Price River

Price & Scofield

Scofield Reservoir, the Price River, Clear Creek all bring back a lot of childhood memories. Buckle in frequent Blog followers, here I go down memory lane. Come on, you’ve been down this road with me too many times to count. This is how I get you interested in today’s story, by starting off with childhood tales from a warped twisted memory of  me and a cousin catching “X” amount of huge fish getting home way too late—blah, blah, blah. Let’ just skip it and keep it about nowadays.

Johnny & I decided to hit the Price today because it’s one river that’s not that far away, adding to our Utah Rivers photo and film collection. I have decided my next book will be “Rivers of Utah.” I know it’s almost impossible to fish and photograph every river and stream in Utah, or to even capture all the rivers in their complete form.  What I want to do is capture all the major and even less known rivers in my home state; sort of a collection of “what I think” are worth perusing as a fly fisherman. 

My first book is a collection of some of my favorite shots of western rivers, with virtually no writing in it, except a page or two introduction.  With my book about Utah rivers, I am going to take a stab with the pen. This brings up the question of what do I want to say? What do I want to write about that I can look at and honestly say to myself “I would want to read that?” 

I am not interested in writing a technical fishing guide or a “list of favorite’s book,” or a geographic guide on how to get to each great river. I have no desire to take years fishing every river in the state to tell other people where to go and where not to go—figure that out for yourself! 

To me fishing is about the going out, the joy of being there, the pursuit and catching of the fish is more of a reward, or a by-product of the journey. For example we stopped at the dam at Scofield and walked down river. We were not sure it was the Price River, but going off everything I saw on a map it was. We got a mile or two down river, and saw a sign that said “Lower Fish Creek” which I found out when I got home was just the name of a road. It was pretty cold, below freezing when you were in the shade. Believe it or not, walking back was my favorite part of the day. It was so quiet and isolated. Johnny spotted a bald eagle perched on a pine tree. The bird was in the shade so you could not see for sure that it was a bald eagle, until it took flight and you could see the white head. We watched it soar until it went over the mountain range on the other side of the valley. Cutting through the wind and riding it searching the ground for something tasty to eat. I want to be reincarnated as a bald eagle.  Further down the road, we found a pile of deer bones; we looked closer at it, and decided it was an elk. The color of the remaining hair was too dark to be a deer, and the spinal cord was really big. Fishing was only a part of the day.

I probably should mention that neither one of us caught a fish; in fact we didn’t see a fish, or even get a bite. I didn’t even have a fake bite—completely skunked! So that could add to why walking  quietly on the road, watching eagles fly or looking at elk bones was the highlight of the day, who cares, as long as you’re enjoying yourself.

Another interest we both share, is acquiring a knowledge and understanding of the waterways in our state. I know some rivers inside and out, where their head water is, its source, where it flows to, if joins other rivers, confluence points... But I don’t know that information on most rivers—point in case The Price River, and the Spanish Fork.

So I had to find out, not a difficult task, it just requires looking closely at some maps and going on-line to find out more details of each river. We were both trying to reason out the complete path of the Price River, and which rivers feed the Spanish Fork River. 

Scrutinizing maps is harder than you think to find out this info. The problem is that they don’t go into enough detail to really trace them down, or the opposite, they show a great amount of detail, but it is a small section of river, and does not show end path or the confluence with a larger river or the rivers ending lake or reservoir.

Here’s what I found out about the Price: it starts at Scofield, and flows down to the Hwy 6 point where it splits up; heading toward Helper and Price, it keeps its name, until its confluence with The Green, called the Green until it meets up with the Colorado, Then the Colorado wins the name game. The Colorado is the source of water that fills Lake Powell.  The confusing part for me about the Price is the part of it that flows toward Spanish Fork, and I wondered does it feed the Spanish? Answer: no that tributary is called the White River, and it does not feed the Spanish. The rivers that make up the Spanish are Soldier Creek, a small river following Hwy 6 where it meets Thistle Creek just below the Hwy 89. Lower down a bit Diamond Fork adds its waters to the mix, making up The Spanish Fork, which eventually flows to Utah Lake—easy sleazy!

Finally I traced down the Huntington River back and forth, coming up with the lakes on the top of that mountain range. There about 6 or 7 water bodies’ total, but the major sources of water are The Huntington, Cleveland, Miller Flat and Electric Lake; which all flow toward the town of Huntington, the general Price direction. All this stuff makes sense, it’s not rocket science, but it can be confusing and it’s hard to have a big picture unless you take a little time to research it out.

What does this all mean? Who really cares about the source of the Price or Spanish Fork River? Plus anyone can go on line and find this information or look at a map.  It’s not just about knowing facts or data about a river; it’s about the combination of it all. It’s about the images of each river, it’s about the different seasons, it’s about looking at cool elk bones—it’s about the soaring eagle.