On the River: Dream Stream, South Platte, Hartsel, CO

October 2, 2010

Theories, all just theories ...

In my quest to understand the Dream Stream section of the South Platte I have yet to reach the end. My experience tells me that it is primarily a Salmon/Steelhead river. Sure, you wouldn't call the rainbows steelhead, but essentially, they don't live in the river, they live in the lake. Same with the browns. My hunch is that the cutthroats do live in the river. I think that at best you can have rainbows and browns coming up river at anytime during the year if the food source is there, but they are most likely migrating up the river for a short period of time to feed.

Having said that, I really do believe you can hit the river just about anytime of the year and get rewarded by a ton of large fish, or stymied by the lack of any fish. While you can hedge your bets by hitting the two spawning seasons (fall for the browns, spring for the rainbows/cutts). Ben and I were met by the reality that in this river, it's anything but a safe bet.

As it turns out, Ben and I had a pretty fun day, but we lacked the large quantities of fish that we've run into in the past. The sun was shining, the wind was relatively calm and we even started out the morning with a pretty heavy cloud of trico's (which seemed pretty late in the year to me, but whatever!) I picked up a few fish on trico's, but none would top the 4" mark so we quickly decided to switch to nymphs and move on upstream.

I had never fished all the way to the upper boundary, so it was my goal to cover some water and see what there was. The morning proved to be fairly uneventful. We spotted one monster, 23" cutthroat that we fished to for a while and I eventually hooked on a gammarus scud, only to pull out within 10 seconds of fighting the fish. In another location I hooked a 15" cutthroat that came to the net, but I fumbled before the photo could be taken. Ben landed a nice brown trout at the upper boundary (no photo again) and I spotted a 20"+ brown that scooted after about 10 casts to it.

All in all we were surprised by the "lack" of fish in the upper stretch.

And so, we found ourselves taking a late lunch and heading down to the lower stretch around 2 PM. With ominous clouds rolling in we didn't have much time in the afternoon. This proved to be sad, because it wasn't too long before we found our magic stride. Ben I and were both hooked up with steady fish on the blacktail baetis. We only ended up with this one photo from the day, mostly because all the fish were around this size and not too camera worthy.

The day ended with smiles, because most of the fish were coming out of shallower riffles, which is always a favorite haunt of mine.

We also had one curious event take place ... as the dark clouds rolled in the flashes of lightning in the distance let us know it was time to go. Ben made his way upstream to my location where I was making just "one or two last casts". As I reached for my line to begin stripping in the slack my finger came within an inch of my hook keeper. The combination of standing in the water on a dry plain composed mostly of metallic soil sent a beam of energy, arcing to my finger that lasted about 3 seconds, accompanied by sound. Needless to say, I immediately bit off my leader above my indicator and we broke down our rods and kept a low profile on our way back to the car.

I don't mind admitting ... it was pretty scary.

Nothing like a brush with death to make you appreciate life!

-Jeff

On the River: 11 Mile Canyon, South Platte, Lake George, CO

July 31, 2010

August 7 and 14, 2010

It had been years since I fished 11 Mile Canyon (aka 11MC). Really, I had only fished it once, when I first moved to Colorado for college at Western State in Gunnison. It was more of a stop in really, and my memory of it was not that impressive. We caught fish, but I don't remember anything too massive. I certainly don't remember anything about a catch-and-release stretch. So, when I blogged about moving to Colorado Springs and one of my blog readers, Jim, mentioned he fished it all the time and would show me what he know, I was excited to say the least.

And so it was, on July 31st that Jim, his son Kevin and I hit the water and they introduced me to a river that I was amazed me. First off, we met at the river at about 6:30 AM to catch the tricos. While we didn't hit an "epic" day, we certainly weren't short of rising fish taking the falling spinners. When the spinner fall ended, most of the fish just kept rising to midges. We spent the morning making delicate cast after delicate cast, and enough rejections to make you crazy, but in the end a rods were bent and smiles were not lacking.

In fact, one of my favorite things about the day was the realization that there were a lot of fish in that river, and they were educated. They act as proper trout should - snubbing a fly if the drift was off, but greedily taking it if the presentation and imitation were accurate. I feel like most Colorado rivers have the X-factor of fish that will take anything that resembles a nymph, or slurp down your indicator leaving one baffled as to "why that happened". Not so with 11MC.

After the hatch was well over, I moved to midge pupa and baetis patterns. One of the first sights I was greeted with was 14" fish sitting in shin-deep gravel just waiting to be stalked, and then picked off by my favorite style of fishing - micro-nymphing.

I spent a large chunk of time walking the river, getting a feel for it and spotting fish. Probably even spent less time actually fishing then I usually would. By the end of the day I had caught my fill of fish and was convinced that this was my new home.

On the 7th, I returned with my wife and some friends of the family. The trico spinner fall was present, but not as strong and the fishing was a little tougher (mostly, I spent the morning trying to help our friends put one on the line).

On the 14th, Ben Robb (his good buddies Matt and Chris) and I headed up to give it a go. The tricos were still a force to be reckoned with and Ben landed this spectacular Brown that had decided to gorge on tricos just 25 feet upstream of him. I spent a lot of the day getting acquainted with some deeper nymphs and did very well in the seems and pocket water using a tungsten hare's ear trailed by a grey midge pupa.

