Farewell Colorado, Frying Pan River, Basalt, Colorado

Date: July 13 - 15, 2012

Weather: Sunny with a few storms that moved in and out

Insect/Activity: Midges, small baetis hatch - very sporadic

Patterns Used: Blacktail Baetis, AB Tungsten Hare's Ear, Grey Midge, **Top Secret Pattern**

Flows: 170's

A Magnificently colored and spotted rainbow!

Farewell Colorado - we had a good 16 years! You will be greatly missed. On July 25th Michelle, Winston and I packed up the cars and began our journey across the country to make the Grand Rapids, MI are our new home. Having started a family, moving back closer to family has always been on our minds and we decided that this was the time to do it. 

Probably some of the best news is that I am now living 45 minutes away from Jay so you'll get to see a lot more posts with both the Allen Brothers in the photos, and we hope to start producing a lot more quality content in video format! Plus, we should be launching a new Allen Brothers website with our blog content rolled into the new site, so navigation, ordering flies and content should all get a lot more user friendly - but ... you didn't click on this blog to hear about website changes - so back to the Pan.

Ben Robb and I headed there for a combination birthday celebration and as a last hoorah! We had two full days on the river, with no thought of nap schedules, feedings or changing diapers! 

Ben with a great looking brown.

The fishing was superb! We were surprised to find not many folks on the river and we essentially fished the upper stretch just below the dam for both days. The flows were low, the water was clear and the fish were feeding. What more can you ask for? Midge was the most predominant insect, and we did a few seines throughout the weekend and never came up with any Mysis so I'm guessing it had been a while since they pumped any major water through the dam. Surprisingly, though, we caught almost all our fish on the Blacktail Baetis. I gave the size #24 grey midge with 7x tippet a try on a few finicky fish, but always returned to the Baetis for our success.

A few smaller fish came on the Hare's Ear, which was used as a point-fly (weight) occassionally, but most fish came on 7x with a micro-nymphing rig for maximium "stealth". 

NOTE: I have made NO modifications to the image color!!! Crazy!

Probably the fish of the trip was this rainbow. Arguably, the most beautiful rainbow I've ever caught, but it is hard to say when each fish has it's own beauty, merit and story behind the catching. This one was taken on a Blacktail Baetis, while sight-nymphing and fishing 7x. So, it's pretty hard to beat that story for pure joy, and a grin that splits across my face every time I think about it.

And then, there was the "flume" hole ... I'm not one for fishing deep water with tons of weight, but we showed up on Sunday morning at 7 AM with not a soul around  and we decided to fish right below the dam for an hour or so. I had a hunch on a pattern I wanted to try. I'm not one to keep secrets, but this is one I'm not willing to share - in the wrong hands, it could be used for ill and not good ;-) I tied on said secret pattern and spent the next 30 minutes watching my indicator shoot underwater with the ferocity of a midget out of a cannon at the circus. I have never hooked more 18" fish in my life with such ease and speed!

Flume hole cast #2 of the day.

Flume hole cast #6 of the day.

Flume hole, somewhere around cast #20 of the day! That is some crazy pigment on this fish!

The rest of the day was good fishing. Ben and I both had our best luck in the flats, sight-nymphing until about noon, then the high sun shut down most of the fish and we usually retreated to water a little further down the canyon for the afternoon. We even sucumbed to the "flume" hole once more on Sunday, mid-day, and didn't do as well, but were surprised to find most of our fish, again, taking the Blacktail Baetis over midge or mysis.

Throw in a breakfast at Cafe Bernard and some burgers and beers at night and you have yourself one fine weekend to remember Colorado by.

They call is a "morning bun". All I know is it's got a ridiculous amount of sugar and butter. You can get a "morning bun" at Starbucks, but it's not even in the same universe as this one. CRAZY GOOD!

No doubt, I'll be back for vacations, and to see friends, but for now I am turning my attention to consistent eastern hatches and looking forward to my first season of Steelhead and some Salmon fishing in Michigan.

