North of the slope

I was able to conjure a day off today since i worked this past saturday so i decided i would head out by 6am and fish some new waters.the plan was to hit the smith's fork river on the north slope and maybe depending on fishing cruise further west and hit the black's fork. made the drive past evanston and dropped down back into utah. on the way i came acrossed a nice looking stream (gilbert creek) stopped at a couple of good looking holes but no fish to be seen. i opted to fish the west fork of the smith's fork first but had trouble finding any good looking water as it was really low. the few good holes that i found produced nada, i did manage to at least see 2 fish in the 10" range anyway. got back in the jeep and backtracked a few miles to check out the east fork of the same river. it was much bigger and flip flopped between meadowie spring creek looking to typical mountain stream with riffles and pockets. only 1 small brookie taken. next to the meadows was G-34 lake and as i neared it i saw 2 moose standing knee deep eating the vegetation that lie beneath the surface. they meandered off and i rigged up one of my rods with a woolley bugger. again, only 1 small brookie to hand. well with the fishing so far being crap i consulted the Uinta Lakes West map and saw that china lake held brookies, cutts and grayling. one of my goals this summer was to catch my first grayling and since i was close to the lake i figured i would search it out and see if i could fulfill my quest. china lake is not a really big lake but it is no pond either and the fact that the water level was pretty low made it even smaller. my first cast landed me a nice little brookie of about 12 inches and thought, this is gonna be killer. i worked my way around to the very backside of the lake without so much as a strike. first cast fish must of been a curse, kind of like getting abirdie on the first hole (golf), it's the kiss of death.when i got to the backside i finally started to get into fish but since i don't fish lakes much i haven't gotten a feel for the proper hook set yet. i tend to raise the rod tip up right away which has resulted in a lot of missed fish for me. once i talked myself into pulling my strip hand back when a fish hit then i started landing the fish. at the far end of the lake is where i caught my first grayling, a nice fish the looked about 13", i was more then pleased. i then started working my way down the other side of the lake where i landed, in my eyes, a couple of really nice brooks and a couple more smaller grayling. i really enjoyed thelake and would like to head back to it armed with more then just a floating line and 4 streamers. the road that i was on merged with mirror lake highway so i headed west and checked a small section of the east fork black's fork to see if i could pull anything out of there. fished it for an hour and took 1 small brookie and 2 little cutts. 7:30 and it was time for the long ride home. by the way that road was by far the worst i have ever driven on. i'm surprised my jeep didn't fall apart.