On the River: Cheeseman Canyon, South Platte, Deckers, CO

July 25, 2010

Some good friends of ours started a church in Denver (www.denverunited.com) and for a brief period in the summer we had the bright idea to drive 1 hour and 20 minutes to church every Sunday ... that didn't last too long, as we decided being part of a church in a community far away from our own wasn't really the point. I digress ...

It so happens that one week, after church, we decided to hit up Cheeseman Canyon for a little afternoon fishing. We travelled the dirt back-roads to come out in Decker, CO and head to the river. It was fun to see some different scenery, but I was pretty amazed at the "grid-lock" like traffic that a dirt road could see. Seems that particular stretch is a popular destination for the Denver crowds. Probably a drive I won't be duplicating anytime soon.

Our adventure was pretty short lived. We were only on the water for a few hours, but it was enough to to tighten-up some tippet with our underwater friends. There were a fair share of PMD's hatching, but not too many takers on the surface. Jay and I had tied up some soft hackle PMD's with no weight a few months back, for fishing in the film, so I decided to tie one on and fish it quite shallow. I had seen a few fish swing up high in the water column.

Side Note: Michelle got me a new Evolution (Ross) reel for my birthday. This was the first fish to go head-to-head with it. It's a FREAKIN' sweet reel!

My bet had paid off and we took a few fish this way. Michelle never landed one, but I had the fortune of brining a few to the net. The cool thing about fishing a "film" rig is that when fish take it, it's pretty obvious. Most of the time you see the fish move to the upper water column, and if you don't, your indicator is so short that anything taking your fly is registered very quickly. You also don't have to worry about the classic excuse of "maybe it was the bottom".

Good times!

-Jeff

Weekend: Jackson Hole, Wy

September 3-6, 2009

How did I find myself in Jackson, Wy on September 3, 2009? Well it's a funny story.

Sometimes, life can serendipitously throw some pretty awesome stuff at you. If you'll remember my post from August 22nd on the Arkansas River, a large part of being there was to watch my good friend Duncan Callahan run the Leadville 100. He had a good finish (3rd place), but it had left a bitter taste in his mouth that he was once in 1st with a 20 minute lead and stomach issues, being unable to keep any amount of food down since mile 87, would ultimately slow him to a crawl and thus, watch the victory slip away.

So, three nights after Leadville 100, we were hanging out at our house over coffee discussing that the only way to fix the stomach problem was to run more races and figure it out. Duncan got a gleam in his eye and told me about a 50 mile race in Wyoming the following weekend, but that to do it he would need someone to crew the race and his wife wouldn't be able to make it. I said, "I'm in".

Duncan Callahan around mile 37 with a solid 5 minute lead over second place

That night Duncan e-mailed his sponsor Vasque and the next day I got the call to pack my bags, we were heading to Jackson, Wy for a long weekend. Naturally, that included my fly-rod to fish some familiar stomping grounds and the birthplace of the Blacktail Baetis.

It turned out that most of Friday Duncan was going to be busy at a speaking engagement and then on a light run to get prepped for Saturday's event, so I would need to kill a bit of time until 3 PM. Flat Creek, being just up the road from where we stayed in Jackson on Thursday night, seemed like a sweet idea and a friend and guide from Jackson, Kevin Mock, was going to be meeting me on the river at around 10 AM. I decided there was no reason to wait, so I got a ride to Flat Creek at about 8 AM and was feeling the sun on my face, breathing the fresh air, and happy to be alive (especially after a great breakfast at Jedediah's Sourdough pancake restaurant).

I got pretty schooled on Flat Creek. Mostly, I walked about 1 mile of the river and only saw 3 fish, all of which were bolting as fast as they could by the time I even spotted them. I've only fished flat creek once before, but from the rumors I had heard, it seemed like a pretty normal day. By around 10 AM there were starting to be some heavy clouds of spinners over some of the riffles and I finally spotted a regular feeder on the surface. I tied on a rusty spinner and he took the first drift that was perfectly placed in his 4" feeding zone (it only took me about 30 casts to get the fly in the right spot!). Not a bad fish, but nothing to right home about. Kevin showed up on the river right as I hooked the fish, so he got some video footage (I hope to post at a later date). Then we walked the river for another 30 minutes and decided it was time to head up to Blacktail Ponds where we might find some more fortune.

Surprisingly, we arrived at Blacktail to find the situation not much different. If you know anything about Blacktail, you know that there are lots of large fish in a crystal clear, small creek. This time there were not ...

