Its been a long time since Casey, my father, and I all did something together for any length of time - just the three of us. For the last couple of years, Casey and I have done a Rocky Mountain fishing trip here in Colorado and Wyoming. This year we thought it would be fun if Dad came along too. We decided to head back up to Grey Reef in Wyoming and float the river for 2 days. This turned out to be quite the trip. It turns out that all of us do a bit of photography. These pictures are from my father. Nice work Dad!
Casey and Dad flew in late Thursday afternoon and we drove strait from the Denver Airport up to Casper Wyoming. We had a interesting stop for dinner at Arby's on the way up. It turned out that they were having a "Super Roast Beef" sandwich sale where you could get a large roast beef sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and some kind of sauce on it cheaper than you can get the plane Large roast beef sandwich. So, we all ordered the special and told the lady to hold all the extra stuff. We just wanted meat and bread. Well it turns out that she couldn't do that. If you wanted the special at the special price, you had to get it with all the extra crap on it. So once we ordered, I yelled back at the guys making the sandwiches and told them that it would be OK if the left all the extra stuff off of my sandwich, but then the lady taking our order had to inform me that if they didn't put the extra stuff on, she was going to have to charge me more money... So we got our sandwiches, and scrapped off all of the extra stuff, and went on our way. Yet another example of just how uncommon common sense really is.
After rigging up and heading out we fished the top hole right below the dam pretty hard and I managed to pull out this beautiful Cutbow on a hot head leech. The river was flowing pretty high at 2500 cfs (its usually somewhere between 500 and 1000) but it was certainly managable.
There is all kinds of wildlife on the river. We saw several deer, antelope, pelicans, wood ducks, hawks, muskrats, (or possibly otters... not sure) and several nice trout.
We all took turns rowing. Rowing the drift boat isn't as easy as it looks. Then add the wind and its even more difficult. Rowing the drift boat so that the anglers actually stand a chance of catching fish is more of an art form. I have to say though that we all did a pretty good job. But once you screw up, everyone lets you know and gives you plenty of "help".
Here is Dad's North Platte Rainbow. Nicely done!
After a long day on the river it was time to pack it up and head back to town for some dinner.
We got off the river a little early and decided to make the most of our stay in Casper. What is there to do in Casper after a day of fishing? Well there is always bowling and beer... 
Casey cleaned up only leaving a couple of pins standing the whole time...
After a couple of games we stopped by the batting cages. 15 minutes for $6.25. We all took turns. It was a blast. Dad did great, he never missed. Casey and I did pretty good too.
Its pretty easy to see that we are all golfers from these follow throughs!
Nice form Dad! (nice helmet too) After hitting the nice slow softballs for 15 mintes we all took a swing at the 80 mph baseballs. 4 balls each. You pretty much had to start swinging before the ball ever even left the thrower. I can proudly say that I was the only one to even get a piece of one!
Day 2
On the way to the river on the 2nd day I happened to mention to Kate that there wasn't any wind... I completely jinxed us. By the time we got to the river it was blowing pretty good. Over the next hour or two the wind picked up even more and the weather started rolling in. We all had to suit up for the oncomming monsoon. Fortunately, the weather eventually blew over and the fishing really picked up.
We never really got any good pictures of Casey's fish. He did get a few nice once and lost several on our first day. Here is the only picture we have of him with a fish. I'll guess you'll just have to take my word that he is really holding one in this picture...
We tried some different tactics on our 2nd day. We pulled over occasionally and dropped the anchor. With the flows up, the fish seemed to be holding in the slower water. We found a few nice ones around some of the small islands a bit further down on the river.
Here is another nice bow. These things fight like crazy!
Dad got into a couple more later that afternoon and gave him a good run for his money.
We finally got this one landed, like many of the fish we caught, it was a team effort to get them into the net.
Great fish Dad, nice work getting him in!
We had a wonderful trip to Wyoming and it was so much fun to get together and enjoy a couple of days on the water together. Hopefully we can do it again next year. Maybe we can all meet up in Montana...Great job on the photos dad!
