10-8-17 Fishing Uinta Basin

Last week end we went elk hunting near Roosevelt. After working our asses off hiking the Uintas with nothing to show for it, we decided to do some exploring. Often times when I’m bored I browse Google Maps looking for new places to fish. There was a few lakes near Roosevelt that were on my bucket list so we went to try our luck. The first lake on my list was Bullock Reservoir. I’m really glad there is phone signal around the area. There is pretty much no street signs on the way there so GPS helped a ton. We came in from the northwest and drove around the dam. Bullock Reservoir was prettier than I thought it would be. The first thing we saw was an island with trees growing off of it. The dam had some weeds growing on it so we followed the dam around to find a better area to fish. As we drove around the lake the GPS and my phone map stopped showing the dirt roads, although there were several around the area. We were trying to find a spot with less weeds but the lake was basically surrounded with tall weeds.

As we drove around the reservoir I was surprised how big it was. From the dam you can’t really tell how much it opens up. We didn’t see a single person fishing, which is not surprising. If you had a canoe the reservoir would be a good place to fish. We decided to head over Cottonwood Reservoir which is about a mile to the east. We kept following the dirt road around Bullock hoping it would lead that direction but instead it ended up going to the river which empties out of Bullock and drains into Cottonwood. The river had a small rapid which was mixing the water with some green algae looking water. We didn’t fish the river long as it looked like Utah Lake on a bad summer day.

I wanted to keep following the dirt road to see if it ended up at cottonwood res. However the ball joint on my truck was badly broken from a Uintas trip a few weeks prior and was making a disturbing noise. So we turned back towards the dam in hopes of finding Cottonwood Reservoir Road. Of course there was no signs so we took the road towards Gusher then had to turn around again and try another road. The third time was a charm and we stumbled onto Cottonwood Reservoir right were the river empties in.

There was a ton of green algae looking gunk emptying into the reservoir. We tried to fish off the dam which appeared to deeper then the inlet. We fished for awhile with no luck. Although it was the middle of the day after a full moon so we didn’t expect the fishing to be hot. Here is a picture of the weird green gunk floating around.

We got tired of playing in the green sludge so we decided to hit another lake I had on my list. We headed to the city of Neola to check out Browns Draw Reservoir. This reservoir is surrounded by private property and is marked about every 3 feet letting people know they can’t hunt or trespass. When we came up to the road to turn into Browns Draw Reservoir I thought it was a private road. There was so many no trespassing signs that it made it appear like we couldn’t enter. Taking a closer look we figured it was only pertaining to the fenced in areas. So we headed down the road and into the reservoir. The first thing we noticed was the beautiful water fall across the lake splashing down into the lake.

The second thing we noticed was the wind blowing about 40 mph. This was a bummer because I really wanted to spend some more time at this reservoir. We couldn’t handle the wind so we ended up leaving. So typical fishing day for us driving all over the place spending half the time lost and catching zero fish. I loved every moment of it.