An underwater shot of the plant life of Blacktail Ponds. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can actually see midges and black-fly larvae in abundance on the plant leaves. You can even see a few floating in the water that have broken free from the plant. That place is a BIO-factory!

We walked a good chunk of the river and I would say we only spotted 25 total fish in a river where you would normally spot 80+ fish. Also, much to our sadness, 15 of those fish were located in two spots that already had fisherman on the lockdown. So, we set up camp in a lower riffle that I had spotted 3 good fish in, and they were feeding hard.

That's when my second schooling of the day began ...

Kevin was pretty content hanging out, watching and chatting since these were his home waters, so I commenced fishing to a tank that was swinging left and right like it was his last meal. Of course, I started with the Blacktail Baetis assuming I'd be hooked up in a matter of minutes. About an hour later, after trying 8 different patterns, I don't think that fish looked at my fly once.

I decided it was time to stop being a neanderthal and spend some time looking at the water. I had not seen this fish rise, but had seen a few other sporadic risers here an there, leading me to believe that there wasn't a strong enough hatch for dries. But, after examining the water I noticed there were quite a lot of PMD's starting to roll off. I tried the Blacktail PMD ... nothing, then I looked a the water again and actually saw a PMD wiggle free from his shuck, dry out his little soggy clump of wings and fly off. So, I switched it up to the Polywing PMD (the big brother of the Blacktail PMD). Second cast and that fish took it like it was his long lost cheeseburger that he had been searching for all day! If that's not sweet market research I don't know what it!

After a 5 minute fight, and a sweet release with an underwater shot that made me happy, I dried off my fly, noticed a second cutt was in position just upstream and he was actually feeding on the surface quite heavily. Four casts later I was in for another 5 minute fight (for slow water, those boys don't give up easily!) and another long deep breath of thorough satisfaction.

Another great shot of how clear the water is at Blacktail Ponds.

And then, that was it. I searched the river for more willing suspects, made a few casts to some other nice fish, but didn't hook up again. At around 2 PM Kevin had finally decided to rig up his rod and we headed out to the main channel of the Snake River. We were short on time, but had a great time hooking numerous smaller cutt's and an occasional take from a big guy, all on the Allen Brother Power Ant.

One short fishing day ... couple of nice fish ... scenery that will leave your jaw wide open ... not a bad time at all!

As for Duncan, I guess he had an alright time too. He ended up finishing first in the Grand Targhee Resort 50 mile race, and beat the previous course record by 40+ minutes.

Life is seriously great sometimes!

-Jeff

Here's a great parting shot! Blacktail Ponds has some serious undercut banks. So, I decided to stick my hand under one as far as I could and snap a few photos and ... look what I found! The cool thing was, the "burm" on the right of the photo was where the edge of the river was, so this was a solid 3 feet of undercut, with a fish tucked under there far enough that you would have no idea he was there!

On the River: Taylor River C and R, Gunnison, Colorado

August 8, 2009

After many failed attempts to meet up with Ron from coloradoangler.blogspot.com we finally succeeded! Sure, Ron may have jumped the gun a bit and showed up at the river at 4 AM, but who wouldn't be excited about a trip to the Taylor C and R?

I, however, casually rolled onto the river at about 10:30 (mostly because my brother-in-law called around 9 AM and you can't neglect family). That's the beauty of living only 40 minutes from world class water, you get spoiled and don't quite feel the pressure of being on the water at first light.

Anyway, we had a great day on the water! Ron is nothing short of a "focused laser beam of trout catching energy". Apparently, getting snubbed by a fish only strengthens his resolve to fish even harder for it. Ironically, the Taylor is REALLY GOOD at strengthening Ron's resolve.

The day was almost as good as it gets. We had feeding fish parked along the banks, and perfect sun for watching their every move. If I had two complaints it would be:

1. The water was pushing hard (about 350 cfs) and in that stretch of the river it means your fly is almost always downstream of your indicator (unless your fishing a TON of weight) which is tough for strike detection.

2. The wind was in Springtime Force, which is just weird for August.

Nevertheless, the conditions were great and we had our fair shot at a lot of monster fish. We also got snubbed by a lot of monster fish.

I got to a point where I would tie on a fly, make 5 drifts, each targeting a different fish. On each drift the fish would look at the fly, reject it, then never look at it again. It was pretty amazing to see the fish in full "professor" mode. But, there were enough fish moving that you could turn a fish off and just fish to his buddy next to him. Eventually, you got a good take, then it was a matter of perfect hook set timing, after that the fish had to actually stay hooked, and finally, you had to not break him off or get wrapped around a rock.

