The Road to a 10lb Brown (Part 1)

Early spawner caught further up towards the dam

So far behind on my journal! Too much fishing / fly tying, and not enough writing. I really do enjoy writing when I actually sit down and do it and I've already gone back and read a few write ups from a year or two ago. It's fun to relive those trips. This journal has actually turned into a fun twist in my fishing life as well. There are a lot of cool peeps in Colorado and I have met some of them because of my journal. I'm happy to think that I'm going to meet more of you this spring and summer. I become a better fisher every time I talk with someone and am always very happy if I can pass on a tip that helps someone else.

So since I'm three trips behind and they've all been to the Dream Stream, I figured I'd turn the last three trips into a little mini series. The trips started off good and just got better. There were plenty of 20" + fish on these trips and the last trip yielded an absolute specimen of a 10lb brown. That will hopefully provide you with a little motivation to keep reading.

This first trip was right around the time the cutthroat were beginning to run. A flow increase kicked everything off and when Ben and I pulled up to the gauging station parking lot it was already packed. Despite what some people might think the spring and fall spawns here are no secret.

We decided to check the next parking lot upstream and were amazed to see an empty parking lot. It was too tempting to pass up. We decided to fish upstream and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We knew we wouldn't have the numbers of slabs upstream but it was great to be able to move from bend to bend and fish whatever we wanted.

Nice Cutty caught by Ben

I started off with eggs but it quickly became apparent that wasn't going to be the ticket that day. On to the midges.... I really do prefer fishing heavier tippet and bigger flies but I like catching fish more. So when the pig rig isn't working you have to change things up.

I switched to my normal small red annelid / black midge pupa rig and covered a few bends. Missed a few but wasn't hooking up the way I thought I should be. I covered quite a bit of water and hadn't seen too many fish. I decided head downstream to a bend that I knew had a long deep run. I figured since I wasn't seeing many fish that they were probably holed up in the deeper runs.

No doubt about it. That day was all about finding where they were holed up. After a few depth adjustments I was into fish. At that point any fly seemed to be good for at least a hit. I wound up catching fish on eggs, midges, and leeches.

Mini hawg stuck on a Polish rig

Another method that worked great once I dialed it in was to use a Polish nymph rig. I had recently picked up a DVD called "European Nymphing with Jack Dennis & Vladi" (yes Vladi as in the Vladi Worm). This DVD won't really wow you on production quality but it is absolutely packed with information on the history of European Nymphing, different rigs and techniques, flies and gear. After watching I realized that I've used some of these techniques for a while without really knowing it. But I did change up a few things to get closer to a true Vladi rig and it worked great. My anchor fly was a large tan woven bead head (that looks to me just like a cranefly larva) and my point fly was an egg. Worked really well and pulled my biggest fish of the day on my anchor fly using this technique.

Little did we know that this was just a quick warmup to what awaited us the following weekend.

Work Sucks, I'm Going Fishing

Spots!

I have spring fever. It's too early to have it but I do. We've been getting some nice days here in Colorado and I always get excited when we do this time of year because I know spring is not far off. Not far off but not really that close either.

Friday was a nice day except for the wind. And the wind was terrible! I couldn't help it though. Like I said I have spring fever. I starting thinking about fishing about 10 minutes into my work day. Terrible... Like a bolt of lightning a thought hit me. Wrap things up early and get your ass to the Blue. I didn't fight it one bit.

I cranked through my email, made some calls, hit up my Account Manager to see if anything was hot and then another thought hit me. Who's coming with me?

Back on the phone. The Old Man had a meeting he couldn't get out of. Ben was slammed. Marty's arm is giving him hell. Damn.... This was going to be a solo trip.

I packed up the White Buffalo and was on the road at noon. I was feeling great! The sun was shining, it was Friday afternoon, Soundgarden was cranked, and I was heading for trout water. The only drag was the damn wind. And it was getting worse. It was hard keeping the wheel straight.

By the time I got to Silverthorne the wind had died down some but it was still pretty gusty. Gusty enough to blow all but a handful of dudes off the river so I had my pick of water for the most part. I decided to hit the run above the gauging station since it was open. 

This is a great run to develop your fish spotting skills. Why? Because you can just about be guaranteed that there are fish in front of you. You just have to scan the water till you see a sign of one. There is a ton of material to help you with this but in my experience two pieces of advice have helped me most. One, don't look for a fish. In other words if you are looking to see a perfect outline of a fish you probably won't get it. You'll need to look for a sign of a fish and then stare at that area. Two, try to unfocus your eyes and look through the bottom of the river bed. This is the best way I have heard it explained and it's helped me.

