A Summer in the USA - Brokedown in Utah

 We left off when our car broke down with a blown transmission and we had taken the bus to Salt Lake City to stay with some of Alex's relatives. I was fortunate to find some Weather Loach on the first night and soon met up with a local lifelister, Nick, who took me out for some hot spring fishing. Most of the catches ended up being hybrids but it was still a cool experience to find aquarium fish out in the desert.

Weather Loach

Hybrid African Cichlid

We didn't waste all our time waiting for the car repairs either, and made the best of it with some mini road trips between Alex's working days. The first was a run into western UT and then up to the Grand Tetons. More hot springs, beautiful views, and more fishing were all on the table! I also spent a day fishing with Matt Miller in Idaho where we caught an amazing number of Largescale Suckers and even a hyrbid Northern Pikeminnow x Chiselmouth, but no pure lifers.

Red Devil Cichlid

Utah Chub

Northern Pikeminnow x Chiselmouth

Largescale Sucker

Redbelly Tilapia

Melanochromis auratus

Shoshone Falls

Grand Tetons

Being stuck in Salt Lake City also meant we were a stone's throw away from one of my bucket list destinations: Bear Lake! A crazy unique place with no less than 4 endemic species; 3 coregonids and 1 sculpin. I knew the whitefish would be basically uncatchable, but the sculpin should have been close to shore this time of year. I noticed a bunch of juvenile trout so quickly caught one of those; a unique strain of the Bonneville Cutthroat Trout. After enough rock flipping, my dream sculpin popped up too! They were way smaller than I imagined.

Bear Lake Sculpin

Bear Lake Cutthroat Trout

There were also one more local species I really wanted to catch while in northern Utah: the Utah Sucker. I thought they might pop up while chasing other species but that never happened. After receiving a bit of intel from a local angler named Lucas, I set out to track them down. The first stream I tried was full of them, all in spawning mode. They weren't very focused on feeding but eventually I sealed the deal with this beauty.

Utah Sucker

Having exhausted the local species, we took some time to explore more of the state. Alex had more time off work so we rented a car and did the classic loop of national parks in southern Utah. My favourite part was the Zebra Slot Canyon which wasn't even part of any park! A SxS tour of the Hell's Revenge track in Moab was a highlight too.

Zion

Bryce Canyon

Zebra Slot Canyon

Arches

Canyonlands

After a few more days of exploring the parks, we finally got some good news: the car was fixed! We took the bus back down to Blanding and went on our way, $8000 poorer. At this point, we were running out of time and I needed to be in Los Angeles for a flight in just a few days. We'd need to cut out some fishing plans, but didn't want to miss some of the big sights like the Grand Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and Death Valley. We also took time for a quick night in Las Vegas and a visit to the Hoover Dam.

Grand Canyon

Death Valley

We were happy to have been able to see so much despite our mechanical troubles, and even made it to California with a couple days to spare. We spent some time on the ocean and I managed to squeeze in two more fishing spots for Tule Perch and Arroyo Chub. Both were very productive and it didn't take long to find the fish.

Tule Perch

Arroyo Chub

Fun fact: "arroyo" is Spanish for creek, so the Arroyo Chub is really just a Creek Chub. Eventually, it was time for me to head to the airport and fly back to Nunavut for work. From one very hot desert to one very cold desert.

Our route to LAX did take us by one final fishing spot and we did have an extra hour or so to try and make something happen. This urban pond had an iNat observation of Lowland Cichlid so I decided I could use my extra time to give it a try. I had to weed through dozens of Green Sunfish, but the cichlid did eventually pop up! Success!

Lowland Cichlid