The flies were the usual fare ... #24 midge pupa (coming to the website soon!), Blacktail PMD took a few hook ups, but the surprising winner of the day was the Gammarus Scud. It was by far the fly that fish would move 2 feet to look at and/or take.

Yep, it was another day on the Taylor. I'd say the final score was:

50 looks

15 takes

8 hook ups

3 landed fish

I have always been curious to do some tests on the river to see if tippet size made much of a difference, so I went all out and fished 8x for half of the day. All in all, I'd say it didn't do much better than 6x, and not worth stressing over each fish you caught. I landed one fish that was 19" or so. So, I can officially say 8x has the power to move a big fish.

I also had one on that Ron claims was in the 30" class. It was definitely big! I feel as if I could have landed him on 8x, but after about 5 minutes of fighting he managed to wrap a rock and 8x just can't stand up to that. A lot of times with 6x I can buy enough time to throw a huge roll cast, unleash from the rock and not lose the fish, but I didn't even have a chance to throw the roll cast with this monster fish.

One thing I will say about the Taylor ... lately I feel like I've been seeing LOTS of MONSTER fish up in the shallows, more so than I've ever seen before. Ron was fishing to some rainbows that I'm sure were 15 lbs. + and apparently someone on the river had landed a 20 lb rainbow earlier that day! That's just crazy!

Tight lines,

-Jeff

On the River: Gunnison Gorge, Ute Park

June 27, 2009

Foiled again ... sort of. I was all geared up to really hit the Salmonfly hatch this time, patiently watching the flows, checking the reports, all so I could hit the perfect section of the river where the Salmonflies were coming off the strongest. Turns out it never really happened. My theories are that the weather and water flows were just weird enough this year that there were not many great Salmonfly days. I think most of the time the egg-laden females never made the mass exodus to the river, like they are supposed to, but instead meandered back to the river one by one and silently laid their eggs. I'm sure someone hit a decent day or two, but from the reports I read most people ended up foiled like me.

On top of it, I was double foiled on the day that I chose. It turns out that the reservoirs above the Canyon were overflowing and so Friday night they decided to pump the flows from 2800 cfs to 3400 cfs which is the best reason I can think of for fish not rising. Let me back up ... I rolled onto the river to a circus freakshow of bugs, thinking to myself, "this is gonna be awesome". There were massive quantities of Salmonflies, Giant Stones, Golden Stones and Yellow Sallies everywhere, not to mention the clouds of PMD spinners and caddis. Bugs were literally crawling all over my skin and up my shirt. At one point I had to tuck my shirt in to keep them from driving me mad and even then the occasional stonefly would crawl down the neck of my shirt.

However, even near the end of the day when there were 10-15, half dead, twitching stoneflies that had just laid their eggs in each eddy-line I never saw a decent rising fish all day long. It was really quite maddening. The reason I blame it on the flows is from past experience. When the water levels fluctuate, the fish don't necessarily stop feeding, but I do think that they "hunker" down and stop thinking about surface feeding. It may even be that with the increased flows the vast majority of food is getting washed down in the nymph form so fish are gorging on nymphs even if there is a lot of flies on the surface. Above all you have to remember that fish are machines programmed to go for what feeds them the most.

So, I started the day with my "drown stone" and hare's ear combination. Surprisingly, I didn't hook many fish. The water available to fish was very limited with the flows so high and pushing hard. I was mainly relegated to very small seams tight against the bank. My first hook up was a rainbow that screamed downstream and put me into my backing before I lost him. But still, with out much fast success I started thinking and remembered all the PMD's popping off just the week before. I decided to switch up to a Pheasant tail, trailed with the Blacktail PMD and thing LIT UP!

Fish started slamming the Blacktail PMD like it was going out of style. Most of them were in the solid 12" to 14" range, but it seemed like every 5th fish was pushing the 16"+ range. Most of the big guys did a good job of spitting the hook.

Then I rolled up onto the "Super Seam". It was a seam like any other, no discernible difference, but I proceeded to hook and land 3 fish in 5 casts that were 17", 18" and 17", all on the Blacktail PMD!

It was a great time! I ended up landing numerous other small fish, and then finished the day with the rainbow pictured here.

It was a good reminder that you don't ever want to get static in your thinking on the river. I could have fished a dry fly all day long and never hooked any of those monsters, but with a bit of observation and thought it turned out to be a great day.

Tight lines,

-Jeff