Stillwater Zap

Ben hooking up early

Been in a bit of a writing slump as of late. Have two half written blog posts that I just can't seem to whip finish. I like to write when I can just sit down and have it pour out and that just hasn't happened lately for one reason or another. But today I have a sudden urge to write pages. I got two shocks to the system yesterday, one good and one bad but both have me dying to type away. Let's start with the good.

I met Jon Kleis a few years back at the Angler's Covey. I think it was at a fly tying night but can't remember for sure when I first met Jon. Sometimes you run into people and you instantly know you are on the same wavelength. Jon and I got along right off the bat. There are a few areas that we line up perfectly on. Fishing is an obvious first. Not just fishing in general but our thoughts on the sport like why we enjoy it, why we fish flies that catch fish, why we like to keep the BS to a minimum, etc, etc, etc. List just seems to go on and on.

Jon Kleiss

We have been wanting to fish for a LONG time but life happens and it's just taken a while to sync up. Things have a way of working themselves out though and through the power of the interwebs I received two tantalizing bread crumbs that lead to an awesome day of fishing at Spinney Mountain Reservoir. The first was an email from Angler's Covey that, in summary, said that I spend way too much money in their shop. They didn't come right out and say it but that's the message I got when they told me how many Perkville points I've accumulated through purchases in the shop. I started to do the math to figure out exactly how much I've spent to get those points but I don't like math and I didn't really want to know anyway. What I was interested in learning was that I had enough points for a full day guide trip for two. The next thing that hit me was that Spinney had just opened and Jon had been up there dialing things in twice since opening day. Pretty much a no brainer at that point. We toyed with the idea of Cheesman but we both knew where we should really go. It took a ton of arm twisting to get my fishing buddy Ben Lewis on board. Lots of phone calls and emails back and forth..... but you know that is a lie.

Other than Rainbow Falls, I haven't fished a lot of stillwater. I've fished Spinney once in the recent past and caught a few nice fish but I've never got the same feeling fishing stillwater that I do on a river. I hate to say it but the stillwater fishing I've done in the past felt a lot like bobber fishing. I don't have a belly boat so other than tossing streamers I'd just cast out and stare at my bobb.... errrr strike indicator until I went cross-eyed.

Had to get a shot of the doubles!

The fishing this trip started out as expected. I figured we'd be casting nymphs and working them slowly, with a twitch every now and then. That's pretty much what we did at first. We were catching fish though. John had us rigged up at a perfect depth so that our trailing fly was just barely catching some underwater vegetation every now and then. That really kept us on our toes because ticking the bottom and some of the takes we got were identical. Fly selection was not as I expected which was good. We fished a two fly nymph rig and fish were biting on both flies. We were using...... ah, gotcha on that one..... Sorry but for that juicy tidbit you'll have to hit Jon up! Ben and I both caught fish and we even had doubles. I can't ever remember getting a picture of two fish in the net. What a blast (guess which one is mine :-))! We were just getting settled in when the wind showed up.

Wind coming in on Spinney

Have you ever gone fishing and been happy when the wind showed up? I didn't know it at the time but I was about to change my mind about wind when it showed up in force mid morning. It was like someone flipped a switch and I went from calm relaxing casts with gentle takes to battling chest high white caps that made it hard to just keep upright. I was fighting like a mad man to cast and then to keep my line mended in the waves. That is where our Guide made all the difference. Jon stepped in and showed me how to work with the wind and waves and not against them. Totally counter intuitive for a guy who has spent years keeping his line mended on rivers. I was basically getting a drift on a lake! Totally opened my eyes to stillwater possibilities.

FUN FUN FUN

The wind really picked things up. We had the right rig, flies, and technique and we really started to hit them. The takes in the morning were pretty subtle but when you have two foot white caps and a trout grabs your fly, your indicator goes under! This was unbelievably fun. It felt like hooking up on the swing at the end of a river drift. Every cast was ripe with anticipation and for good reason. We spent the rest of the morning into the early afternoon landing one fatty after another. It was a mixed bag of hens and bucks. All of the boys had kypes. It was really fun fighting and landing fish in waves. I can imagine that surf fishing feels a lot like what we were doing in the middle of Colorado! I can't even describe what it's like to see a trout fight waves on it's way back out to "sea" after the release. Unreal... 

Chad Ries. Miss you already Man

It's times like these that you can take for granted. We get in our day to day routines and hopefully pepper them with experiences like this but all too quickly we are back to the grind stone waiting for the next weekend. It's rare to get a zap that level sets you again and makes you really think about how good you have it. For me that zap came from my Buddy Chad who tragically passed away on Friday doing what he always did which is to help people. You hear about "shirt off their backs" kinda guys all the time but Chad truly did set the standard for living right. Chad, you passed this life with flying colors. You are missed by many. On to the next Brother.

All of these pictures were taken by Jon Kleis in between helping us out with technique and netting fish. We didn't even know he was taking some of these. What a treat it was to get these the day after the trip. Chad, this is our church and these are for you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 RIP Brother