Middle Fork (Tomahawk)

Mike Greene making a cast 

Got away from the crowds this week and headed up to the Middle Fork of the South Platte River. This river is typically less crowded than other rivers around Denver / Colorado Springs. If you can go on a weekday you can basically have the river to yourselves. We only saw two other anglers the whole day!

Tomahawk has some of the nicest water within an hour and a half from Colorado Springs. It winds through a beautiful valley with snow capped mountains in the background. Every bend of the river offers up perfect runs, riffles, and undercut banks. The trout aren't huge but they are aggressive and each run holds several nice rainbows and browns.

We started fishing around 7 and worked our way upstream from the dirt parking lot. We immediately started hooking fish. The hot ticket in the morning was a San Juan Worm / Bead Head PT combo. There was a heavy midge hatch in the morning and a sporadic BWO hatch but the trout seemed to be keying on to BWO nymphs. The trick to this river is stealth. You need to keep your distance and stay low at each run. These trout are wild and spook easily. If you stay low and make a descent cast you will be rewarded with little gems like this.

After lunch we hiked downstream about a half mile from the dirt parking lot and started fishing upstream back to the Jeep. This section of river opens up a little and gives you a little more room to cast. The trade off is less deep bend runs. Never-the-less we continued to hit trout on just about every bend. Mike switched to a dry dropper rig and had some luck on a size 14 yellow Simulator. It was fun seeing little 4-8" trout coming up to eat that fly! They couldn't even fit it in their mouths.

We each landed over a dozen trout and had many many more on. This is such a fun little river and it's very refreshing getting away from the pig chase. I will be heading back up here this fall for the chance to land a large brown from Spinney in such a fun little river to fish. Had a great time with Mike who is always a pleasure to fish with.

I wanted to get a little fish catching action on video and since we were regularly hooking fish I thought it would be a good chance to do so. Below are a few videos of Mike and I hooking into fish. Not huge by any means but you get a feel for how peaceful it is fishing here.

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