Red Creek (Paragonah) Reservoir

Red Creek (Paragonah) Reservoir in the Early Fall

Looking southeast on the reservoir, the Fish Taco truck is evident to the left, while Luis oaring his new Outcast Fish Cat Cruzer float tube is seen on the right. Note the remaining burned timber in the high mountains above Luis.

This was my third trip to Red Creek Reservoir (a.k.a. Paragonah Reservoir), and my friend Luis’s first trip. Previous trips to Red Creek were in July 2009 and August 2017, so it has been eight years since I have fished this water. It seems to be one of Utah’s lesser known reservoirs. Perhaps that’s because it is 30 miles east of the town of Paragonah, which is on I-15 about halfway between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, which is to say that there are more popular waters to fish closer to Las Vegas and Salt Lake. No matter why, weekday trips to Paragonah seem to provide pleasant solitude. On this trip we only witnessed one man, in a Toyota 4Runner, and he seemed to be inspecting the reservoir; he was not fishing.

Red Creek Reservoir, Utah’s Dixie National Forest

Enjoying the early morning shadows on road to Red Creek Reservoir, near Paragonah, UT.

As a birthday gift to myself, I took a day off from work to make a fishing day trip. Although I have Fridays off, fishing on Friday is becoming much like fishing on Saturday used to look like. The 4/10 workweeks are more common now, and lots of others seeking more solitude start their weekend excursion on Friday. So, by exercising my birthday holiday on Thursday I got a jump on other enterprising anglers. On top of that, Mother Nature was running her summer monsoon routine and Thursday was forecast to be partly cloudy in the mountains of southern Utah, while the days surrounding Thursday were forecast with thunderstorms. It isn’t good to be waiving chrome-tipped fly rods in a lightning storm.

Red Creek and Panguitch Reservoirs – Southern Utah

My son, Brian, and I had been discussing a short weekend fishing trip. The Vegas heat had arrived and I thought it was time to retreat into Utah’s high mountain country and escape the sweltering temperatures for a day or two. Besides, we had solicited my youngest son, Evan, to come with us. Since Evan had never fished before I had planned to spend the trip teaching him.