As expected there was plenty of red moving around in the water. One was an easy eight pounds. I'm always torn between going light on tippet and hooking up more or going heavy and hooking up less but having a descent chance to land a pig. The fish in this river absolutely lose their minds when they are hooked and a beast on 6x or 7x will put you in a tight spot fast.

Big bow in the recovery room

This trip I decided to go heavy and rigged up with 4x flouro since it was fairly cloudy. I didn't do much for the first two hours but as the sun dropped I think the 4x became less and less important. Ale eggs and Mayer's Mysis started getting hammered hard. These were NOT light takes. I had 15-20 minutes of hooking up every other cast. Totally made the trip worth it. Didn't hook any pigs but I did land a nice 21 incher.

All in all a great trip up to the Blue. Any time you can have that river pretty much to yourself it's a good thing. May have to make a habit of these Friday evening Blue trips!

Quick Morning Trip to Deckers

Deckers continues to surprise me! I have only been a handful of times in the past 5 years or so. This past summer was my first trip up there in a while. I have no idea why I haven't fished this area more but that is going to change.

There is no doubt that Deckers can be a crowded place but it doesn't seem to really matter. Every rock seems to have a trout behind it. You really don't need to get into the prime runs to find fish. It seemed that anything knee deep and fairly slow held a trout. And they are all SUPER healthy! 

Best patterns were a chamois leach and ale egg. I tie my leaches a little longer than the ones you find in the shops. Keep them about the same width as the ones you can buy but tie them 4" long. I use red GSP thread to really crank down on the chamois. I think it's key to find the softest chamois you can find. I've used leather leaches before but they are no where near as effective as a chamois leach.

Another pattern that was getting bit fairly consistently was a purple DM midge. I picked up half a dozen size 20 from Combat Fly Fishing before the Frostbite Fish-Off and they have worked everywhere I've tried them since then.  I've been fishing purple and red and both have done well but I think I've hooked more on the purple.

Not a super eventful trip but a fun one. Will be back to Deckers at least once before summer for sure!

Frostbite Fish-Off 2014

I remember hearing about the Frostbite Fish-Off in Pueblo Colorado just before the 2012 event. It was either too late for registration or I was too chicken to sign up so I didn’t get to fish but I did show up the day of the tournament and walked a few beats. The tournament looked great. Unfortunately walking along beautiful trout water without a fly rod in your hands is not natural. In fact it is as wrong as..... well I won't finish that thought but it's wrong!

The Frostbite Fish-Off is run by the Southern Colorado Greenback Chapter 509 of Trout Unlimited. An entire Army of volunteers make this tournament happen. Ben Wurster and Lou McCullough from Steel City Anglers walk point in this effort and they have done an outstanding job to make this event a fun but competitive event that raises a good amount of money for Chapter 509. All of the proceeds from the event go directly to improving the fishery and many stream improvements have happened and continue to happen due in part to the money raised by this event. Lou McCullough provided a little history on the event.

One example of recent stream improvements

 "Ben and I started the FFO after Ben was a controller in the Carp Slam in downtown Denver organized by the Denver Chapter of TU.  I knew a lot of guides and people in the business and we had the support of Team USA, Rob Kolanda and company.  I sent out hundreds of e-mails and we had 23 teams the first year.  It was an insane experience, with over 100 people at Garlic and Onions, the venue for the first year.  The money we netted over the first 2 years went into a total contribution from Cheyenne Mountain Chapter of $11,100.00 which was doubled by a GOCO grant. Coupled with a Packard Grant and $100,000.00 from CPW and other sources we totaled $340,000.00 for the Arkansas River Legacy Project Phase II.  It has been a real adventure, meeting new friends and spreading the word about the Arkansas River tail water.  Now the river is one of the top ten tail water fisheries in the country, thanks to Pete Gallagher of Fin-Up Habitat Consultants and his incredible design for the structures".

Ben Lewis and I joined “forces” and created Team Chuck and Duck for the 2013 tournament. At that time, neither one of us had fished in a tournament before so we didn’t really know what to expect. Ben and I had drawn two good beats the night before (a fun event in itself) that we had both fished before so we were feeling pretty confident the morning of the tourney. As we walked to our first beat with a dozen tangled rods however, I began to question my confidence in two dudes with way too many rods who could only come up with “Chuck and Duck”.

