On the River: Gunnison River, Gunnison, CO

We just couldn't get enough fishing on Saturday, so we decided to hit the Gunnison River on Sunday. It was pretty short lived, only fishing from 2:30 to 4:30, but because of the recent cold weather, the blood-flow of spring runoff was staved off for one last day and we decided to capitalize on it.

Fun story, really ... we fished a lot of the usual to start with and didn't have much luck. We did see some dark bodied caddis flying around, along with a few small black stones. Being a small-fly kind of guy, I don't spend much time fishing Stonefly patterns; but guessing the fish were pretty deep, I decided to rig up with a Prince Nymph and egg pattern combination (see reasoning from previous blog). 

The tungsten Prince Nymph and slow deep water have a tendency to butt heads, so we found ourselves hooking up on the bottom quite frequently. That's when the gears in my head got turning a bit (insert rusty creaking noise here) and I started doing a light "pull set" to release the fly from the obstacle hanging it up. The thought was, that if a fish hit, I'd feel the resistance, and if not, a slow pull set would imitate a Stonefly crawling toward the banks like its usual hatching process.

Turns out I was right! We ended up hooking 8 fish in about 20 minutes, all in the healthy 14"+ range. It was like clockwork ... we would make a few pull sets and inevitably one of them would pull back, then you just lifted the rod like normal and waited for the fast run of a 14" brown to ensue.

I think that's what I love about this sport so much - even in the highly predictable West, you can still figure out new, unique situations that you've never tried before.

Here's to Discovery!

-Jeff

On the River: Uncompahgre River, Montrose, Colorado

As you no doubt gathered from my earlier post, Michelle and I were a little sick of the late season snow storms, so we decided to head west on Saturday toward Montrose/Grand Junction area to try and improve our weather odds. Our sights were set on the Gunnison Gorge, but as fate would have it, the North Fork of the Gunnison was running at 1000+ CFS, meaning you couldn't wade across it to access the clearer dam release water of the Gorge. So, we decided to try out the Uncompahgre River just below Ridgway Reservoir.

It's a catch and release stretch of water, and I had heard it was on par with the Taylor River C & R. The water was flowing pretty high and fast, but greenish/clear. All and all it was a pretty successful day and definitely scratched where it itched. From a visual scan of the river it is NOT on par with the fish size of the Taylor C & R, but there were a lot of deep holes we couldn't really see into all that well.

We got a bit of a tease with hooking up in the first 15 minutes of being on the water with a 16" rainbow, but the rest of the day was filled with consistent 8" to 12" fish. Surprisingly, most of the fish were really good looking, including this rainbow that had some unique spotting.

Most of the time we fished what will become known to the regular readers of this blog as the "Jeff Allen standard nymph rig". That's right, you guessed it ... a soft hackle bead headed hare's ear with a blacktail baetis trailing by about 8". I always use an adjustable indicator so I can set my depth based on each spot I'm fishing (setting your depth right gives you the best chance at strike detection).

It was a great day on the river, and would have been even if we caught nothing - simply because we were in light, hooded sweatshirts basking in the 60 degree sun. Nothing but smiles here ... and I've now fished another stretch of water that I intend to go back and visit again.

Good Drifts,
-Jeff

BLAST!!!

Oh, the Spring! It's such a tease. You think that winter is nearing an end, and then suddenly ... 6" of new snow on April 17th. It is not so much that a little spring storm has got me all riled up, but the fact that the weather has decided to make the last 3 weekends unfishable with rain, snow and massive amounts of wind. To make matters worse, come Monday morning the clouds roll away and it's a sunny 50 degrees. I think, to the fly fisherman, that is what is so hard about the winter. Sure you can get out plenty of days if your prepared and willing to be a little patient for the right weather, but then you start to dream of summer days (jay actually wrote a great article that you should check out) and think you are nearing them, only to find that Spring is still in the way and even though the air is warmer, the conditions can be pretty tough (especially in the West). I have no real point to this entry, except to express my displeasure that Michelle and I were planning on heading to the lower Gunnison River Gorge and soak up the sun, and now it is not so.

On the River: East River, Gunnison, Colorado

Saturday, March 28th

Somedays, you get just what you needed. Any serious fisherman gets a little stir crazy near the end of winter, and even though I get out on the river a fair amount in the winter, I still find myself longing for those sunny summer afternoons where being on the river rejuvenates your soul and washes away your stress.

Today was like that, but in a different sort of way ... The temperatures didn't remind me of that warm summer day exactly (I don't think it ever got above 25 degrees all day), but lately I have had the same feelings as mentioned above, but they were directed at east coast fishing and a good hatch rather than the above mentioned feeling of summer warmth.

Today was that day. 

It's not often that you run into true hatches out west. Yes, there are the Green Drakes, the Caddis "Happy Hour", but they hardly ever seem consistent and predictable like a hatch out east would be, but today we rolled onto a pretty rare scene.

When we arrived at one of the deeper, slow pools on the East River we were met with large trout sipping grey midges and it was a phenomenon that lasted. Our good friends, Ben and Bree Robb, Michelle and I spent a solid hour fishing to risers and only left out of necessity, but they were still rising to midges even as we tore ourselves away from the river.

We took all of them on a size #24 single grey midge pattern (unfortunately, we don't sell them yet, we are working on getting them in stock for our next order, but in the meantime the link will take you to the tying instructions). It was pretty rare that we actually saw the fly, but as with tiny dry flies you just have to know the general area where it landed and watch for boils in the vicinity. All in all I landed three fish (on dries) over 13" and had at least six strikes that I missed. Michelle and Ben also landed some really nice fish too!

We also fished the standard hare's ear/trailing baetis rig (earlier in the day) and caught a bunch of other nice fish, a lot of which were in slow, shallower water It was a good day on the river. Great time to get out there and banish those winter blues.

Tight lines,

-Jeff

On the River: Taylor River, Gunnison, Colorado

Sun. March 22nd

EPIC. Ok, maybe not epic in the grand scheme of fly fishing, but we had a lot of fun. We went to check out the C and R, but were met with a large crowd and maddening wind! So we headed back down about 7 miles from the dam and fished the "classic" Taylor River water.

Same setup as on the East River, except we trailed with an olive midge. We had about the same success on the hare's ear and the midge.

It was a lot of fun, the water was gin clear and the fish were pooled up in the deeper spots. Basically, if we rolled up to a spot that was deeper than 1' and was slow moving we were sure to spot at least 3 fish, and for the Taylor they were pretty decent in size (meaning they weren't the usual 6" fish, but closer to a 10" average). We also hooked a few that were pushing the 14" range.

All in all we landed about 10 fish in  3 hours between the two of us (most of the time we just share a rod and trade off after each fish), and most of the fish were sight nymphed, which always makes it more enjoyable.

If you're planning on heading out anytime soon, this is the river I'd be thinking about, especially since the Taylor has so much public water. It's easy to find yourself all alone and not worry about crowding.

-Jeff