This was my second Illipah trip, having quickly fished this reservoir four years ago with sons Doug and Tom, at which time I landed one single rainbow through the thick weeds of the warm summer. On this 2004 trip the late spring weather found the trout feeding in much sparser weeds along the banks. The high temperatures were around seventy, and the lows were in mid thirties, although I lodged overnight at the Best Western in Ely. Although Illipah Reservoir is 6,700 feet in elevation, I found the sparse high-desert flora too monotonous for camping, especially since Ely was just forty miles to the east.
Continue reading “Illipah Reservoir, White Pine County”