Over the Hills and Far Away

WOW! What a long day. i got an invite from colling the other day to hit some new water that was a bit of a drive. neither of us had fished it before and were both chomping at the bit to get to it. i had to meet him at 4am so i was up at 2:30 to get ready and on the road and morning sure comes early when you only get 3 hrs of sleep. it was a 5hr. drive to get there and for the most part the roads were good. the roads did get pretty shitty once we got to our peak altitude, still lots of snow and ice on them. once in the parking lot and geared up we hit the trail and headed for the mouth, stopping on occassion to fish a few tempting holes. the 4 mile hike through the canyon was extremely scenic with tall canyon walls, we found a spot that had where there were ancient pictographs on the walls. we finally made it to the mouth at about lunch time and just kind of relaxed for a few. as we got to the mouth we stumbled upon a group of bighorn sheep that were chowing on some grass. i was surprised that they let me get fairly close to snap a few pics. it was 12:30 when we packed our shit up to start fishing our way back up. at this time the stones started popping off, the caddis were buzzing around and shortly after that the mayflies were flying around. it was cool to see all these bugs flying around this early in the season, early to me anyway. with all the aerial action the fish were definately taking notice and some of the fish were reall starting to feed aggressively. colling threw on a golden ston dry and i rigged up a skwala dry, both produced pretty well, although the golden out performed my skwala. we skipped a lot of water on the way up since we still had 4 miles to get back up to the truck and then a 5hr. drive back. we finally made it back to the truck at 7pm and home at 12:30am. although the company was good and it was fun taking browns and rainbows on the surface, the 5hr. drive was not worth it to do as a day trip. if i head back another time i will definately will be staying over, it was just to much with that little of sleep.