Tight lines, see you out on the water :-)

-Jeff Allen

The food journey: Lunch in Buena Vista at K's Dairy Delite

The food journey: Breakfast at Cafe Bernard

The food journey: Breakfast Sunday morning ... in my car :-( It was stark juxtaposition to the rest of the fare we had that week.

Ben with another healthy rainbow.

Muskegon River, Newaygo, Michigan

Date: Saturday May 27, 2011

Weather: Sunny with a few storms that moved in and out

Insect/Activity: Few caddis in the air, few baetis emerging, Suckers spawning.

Patterns Used: Blacktail Baetis, AB Tungsten Hare's Ear, Sucker Spawn

Flows: 2000 (?)


This one's an oldie but goodie! In the rush of life I never posted this blog and just kept pushing it back in favor of posting more recent outings. Over a year ago now, I got out to Grand Rapids, MI on a business trip and added in a couple days to stay with Jay and fish the Mighty Mo (Muskegon River).

It was a surprising day - we started out really hoping for some good caddis activity, but it never really happened and nymphing in the morning was slow. Jay hooked up with one late season Steelhead on a green caddis pupa. Then the afternoon hit and things changed ...

We aren't sure if the fish just turned on, or if moving locations and changing tactics was the culprit, but as we moved up river the Suckers were a little more intense on their spawn beds so we switched to fishing a sucker spawn pattern and the rest of the day was about as epic of a fly fishing day as you can have!

We spent from 4 PM until 10 PM bringing in more fish that were feeding hard in the shallows on sucker spawn than I can count. A lot of them were good healthy fish, and naturally (as fish stories go) the biggest of them never made it to the boat. I'll let the photos tell the rest of the story.


Tight lines,


-Jeff

Family Vacation, South Holston River, Bristol, TN

Date: Sunday April 1 through Thursday April 5, 2012

Weather: Fantastic! Sunny with a few scattered rain showers, 70 - 80 degrees, NO WIND!

Insect/Activity: Sulphur mayflies were on the verge of hatching, scuds everywhere, midge and baetis were sparse, but effective patterns

Patterns Used: Blacktail PMD/Sulphur, AB Tungsten Pheasant Tail, Gammarus Scud, Olive Midge Pupa, Compara-dun Sulphur, Blacktail Baetis

Flows: Low (not sure what the river runs at with no generators, my guess is 150 CFS), Generators were on each day at 4 AM and 11 AM, each for one hour making for a perfect low water day with a nice break for lunch :-)

Michelle crossing the old iron bridge just upstream from our cabin.

Simply an AMAZING trip. The South Holston river is a tailwater in the northeast corner of Tennessee. Jay got turned on to it a few years back and ever since we have been visiting this place, and intend to make it a regular destination on our fly fishing calendar. It's fishes a lot like the White River and Norfork River in Arkansas, but the dam generation releases are much more predictable since, my understanding, is this dam is more for flood control than power generation.

One of the bigger browns from the week with FLAWLESS coloring!

As a brief overview, the river has an amazing bug and fish population, with natural spawning occurring (all the browns are wild I'm told), but one of the highlights of the river is a slot limit on fish. All fish between 16" and 22" must be returned to the water immediately and you can keep 7 fish under 16" and only 1 fish over 22". My hat is off to the Tennessee regulations department because that is a GREAT management practice! The only flaw, is poachers, and that will always be the case.

I took this shot from on of the best nymphing riffles.
It's looking across the river, back at the cabin's front yard.

As for the family aspect - PERFECT! We stayed at a cabin on the river and since this was our first trip with young Winston, it turned out ideal because we were able to hop down to the river and wet a line any time since it was only 35' away. Even better was the fact that the stretch of water in front of the cabin was excellent water. We had everything from long, slow, deep pools to shallow-wide riffles all within 200 yards of the cabin. Most of our days looked like me slipping out for morning fishing at 6:30 AM, then breakfast and back to the river for a couple of "day sessions" with a break for lunch and some family time playing in the yard near the river.

