Favorite Family Pastime, South Platte River, 11 Mile Canyon, Colorado

Date: Monday March 12, 2012

Weather: Partly cloudy, warm, Breezy

Insect/Activity: Not much

Patterns Used: Blacktail Baetis, AB Tungsten Hare's Ear, Grey Midge Pupa
Flows: 92

I spent some quality time with the family today doing our favorite activity! Yes, I am a blessed man to have a wife that loves to go fly fishing with me, and I love doing it with her. However, for the last 8 months I've been trying my hardest to see how early you can take an infant with you. Turns out 4 months was a little too early, and crazy as I am, I just couldn't subject a 6 month to the bitterest winter fishing. However, when the forecast for Monday was a balmy 55 degrees and the sun was shining, I played hooky from work and we set out to 11 Mile to test the infant fishing age.

Do these sunglasses make my face look small?

It was really a great day all in all. The fishing was not epic, there was a fair amount of winter lethargy hanging about the fish, but we found them and they would take a well presented drift of baetis or midge. Really, the hardest part is that a boy of Winston's age only has short windows of time between naps, so we did a lot of driving for a little fishing but it was worth it. Especially, to get Michelle hooked up with a few fish because it had been a long time since she was last out on the river.

Michelle wasn't happy about her hair in this photo, but she was quite happy about the fish!

Winston was a champ, even helping me strip in some line when I need it. His first fish (while he was awake anyway) was a pretty exciting moment. He had no clue what it was, but definitely wanted to grab it, and most likely would have tried to put it in his mouth if that were possible.

Winston, working on his line stripping technique.

First fish!

I'm looking forward to many more days like this :-)

Tight lines out there!

-Jeff Allen

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!

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

Long time coming, Jackson Wyoming 2009: Part 1 of 7

October 4, 2009

Part 1

We had been planning this trip to the Jackson area for some time. The idea was to get some pretty serious fishing done in one of the best seasons in the Jackson area. In the fall you have the usual low water sight nymphing, great baetis hatches, and a brown trout pre-spawn run out of Lewis and Jackson Lakes that brings some seriously large feeding browns to the rivers. To top it off, the main goal was to do some filming and get some Allen Brothers videos up and running on the internet. Our good friend, Greg Cooper, was going to bring along his Canon 5D Mark II still camera that apparently has some buzz in the video world because of it's amazingly high quality (that I will show you in the next couple of months!).

A typical western fall is pretty awesome. The skies are usually clear, the temperatures are cool, but not so cold that fishing is difficult, and a lot of the time the cooler nights bring pretty active fish because the heat of the day and low water flows of late summer are gone. And, my favorite reason, tourist season has ended and most of the time the rivers are pretty empty (of people that is).

But alas, the sea was angry that week my friends, like an old man trying to send soup back at a deli (Seinfeld). The plan was to camp out that whole week at a site our friend Kevin had set up just before our arrival. Day 2, we woke up with 8" of snow and the tent collapsed on top of us ... That is a pretty good analogy for what the whole week was like for us. Raging wind, cold temps, snow, freezing rain, fluctuating water levels and brown trout that apparently didn't get the memo about the pre-spawn in the fall.

But, part of being a man is to make do with what you've got. So, that's what we did and in the end, we had some pretty lousy fishing, even worse filming, but a great time; and when I look back at the video and photo review of the week, I have to say, some awesome fish!

Stay tuned in to the website and the blog. My plan is to bring this Wyoming trip to you in a 7 part series. Also, we hope to get the video footage into the cutting room (my living room) and come up with some pretty sweet film "shorts". Hopefully, it will keep us all sane through the winter.

-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: Uncompahgre River, Montrose, Colorado

... again.

If you've been following my posts, you'll no doubt have noticed a tone of disgruntlement at spring weather. I set out on Saturday, April 25th to fish the "Pleasure Park" stretch of the Gunnison River thinking I could get above the North Fork and be in relatively clear water. Unfortunately, the North Fork impeded my progress ... for some reason crossing an 80 foot wide, milk chocolate, raging, 3000 CFS river in my tiny, one man, walmart raft did not sound enjoyable, much less livable.

So, I found myself once again at the Uncompahgre River, just south of Montrose, CO. It wasn't with any reluctancy though, I had a good time when I last visited this stretch of the river and was pretty excited to hike down a little further and fish a lot more water.

It fished very similar to my last visit. The water was up, and moving pretty fast, with a good "greenish" tint to it. The fish seemed about the same, holding in the slow and deep pools. In fact, I don't think I caught a single fish in any other type of water. I was fishing the hare's ear/baetis combo like before and kept a weather eye out for Mother's day caddis (and the fish were too as I'll explain later).

Picked up a lot of good fish and got about as close to a Colorado Slam as you can get. I'm guessing that there are no brookies in this stretch of the river, but by the end of the day I had landed a Brown, Rainbow, Snake River Cutt, Colorado Cutthroat, plus a small Cutbow as well. My pride and joy was a nice 17" brown that came at my fly as it was drifting toward me. I got to see him turn downstream and inhale my fly about 2' in front of me. I think we were both thinking same thing ... "oh, crap".

Near the end of the day I was disappointed that the Mother's Day caddis never happened since I had just tied a fresh dozen of Allen Brothers Cut-wing Caddis. So ... I decided to tie one on anyway, just to test out how well they floated. To my surprise, though there wasn't much of a presence in the air or the bushes, the fish were still looking up. I ended up landing about 3 fish on dries all said and done.

It was a good day ... what more can you say.

Tight lines,

-Jeff