When it was all said and done fish were caught, old friends were caught up with, new friends were met, and Ben and I had an absolute blast. We endured paparazzi, mobs of crazed female spectators, fish that ignored us the entire morning save our last THREE MINUTES of morning fishing, and a last hour of the day, buzzer beating, jaw dropping, ROD BREAKING fish hook up! Fun was to be had each step of the way. 2014 had big shoes to fill.

Feeling the pressure just before the morning session

The 2014 Frostbite Fish-Off did not disappoint! The tournament this year started off with the news that we were going to fish two outstanding beats. We were going to fish beat 4 in the morning which had recently been worked on through the ongoing stream improvements and featured several beautiful weirs, a long deep run with large submerged boulders, and a run fed by the hatchery outlet. In the afternoon we had beat 2 on tap that featured a long riffle that tails out into a deep pool with a gradual drop off toward the north bank along the entire run. We would not be able to blame our beats if we didn't post some respectable numbers. The pressure was on!

Ben got us off to a great start with a 19" rainbow within the first 10 minutes of the morning session.  I was able to post 17" of rainbow trout about 45 minutes later. We had two fish on the board and needed two more to max out our morning session. We needed to keep up the momentum. At that point Ben stepped in and turned it to 11.

Ben is starting to make a habit out of pulling absolute slabs out of Pueblo on the biggest nastiest flies that have survived since his Alaska days in the deepest recesses of long forgotten fly boxes. Good for Team Chuck and Duck that Ben sticks to what works!  I don't want to give away his secrets but I'll say that he was chucking a purple leach type pattern that almost looked as though it was sucking on a hot pink trout egg. Almost as if a leach was swimming around sucking on a leach. I'd probably call it a huge purple egg sucking leach..... and it's awesome.

Ben Lewis winner of biggest fish 14' !

This awesome. When combined with the correct retrieve of course. This fatty could not resist the purple nightmare dangling in front of its face. Getting to net this thing was a treat enough. When it kicks in that you get 21" out if this beauty since you are fishing in a tournament, the world is yours. But it got better.

While I was dinking around with midges and leaches, Ben was dredging away to seal the deal. And it turns out our 21" slabba had a friend that also had an eye for purple. He held out as long as he could but not long enough. With 10 minutes left in the morning session, his glutinous Prince loving friend (the trout's not Ben's) let loose and bit down hard on the purple dancing dream that had been swimming around his head for the last 20 minutes. No way! Catching two trout over 21" in that short period of time is no small accomplishment folks. There was no way we weren't winning.

Are we friggin winning!?

And we were! This was crazy considering our main goal going in was to not finish last. Lunch was fun and all but it took an eternity. We were looking to get back in the water. Our normal lunches on fishing trips take about 4 minutes. We were winning a fishing tournament! Crazy...


After a quick wardrobe change, we kicked off the afternoon session. Ben hooked up quick and landed a 16" bow. We were on the board in the first half hour. So far so go. Then I was lucky enough to hook and land a 17" bow about a half hour after that. On a good pace! 20 minutes or so later I hooked up but felt the dreaded release and hook. I knew he came unbuttoned and my second fly found his tail. Foul hooked trout don't count so after a quick net and release Ben was fishing again.

Love this part

We needed one more fish! We got down to two minutes when Ben hooked up! I told Ben that I would get in position while he netted. I tied on the nastiest egg cluster pattern I had and threw a slab of mojo mud on the line. I told Ben that as soon as the fish was landed I would cast. I kid you not, with less than a minute left I saw a nudge and set the hook to a solid pull. Jim Good gave me a heads up that I had 10 minutes to land it. A nice 10-15 yard run of line and I was living the dream. Then my monster trout started coming right in.

No...... please no...... not now.... please not now. I've felt this fight before. I've been burned by this fight before. Yes, it was...............a sucker. A beefy egg faced sucker! Last year I broke a rod on a huge last minute bow.... And now a sucker burn with the clock at zero...... terrible 1st world problem to have.

BUT,...... we had put three descent fish on the board. We knew not posting four fish in the afternoon would make it very hard to place but we also knew that the conditions on the water were tough.

I think both of us figured we'd done well but didn't know if we did well enough to place. I couldn't believe that we were even considering the thought of placing. We have a LOT of REALLY good fisherpeeps (cannot forget our ladies) teaching our trout lessons year round in our great state of Colorado. Just to be close was a great feeling.

