Ham's Fork Wyoming

Ham’s Fork Wyoming

“Talk to me Goose, do you still want to go in the morning?” read my text to Colby, I was checking to see if he was still in to going fishing to Ham’s Fork the next day. “The weather report say it’s going to be 9 degrees, I’m in if you are Ice Man,” replied Colby—oh don’t ask me about the Top Gun reference it means nothing, it’s just fun to call people Goose.

I was really hoping that the weather would be a nice 60 degrees, and the fish would be starving and feeding like mad, but I would have been happy with upper 30s low 40’s I realize we are a couple weeks early, but I have heard it’s not uncommon to catch 20 inch brown, bows & cuts. The problem is that it’s just too hard for me to get all psyched up about a fishing trip, then change plans—or worse not go at all. I always say “it’s about going fishing, not catching.” However when we parked just below City Reservoir and the thermometer read negative 8 degrees below zero, just what was the Ice man thinking!

We geared up in the truck, with the heater cranked up—I figure get the core as hot as you can before you go out in 8 below. As you can imagine the eyelets were frozen after about 3 casts; I just stopped casting and stripping line in. As the day heated up, which it did to a balmy 30 maybe 31 so did the fishing, we both caught more than 50 Browns and Rainbows each, and the smallest one was at least 19 inches. I caught so many fish I got sick of catching. Okay maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, well actually a lot a bit. Instead of going after the bland and every day Brown & Rainbow we pursued the handsome and hardy Sucker Fish. You haven’t lived until you’ve hooked into one of these beauties!

I seriously doubt that’s how Colby looked at it when he realized the big fish on his line was not a trout, not even a white fish, but a sucker fish. He released it, and started fishing again and bang he hooked up again; lucky him another sucker fish. Fish after fish, the sucker fish and Colby were one. I too managed to land a few myself. “We came all the way up here just to catch Sucker Fish?” Colby asks in a flat sad voice. “And why not?” I ask, what’s really wrong with the sucker fish? Is it the sucker mouth? Well that could do it, because they do have disgusting mouths (see photo). But other than that, what’s really wrong with them?

Honestly I have to say that was the first time I have ever actually gone after the sucker fish on purpose. We’ll let me re-phrase that, we didn’t go after the sucker fish, it’s just this hole we had was awesome, we busted ice off from it and pushed huge sheets down river; then returned to it about fifteen minutes later. We were reeling in some really big fish, and although they may not be the greatest fighters in the world, they still throw down. Why leave fish to go find fish? Sucker fish or not.

After who knows how many hours, we headed back toward the truck, as fun as it was, I was starving, and ready to eat. We brought a little bbq’er and the brats were calling my name. We ran into another school of fish, by God it’s just hard to pass up fish. As luck had it, another school of Sucker fish. After dancing with some more of those highly prized fish, we somehow broke away to get lunch.

I end on this note: when I was a kid they called Carp a trash fish. Now if you are a fly fisherman and you go after Carp, you’re on the cool kid list. Well my friends if you hook into a big fat sucker, but leave without a smile on your face because it wasn’t the game fish you had it mind, who’s the sucker?