Winston, enjoying the river view.

Front porch

Winston meeting a new friend (yes, I got his hand wet before he touched it :-)

Chillin' out.

The fishing was nothing short of fantastic. The water was low the whole week, and the weather was unseasonably warm for April, which meant we were fishing in t-shirts most of the week. And, coming from a Colorado boy, there was NO WIND to speak of, which made me very happy!

Michelle, with a big brown. She was a very happy girl!

We were there just as the baetis were slowing down and the sulphur's  were ramping up. So we never hit a real strong sulphur hatch, but you could always find a few willing victims to rise to a compara-dun dry. The real champs of the week were (in this order) the Blacktail PMD/Sulphur and the Gammarus Scud and the AB Tungsten Pheasant Tail, but I would be remiss is I didn't mention that the Olive Midge Pupa and Blacktail Baetis didn't play their part in catching fish!

Another perfect brown.

The South Holston is really the best of both worlds - it's a technical, spring creek, fisherman's dream, but also a fantastic place for the beginner to catch fish. This is mostly due to the large fish population in both numbers and size. You can catch twenty 6" fish in a half day (and may even be surprised by a 13" here and there), or you can go "hunting" for fish that average 15" and run across 19" fish pretty easily. Then there are the mega-tanks that push the 10 lb. mark. They're not as easy to find, but they are definitely in there and are scary big!

A gorgeous rainbow.

Probably one of my favorite features of the week was the spring-creek-like nature of this tailwater. It is awesome to see some of the skinny, shallow riffles that you can find fish in, and good sized fish too! One of my favorite spots was a 60' wide riffle that was no more than 12" at it's deepest. Most of the time I was fishing a micro indicator, micro split shot and a #16 Blacktail PMD/Sulphur set at 8" deep. With a keen eye you could spot areas that were slightly slower in water speed, or where there was a small depression in the gravel and sure enough, there would be 5 or 6 browns concealed. What an excitement to be fishing water that look so unassuming, but held some of my best fish of the trip!

Notice the coloring on the tip of the dorsal on this rainbow.

If you ever get a chance to head that direction, the South Holston is a river not to be missed, and for any serious angler, it's a good place to put on your bucket list of destinations!


Below are some good shots from the trip, check 'em out.


Tight lines,


-Jeff

South Platte, 11 Mile Canyon, Colorado

Catch-up: This event occurred in the Spring of 2011

Date: Friday April 22 and  Saturday May 7, 2011

Weather: Sunny, beautiful

Insect/Activity: Small amount of midge and baetis activity

Patterns Used: Blacktail Baetis, AB Tungsten Hare's Ear, Grey Midge Pupa

Flows: 52

Fortune smiled upon Ben and I as we took to the river a couple of times in a two week period! I can't remember what stopped Michelle from coming, but I think it had to do with bridal showers, or baby showers!@?! Needless to say, upon hearing my tales after fishing, Michelle rued the day she was born a woman and "showers" became a required event for her gender.

That's a really long way of saying: Ben and I had two amazing days. The weather was amazing—sunny, calm winds, low flows, clear water and cool enough to wear a hooded sweatshirt—and the icing on the cake was the ridiculous amounts of fish we caught!

One of the beauties of late winter/early spring is the low flows and lack of fishermen on the water. It's a great time to get out there and catch fish that, in my opinion, are feeding recklessly because they are hungry from low metabolism in the winter and haven't been pressured for a few months.

With really low flows, it's easy to see fish too, and you can get away with fishing nymphs that aren't too weighted. It's one of the best times that nymph fishing feels like dry-fly fishing.

Here are some great photos that Ben and I got of the course of two days. Make sure to check out the rainbow with the spots on his eyes! I had never seen it before (in person). Really cool looking (though it's possible he took my fly because his eyesight isn't so good :)

Enjoy!

-Jeff Allen

Beautiful, dark colored rainbow. Notice the how his spots are covering his eyes! Amazing!