I also discovered that there were Snake River Cutt's in the river and as is my habit to prove that there is something mentally wrong with them, I tied on a large Power Ant and had a nice 15" fish take it on the first cast. (Side note: Jay lived in Jackson for a number of years and we learned if a Chernobyl Ant won't get a SRC to rise, then just tie on a Power Ant. None of those food source made much sense so I concluded that these fish had brain issues. In my years since then I've never cast to a SRC, in any river system, that wouldn't rise to one of those two patterns! It works without fail from about May until Sept. I guess they are just opportunistic fish at heart.)

In the end, my Shan-gri-la view of 11MC was jaded a bit by realizing that the river is a zoo of fishermen, tubers and campers. Though that won't stop me from going back!

Thanks to Jim and Kevin for showing me the ropes. Now I've got to just get back out there with them in the winter!

Tight Lines,

-Jeff

On the River: Spring Creek, Bellefonte, Central PA

July 31 - August 3, 2009

Ah, Central PA is the non-humanoid love of my life. If at any point up until now you were to ask me where I learned to fly fish the answer would have always come back - Central PA. I suppose I did a fair amount of learning on the White and Norfork rivers of Arkansas, but really, I've always considered Spring Creek, Penn's Creek and Big Fishing Creek my "school of hard knocks". These are the rivers that have taught Jay and I so many things about fly fishing along the journey.

So, after many years since I have made a dedicated trip back east to fish Central PA, I finally got to break away for a long weekend and remember the joy!

After fishing in the west for 13 years now, there was nothing I was looking forward to more than standing in Spring Creek, with absolutely no wind, the warm sun on my back, and sight nymphing to 18"+ browns that are holding alongside veronica americana in gentle riffles and flats. But, mother nature had some other ideas about our weekend, and so, midday Friday we found ourselves fishing to a hatchery outlet pipe (the only clear water for miles) in a steady downpour, praying that it would let up and the rivers might have a chance of being fishable the next day.

You see, all Thursday night the Central PA had gotten pounded with rain, so by the time we showed up on Friday the rivers were high a muddy. We knew that as soon as the rain stopped we'd only have to wait 6-8 hours for the clarity to come back a bit, but things were looking grim. Fortune, however, has a funny way of shinning upon us sometimes.

The rain did finally let up and the river, by the next morning, was a milky brown but definitely fishable. We didn't know what to expect, except for the fact that we knew we weren't "sight nymphing" to any fish. So, Jay and I did what we do best and began thinking about how to approach the situation and find fish.

It was about 15 casts, and 6 fish later, that we decided "off color" water wasn't so bad. All in all, we learned some really important things about Spring Creek that weekend. So often, when you can see the fish, you give up trying any blind nymphing. I mean, why would you blind nymph when you can spot tanks left and right. But the twist is that for every fish you spot, there is 4 that you don't.

I can honestly say that being limited by the murky water showed me the true colors of that river. In the past we had always assumed there were not massive numbers of fish in Spring Creek, but a good number of very large fish instead (and who would be sad about that). But with the water being high and off color, not to mention a lot of extra food getting washed down the river, the fish were not as spooky and OUT IN FORCE, slamming our flies on a well placed drift.

I learned some other things that weekend too. I had good confidence in the AB sow bug, but I now have the utmost confidence that it is a sweet pattern. By the end of the weekend there were really on two choices, the AB sow bug or the Gammarus Scud. Sure, you could catch fish on a midge or a hare's ear, but why? The fish were CRUSHING those two crustaceans and didn't leave much desire for changing up patterns.

One of the other amazing things was the holding locations of most of the fish. With the water being "greenish" you could get a feel for depth by looking for the darker green/brown patches (by midday Saturday we had about 8" of visibility). Making a drift over a seem with a little more depth would inevitably produce a fish. In fact, my biggest brown of the trip came out of what was little more than shin deep pocket-water.

We were on the river every morning at about 6 AM, looking desperately for the Trico spinner fall, but none of the days were a heavy enough fall to budge the trout off the bottom of the river. It didn't seem to matter though, the nymphing was good in the morning too. Really the only slow part of the day was the "heat", from about 2 PM to 5 PM, but even then, we were still picking up fish.

We primarily fished the Benner Spring stretch, but did break away for a half day to hit the Fisherman's Paradise. Not to impressed by that ... I know there are some big fish right near the hatchery, but headed upstream into the "Canyon" immediately and regretted it. This fish were plenty, but the size range was about 4" smaller, on average, than at Benner.

All in all, irony played its final twist on us ... As Jay and I were heading back to the car Monday morning, we realized that the true clarity of the river was finally restored. Being that I was so nostalgic for sight nymphing out east, we decided to walk the river, instead of the trail, for the last 100 yards. I immediately spotted this Brown, but he spooked. I thought I saw where he went so I made three drifts and hooked him ... still not a true "sight nymph"

Then it was "batter up" for Jay, but we were 30 minutes behind schedule to get back for dinner with the ladies. Sadly, Jay got a few sweet takes, but never got to seal the deal and we were out of time.

I guess if you fulfilled all your fantasies you wouldn't have a reason to go back ... yeah right! Of course you would, to fulfill them a second time.

I love this sport!

-Jeff