Team Chuck and Duck Bronze 2014 FBFO

Lou provided a really nice introduction welcoming Team Chuck and Duck up front to accept Third Place at the awards dinner! Bronze Baby! And Ben gets the Biggest Fish award and a new rod to boot!

I've never won an award for fishing before. This was sweet! Bringing home hardware from a hard days fishing. Life is really good. I'm making Ben Most Valuable Fisher (MVF) for the 2014 FBFO. Thanks buddy! Can't wait for next year.

On a very personal note, I would like to thank my Dad who introduced me to fishing at a young age. I learned from the get go that fishing isn't all about catching fish. Thanks Dad! Looking forward to many more write ups.

For more information on fishing the Arkansas River Tailwater in Pueblo Colorado check out my blog at http://jamiesfishingjournal.blogspot.com . To book a trip to this great fishery head over to http://www.steelcityanglers.com/ and talk to Ben and Lou.

Frozen Sun Screen on the Taylor

You learn things when you are a ginger. Things non-gingers may not learn. One of those things is that sun screen will freeze solid. And when that happens you can decide to keep fishing and risk a painful week of batman eyes and ridicule, or you can sit in the car with the heater cranked directly on your bottle of life saving copper tone and warm up enough to feel your face again. I decided to warm up and avoid the lobster skin.

And I needed to warm up. Air temp was -5 when we started fishing at 7:30 and the wind was whipping. It was all I could do to flick a few yards of line out and stiffly rotate like a robot as I followed my indicator downstream. Hook sets were extremely delayed. Dad hooked up first and a 14" brown came up to the surface. "Ah damn it..... get off"..... Hmm... we are freezing our asses off standing in a mountain river in January fishing and we don't really want to hook a fish. Why? because the release part of catch and release will require you to take your gloves off  and hold your hands underwater. I had a moment of self doubt. What the hell was I doing? Why was I fishing when I didn't really want to catch a fish (under 24")? Why are we the only ones fishing one of the most pressured tailwaters in Colorado on a Saturday?

The reason showed up before the sun hit the water. Not the biggest fish in the run but a super nice male brownie. As soon as you see a fish like that on the end of your line everything else goes away. The weather was cold but the fishing was hot. We pulled at least a dozen fish out of the Avalanche Hole before 9:30.

All in all it was a good day of fishing. We both caught double digits and we had fairly steady action throughout the day. The hot pattern for me is what I call a Grinch Egg. It's a chartreuse egg tied on a red hook with a white halo. Killer pattern all over the place.  

I think we had a first on this trip. My Dad managed to switch flies in the hotel room the night before! He was rigged up and ready to go and I was tying some of my leach patterns and he couldn't resist :-)

Breezy on the Ark

Mr. Greene with a nice little bow

I had my eye on the weather last week and Saturday's forecast was pegged as awesome by several people on TV that guess weather for a living. If more than two guesses on different channels happen to be identical then you can be 100% sure that 60% of the time they're right every time. A little Anchorman humor there for you.

Mike, Ben, and I also had the pleasure of having my better half, someone that actually knows how to take a picture, out with us for a little fishing and picture taking. Not only did Alica take some great pics, she managed to get out of 8th St. Walmart on a Saturday morning with a fishing license in hand before the bus left the station (10 minutes, which was announced by some ahole as Alicia was getting out of the truck).

Again, my fellow Colorodeans did not disappoint and were out in droves taking advantage of another beautiful sunny, warm, winter day in Colorado. The only catch was the gale force winds that came along with that warm sunny weather. I always learn something new when I fish and this trip it was not to tell someone how good a run is if it requires them to cast directly upstream into 40 MPH winds! Mike didn't think the run was that great :-)

We weren't on fire by any means but we all caught fish and had a good time. Main thing that came out of this trip for me is that it seems like on descent days in the winter you can pretty much set your watch to the midge hatch that seems to be heaviest around 12:30 - 1 PM. I've tried a bunch of test patterns based on samples I've taken, but to be honest with you a black beauty is hard to beat. Mike did find another midge emerger pattern that was also pretty hot which I will share with you all after the Frostbite Fish-off!

Location:  Anticline Bend
Time: 1:00 PM
Water Temp: 40
Weather: Sunny / Windy 58
Hatch: Midge (fair)
Stage: Pupa/Adult
Size: #18-22
Abdomen Color: Olive / Brown
Thorax Color: Black
Head Color: Black
Wing Color: Clear / Dun
Shuck Color: Light Tan
Sample: Yes

Notes: Sample contains an big adult midge as far as midges go. It was pushing a size 18. Big damn midge!

