Panguitch Lake

Just got back from our first annual Panguitch Lake trip.  With a $50/night lodging fee and a short 7.5 hour drive to catch the diversity of quality fish we caught, this will surely be one of our best non guided trips every year.  Guests Ron Gonzalez and Buddy Edson both caught the biggest trout of thier lives.  I wish I had better photos of our trip but because of bad weather and a little bit of laziness I missed a lot of opportunities.  I managed to get a few…mostly of Daryl who was definitely on his “A”game this trip.  He caught big fish every day…..the BUM.   Here are a few shots.

This is Ron Gonzalez with a 21″ 3 lb. Bear Lake cutthroat. As you can probably tell, Ron had a bit of a struggle keeping this fish in the net.  I think next year his net will be considerably bigger.

We caught lots of 3-31/2 lb rainbows, numerous 4 lbr’s and a fattie that went over 4 plus Daryl’s big fish of 5 1/2 lbs.  Lots of 19″-22″ Bear lake cutt’s were landed.  Between us we landed 9 Tiger trout which is just about unheard of there.  Many locals have never caught one on a fly yet.  We averaged 15-25 fish a day and your arms felt like it too.   The rainbows fought as hard and jumped as good as any rainbow I have ever caught including the Kamloops in B.C.  95% were caught on simi’s tied up especially for Panguitch using an intermediate line.  With the weather being bad the Callibaetis came off mostly all day and this brought the big fish up shallow.  We simply casted to rises or kept our simi’s in the upper water column and they hammered them.  With the amount of food in this lake I can see it becoming one of the premier lakes in the West, surely one I plan on hitting a lot in the future.