Exploring, Camping, and Fly Fishing Canyon Creek

Canyon creek is an amazing little gem within Arizona! It is located near Payson, in the Tonto National Forest just under the Mogollon Rim roughly 20 miles away from the town of Young. The scenery is filled with ponderosa pines, rocky mountains, creeks and all sorts of wild life.

I found this place by way of my good fishing buddy RC. We have gone on a few awesome little fishing trips now and always have a blast whether we catch fish or not. This trip to canyon creek was an awesome over nighter complete with camping, fishing and great food.

The trip started of course with a drive up Highway 260 east of Payson to get to the pull off.

The pull of from the main highway is near Willow Springs Lake, and goes south to Globe, AZ. I met with my friend RC in the morning in Payson and we drove out to the site together in separate cars. We had to first scope out the area and find out where we were going to fish, and camp.

My friend RC and me checking out the area and where we are going to walk to for optimal fishing.

We found the creek, it is small but promising, and we could see fish in the water darting around.

Once we scoped out the area, we needed to go find a campsite, and there was a prime one that we saw when we were driving in to the creek. It was on a little outcropping just off the road.

We got up early the next morning, made some bomb breakfast, packed up camp and headed out toward the creek again to get our fishing on.

This is at the start of the trail to the fishing hole.

We worked our way toward the water in hopes of catching a big one. This was sadly not the case. Apparently there is plenty of food in the water because we did not get any bites, they just continued to run away from us.

My buddy RC is very persistent and serious when it comes to fishing.

Even though we didn’t catch anything all day, we still had a good time, and the creek is a beautiful place just to be at, and explore around. It was still a good day.

Since our luck was not there today, we decided to hike back through this beautiful place and get back to our vehicles and move much further up the river in hopes of better luck. It was later in the day so we stopped and had lunch on the side of the dirt road.

Then it was back to fishing.

The last place we explored in the creek area.

RC and I never caught any fish on this trip but we had a good time exploring everything and the surroundings, as well as camping out, and just hanging out. Im stoked for our next fishing trip. Next up is back to Chevelon canyon.