants. They are young and don’t yet know that a Panther Martin spinner isn't the breakfast they thought it would be. Pinching down the barbs, we release the fish we catch. I snag one in the eye and am forced to keep the 15-incher.
So much for obscure sections of the river. Maybe we don’t have to do a bush-walk to catch, and yet we don’t land any “big ones" either. They are in there somewhere, we just didn’t find them this time. But I've got all summer and into fall to walk this river.
Besides, I’m home.