San Juan River

Dad and Grandpa

This river has a bit of history in my family. My Grandpa and my Dad used to fish it in the 70s. I remember a few times begging to go when I was little and remember getting told that walking in the river is dangerous and that I had to be bigger... Funny the things you remember.

70s Rig

The money rig in those days was a two burlap nymph setup dredged with a slinky weight. They would use a spinning rod and tie a slinky weight on the end of the line with  two 6" droppers  12" and 24" or so above the slinky weight each with a burlap nymph. They would cast out into the current and keep just enough tension on the line to detect a strike. They used to KILL it with this setup. This was back in the day when you could fish right up to the dam and they would be able to cast out to the main current coming out of the dam and get their flies right on the bottom.

Yikes!

I guess hearing about those trips stuck because as soon as I got into fly fishing I was asking to go fishing on the San Juan. My first trip was in 94 I think. I had just barley started fly fishing and actually started out fly tying with burlap nymph patterns.  My Dad would take my buddy Nate and I down to Colorado Springs Sports on Academy and Austin Bluffs to talk to George who was learning us in the ways of fly fishing rigs. He got us tying thread and disco midges once he heard we were planning a trip down to the San Juan. This was a bit of a challenge going from size 12 burlap nymphs to size 22 disco midges! The killer patterns on that trip as I recall were a chamois leach, size 18 red hot, and size 22 olive thread midge. I caught the biggest fish I had ever caught on a fly at that point which was a 19" rainbow on a chamois leach. I was shocked when I netted it!

So after a 20 year hiatus, and a trip up to the North Platte that was canxed due to weather, Ben and I decided to head down south the day after Christmas and get two days, Friday and Saturday,  of fishing in and then drive back Sunday morning.

Not a whole lot has changed in 20 years. Abe's shop is a little bigger and he added a few rooms but it's still Abe's. Rizzo's is now Fish Heads and there is a third shop now which has a descent selection of fly tying materials if you need to tie something up in the room.

Fish Heads has a restaurant which I highly recommend. We were actually able to score prime rib Friday night which was great. They also offer rooms which I may check out next trip. Abe's was more than adequate however if you don't require anything fancy. If you are in your room for anything other than sleeping or showering in Navajo city during daylight you probably need to do more fishing. 

Upper Flats

We hired a guide for the first day which was a good call because it was hard to read the water with it being so off color. Chris, out of Abe's,  put us on a few runs I would never have fished and they fished well.We fished the Kiddie Hole and landed a few to include a nice 18" bow I fumbled trying to get a pic. We then moved up to the upper flats and continued to hook fish fairly consistently.

After lunch we moved downstream. We started a ways above Baetis Bend and worked our way down to the end of the bend. I missed a 20" class fish as the sun was setting on Baetis Bend that hit a midge emerger that I was testing in

Pueblo. I guess that goes to show that a midge is a midge is a midge. Not too much to change other than color and size.

We spent Friday night tying up some flies and rigging up for the next day. Ben has a very unique saying (which I can't repeat here) when he realizes that he missed a rod eye after rigging up. Let's just say that it's probably not the best thing to yell when two dudes are in a hotel room with thin walls.... 

On Saturday we decided to hit Texas Hole. Figured anyone who fishes the San Juan needs to hit Texas Hole at least once and this was Ben's first trip to this river. We hit the water around 8:30 and it wasn't too crowded. That changed quickly though.... Fishing was good and I landed 2 in 4 casts. The fishing tapered off though as the dude hatch progressed. Ben landed a nice 18-20" fish at the top of Texas hole and I missed a nice one in the same area.

After lunch we decided to work our way through the braids. I remember this section from the last trip and have always thought it would be cool to work your way through them searching for large trout. I was right. It was very cool. You can really get back off the main channel of the river. It feels like small stream fishing. The difference is that you are catching 20" brick red bows!

Leach patterns were definitely the ticket this trip. Most of my fish, including these last two shown here took a leach pattern I developed for Rainbow Falls. A chamois leach worked well if tied large enough. The standard 1-2 inch pattern didn't do squat but a 3-4 inch pattern got bit fairly consistently. By the end of the trip we were fishing double leaches. Not the prettiest rig but very effective.

It was a really fun trip overall. It brought back a lot of memories. It's comforting to know that a river you fished 20 years ago is still fishing the way you remembered it. I don't think it'll be another 20 years before I return but I sure hope it continues to fish well for years to come.