Baptism by Fire: Utah’s Strange Access Laws

I headed out to one of my favorite trout streams after dinner last night to fish the evening caddis fly hatch. I like this river for a number of reasons: it’s only a 10-15 minute drive away from my apartment, it’s loaded with decent sized brown trout who readily take dry flies, and the access is generally pretty good (more on that later)
 
 
One bad thing about this stream is that it’s definitely not the path less fly fished and can be quite popular on a summer evening, especially when conditions are right for a hatch. All 3 of my favorite access spots were taken, so I was forced to try a spot downstream that I’d never been to before.
 
 

 
 
This spot was beautiful. Large boulders created a series of deep pools between rifles and some small waterfalls. Every now and then you’d find a calm surfaced run where trout could be seen leaping into midair after the hatching insects. It didn’t take long until I hooked into my first trout of the evening; a small brown that fell for my dry fly caddis imitation.
 
 
I continued my way upstream until I found one of the aforementioned runs. I spotted a rising trout directly ahead of me and hooked him on my second cast through his feeding lane. This one was a bit above average for the stream and gave me a real nice fight. Eventually I had him in my net and took a series of pics before releasing.
 
 

 
 
Just shortly upstream of this run by about 25 yards, I spotted an orange sign placed in the middle of the stream that read, “Private Property: No Hunting”. Being used to Wisconsin law, which simply states as long as your feet are wet you can access any part of any waterway in the state, I assumed the same rule applied nationally. I didn’t think anything of it and began fishing a nice run.
 
 
A few minutes later I’m startled by a man yelling at me from his back porch, beer in hand. I’ll censor the following conversation, but trust me that obscenities were thrown at me with high frequency.
 
 
“You really couldn’t find a better spot to fish than my backyard could you?”
 
 
“Excuse me?”
 
 
“You’re trespassing on my property and I could call the cops on you right now.”
 
 
“Sir this is a public stream owned by the state. You don’t own the entire waterway, you’d really call the cops on a college kid fly fishing behind your house? C’mon man. I’m just trying to enjoy a nice evening out here.”
 
 
“Yeah I would, this is my property and you’ll get out now or I’m calling the law. Idiot.”
 
 
And with that he slammed his back door and I waded my way back downstream to the car. An abrupt end to an otherwise enjoyable fishing trip.
 
 
I did some research when I got home and found out two things:
 
1. I was WRONG
 
2. Utah has some messed up laws
 
 
The law states that anyone who owns stream side property also owns the corresponding stream bed. If they choose to post their property, you are illegally trespassing while wading within the property borders. Because they don’t own the water, one must use a canoe to bypass these areas and can not make contact with the stream bed other than “incidental touching”…
 
 
This whole regulation confuses me. A stream is more than merely just the water it contains. The ownership of both the stream bed and the water should undoubtedly belong to the public interest.
 
 
Luckily, there are people in Utah fighting the good fight. The Utah Stream Access Coalition was formed with the mission to “promote and assist in all aspects of securing and maintaining public access to, and use of, Utah’s public waters and streambeds.” As anglers in this country we enjoy many freedoms that we take for granted, one of them being public stream access and the right to explore and wade these waterways. But, as I was witness to last night, these rights can just as easily be stripped away. It’s up to us as an angling community to stand strong on protecting these natural freedoms that rightly belong to the common man.