KEMMERER, Wyo. — Follow the seemingly endless drive across the southwest Wyoming desert, past the fabled fisheries of the North Platte River, Flaming Gorge Reservoir and the Green River below Fontenelle Dam, and eventually you’ll encounter a trout stream that few had heard of 10 years ago and apparently have forgotten since.
On the right day, you might cross paths with a fellow who goes by the title of the Solitary Angler. If he tells you you’re in the wrong place, you’ve found the Hams Fork River.
The tailwater below Viva Naughton Reservoir is not the prettiest place you’ll ever fish, unless beauty is measured in the color of rainbows. The beauties that lie in this pocket-sized stream double as hook-bending beasts, willing to strike a dry fly with an aggressiveness worthy of their weight class. Then it’s time to practice your fish-playing skills, marveling at the number of fish longer than 20 inches and the seeming inability to catch one under 15 inches.
Afterward, Van Beacham, the Solitary Angler, might tell you how it reminds him of the good old days.
Those days stretch back roughly a decade, before the river running through the twin towns of Kemmerer and Diamondville first popped up on the unlikely radar of The Denver Post. Then Outdoors editor Charlie Meyers’ conversation with Joe Butler of The Gone Fishing Company went something like this:
“You’re not going to believe this place,” Butler declared with more than his usual breathless fervor. “This little stream out near the Utah line is loaded with big rainbow trout. Damndest place I ever saw. It’s called the Hams Fork River.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Just got back,” Butler panted. “My buddy and I caught more than 50 fish apiece every day. Best of all, the people tell me the dry fly-fishing in late summer is better yet.”
These days, the conversation goes like this:
“That story was kind of a double-edged sword. After he wrote that story, the place turned into a zoo,” Beacham said Sunday. “For the first year or two, every Coloradan with a fishing rod came up here. Now it’s all Salt Lakers and the fishing turned to crap. That’s the story there.”
It’s tough to tell if Beacham’s account is a case of cagey misdirection, guide’s perspective or simple demographic relativity coming out of a vast state with total population less than that of Denver proper. Clearly, crowds are not something the typical Wyoming cowboy is accustomed to, yet a Sunday-long survey of the Hams Fork’s most coveted quarter-mile yielded only a pair of spin-casters in Oklahoma Sooner attire.
“I heard about this place and thought I’d give it a try,” one said in the 20-minute window it took to land a fish and leave. Fewer than 10 others were spotted on the river’s lower reaches.
Fair enough, the fishing was relatively slow in that window, despite the unsettling slurping sounds and periodic emergence of broad tailfins in the largest pool. A decade ago, Butler had described the river “like the San Juan without all the people, like the Madison in Yellowstone Park when the fish actually bite.” Perhaps by now, those trout had become equally educated.
The word may be out on the Hams Fork, although much of the talk is of the river’s decline. Fishing pressure is a likely contributor, but the primary culprit is more likely drought. Lean snowpack and low water flows ensued in the five years after Meyers’ story, allowing weeds to grow along the riverbed that choked out many of the large fish the small stream had been known for.
In the five years since, however, increased snowfall and runoff appear to have brought the fishery back, culminating with record snows and a mighty runoff that only recently subsided.
“The fish have grown, and I’m certain a number of large fish washed over the dam this year,” Beacham said.
If you find yourself fishing with the Solitary Angler (575-776-5585), don’t be surprised if you find yourself somewhere in southwest Wyoming other than the Hams Fork.
“Thing is, the rest of southwest Wyoming is still a jewel that nobody knows about,” Beacham said. “There’s great fishing all around here if you’re willing to explore a little bit. . . . There are plenty of big fish and solitude, if you know how to find it.”
