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.