Frying Pan River

25" 9# Brownie

I don't even know where to start to describe this trip. It was one of those trips that border on "epic". It didn't start out great but quickly changed for the better.

Dad, Mike Greene, and I left for Basalt Friday afternoon around 1. We needed to take a detour to the Orvis outlet in Denver so I could use my Orvis gift card on a pair of waders. Long story short I sent in a pair of waders for repair and they sent me a full refund in a gift card (always good customer service). Very cool store if you are ever in Denver. I picked up a pair of Silver Sonic waders and the guy gave me a coupon for $25 off at the register. With that and the gift card I paid $98 for them. I LOVE Orvis! For a full review on these waders check out John Kleis' blog entry here .

We stayed at our usual digs in Basalt, The Green Drake Inn. Nice place but I had brought a small DVD player to watch some fish porn that night and they didn't have the TV remote and there was no way to select a video input for the TV.... Alicia had gone and loaded up on chick flicks and came home to no DVD player. Sorry babe! I'm a bone head. Especially when it comes to a Frying Pan trip. OK I'm wandering...

On to the good stuff. We woke up at 4 and planned to do some fishing before daylight. We arrived an hour before daylight (that is before driving past our turn and heading up past the reservoir in the dark because we were too busy discussing social security of all things) only to find a car in the parking lot. Bummer! Love the Frying Pan and have fished the entire stretch from the damn to Basalt but I REALLY love the toilet bowl (along with the rest of the state - more to come on that later). We walked up to the damn and there was one guy there. We don't like to crowd up on people so we were discussing what we were going to do when we started talking to the guy. He had been there since midnight doing some night fishing and was getting ready to leave. Score! Nice guy who appreciated us not just jumping in the run all around him.

The flow was around 40 which is the lowest we had ever fished this river and it was dark so it was hard to get dialed in right away. We are used to fishing this river at at least twice this flow and the current coming out of the damn was a lot lighter than what we are used to. I set Mike up at the top of the run and tried to get him dialed into getting his flies on the bottom and feeling a hit. Mike picked it up quickly and landed this nice 20" bow. This was Mike's biggest trout ever but he would quickly break his record.

Dad, Mike, and I started rotating out of the head of the hole as we each caught fish. Mysis were the obvious choice but we also hooked some fish on egg patterns. Pretty much any Mysis size 14 - 22 worked well but especially those patterns that you can't find in the shops :-). I could go on and on about these fish. Big, strong, and colorful. We wound up catching 10 fish over 20" and probably 60-70 fish altogether. We were all totally worn out at the end of the day. It's awesome that such a place that gets so much pressure still has as many big healthy trout that it does. I think that says a lot about most of the people that fish these popular tail waters.

Mike caught 2 fish over 20". The two biggest trout he's ever caught. I was really happy to see Mike landing big fish. I think he REALLY has the bug now. Mike also landed this beautiful cut-bow which is one of the nicest I've ever seen.

Dad wound up with two fish over 20" including a football of a brown. The bigger browns in this run don't have many spots along their bodies. It's almost like it's a cross between a cutthroat and a brown only there are no red marks along the bottom jaw like a cutthroat has. I'm not sure if such a fish exists but if it does it may be what we are seeing here.

I wound up catching the biggest brown I've ever caught. It took about 15 minutes to get him in because he got hooked by both my flies. It wound up going 25" and weighed just over 9 pounds! Awesome fish.

Here is the good stuff. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. I'll close with a few words on foul hooked fish and fishing etiquette.

FIRST UP THE BOWS

NOW FOR THE BROWNS

You do wind up foul hooking some fish in this run. You can't help but foul hook some fish when you are fishing a run as packed with trout as this run but you should NOT be trying to foul hook fish as I've seen guys through the years trying to do in this run. It's important to know when to set the hook and when not to. It can be hard because some takes are very subtle. Especially the bigger fish. This just takes time to learn. You can usually tell right away if a fish is foul hooked. If you aren't feeling good head shakes and you feel a steady "swimming" type of feeling then the fish is probably foul hooked. If you do foul hook a fish it's best to just horse them in and get the fight over quickly in order to not wear them out too much. If they break off or pull out - no biggie - they'll live to take your fly another day.

A few words on fishing etiquette. No one likes to be overrun when fishing a popular spot. At the same time nobody owns these popular spots. We had a guy come up around daylight and started talking with us. He was polite and asked if we minded if he fished with us. We said we didn't mind and even though it was extremely tight with 4 guys crowding the damn, it was better than hogging the run and getting in an argument. The guy was a nice guy and I enjoyed fishing with him. I would encourage everyone to do the same thing. On another note - we had guys that just walked up and started casting in front of us. This is not the approach to take with people. Most of the time if you just ask someone if they mind if you jump in they will let you do so.

I'll admit that in my day I've told some people to get lost when trying to fish next to me. I don't know if I'm getting mellower or if it's just the few grey hairs that are starting to replace red ones but I've learned to just let things slide and it makes for a much more enjoyable day of fishing. It doesn't matter who it is, you will always learn something new from another fisherman. I think that you just have to have the right mind set when fishing places like the toilet bowl. If you don't want to be around people when you are fishing then these popular places are not the places for you.

Had a GREAT time with Mike and Dad. This is one for the books, at least the blog. Will remember this trip for a long, long time.