South Platte (Charlie Meyers SWA)

Week 3 of the pursuit for a big spawning brown at the Dream Stream today. Not only that but is Marty's birthday. We were due for some big fish and our persistence paid off. 

Ben, Marty, and I got to the parking lot around daylight. More cars at daylight each week. I didn't see any duck hunters on this trip which made me a little more comfortable. I'm all about taking it all in but draw the line at shotgun pellets whizzing past my head along with my streamer. And speaking of taking it all in check out this sunrise we were treated to!


I decided to change up my tactics this week by carrying two rods. One with a streamer and one with an egg pattern. The last two weeks I concentrated on streamer fishing and caught some nice browns and learned a lot but hadn't landed the big brown I was after. If there is one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you can't force feed a trout.

For my loyal reader out there - Here is a good tip on eggs. Get some small plastic beads the size of a trout egg. If you buy "Trout Beads" the already come with a nice red dot on them. If you don't want to spend the extra money for those use a little red nail polish to add an egg yolk. Cut a 12" piece of 6lb mono, put it through the bead and tie two overhand knots to secure the bead in the middle of the mono. Epoxy the knot. Use a size 18 hook and tie the mono around the hook and tie two overhand knots. Wrap the mono in opposite directions once and tie two more overhand knots. Cut the tag ends and epoxy the knots around the hook to secure in place. The epoxy looks like "egg milk" AKA fish sperm. This is basically a peg egg without having to do the peg egg. It also holds the egg of the hook so that you get the max hook gap out of your hook. Peg egg works fine but I always thought that the fish may get turned off by the hook floating 2" next to the egg. Egg yarn works too but it takes a little longer to tie. Soft eggs are great but don't stand up to catching fish. This pattern is almost indestructible. Don't forget to pinch down the barb. Last piece of this puzzle is to tie this "fly" on with a non-slip mono loop. Allows the fly to move freely and, in my mind, if the stars align and this fly is floating correctly in front of the fish, the only thing the fish is going to see is the egg. No hook, epoxy, or tippet.  Here is a pic of the fly I landed this brown on. Only had this fly on. No dropper. Want to try something new? Tie a group of three beads together. Haven't tried that yet.

OK - on to the fishing. We started at the bridge parking lot and walked upstream about a quarter mile. Things started off slow but picked up as soon as I started using the bead egg. I was at the top a long deep bend hole fishing the drop off. I had a VERY subtle take and set the hook. I felt two big head shakes and new this was not a small fish. He took a few short runs and then came up to the surface and right into the net! I like strong fighting fish but when you know you have a big one on a little cooperation is always nice! This guy wound up being 20" (just under really but he had been sitting for a while) but one of the nicest 20" trout I've ever landed. I almost didn't get a pick of him. I went to lift him out of the water for a pic and he decided to start fighting. He landed in the river outside of the net. I don't think I've ever displayed such cat like reflexes as I did pouncing on that trout. I willed him into my hands and back into the net! I was NOT done with this guy yet! Thank God I grabbed him because this was one awesome fish!


We quickly caught up to the mob that was spreading from the parking lot upstream and decided to start working our way downstream. We each hooked several more on the way back downstream and things really started to pick back up just above the bridge. I was fishing a deep bend hole and missed a nice fish I never saw. Shortly after that Marty hooked this NICE cutbow on a Rapala. After he hooked it he said this is a nice fish! I started hauling ass upstream with a net until he said "I think it's a sucker". Bummer! I had been burned earlier by a thick 18" sucker. I kept looking though and it didn't look like a sucker to me! This was a nice trout! I got up to him just in time to get him in the net as Marty's line was breaking! It would have been heartbreaking to miss this one.

What an awesome half day on the Dream Stream! Unfortunately not everyone can respect our wildlife resources that we have in this state. We saw Fish and Game at the bridge while we were getting out of our waders and they were drawing a crowd. A group of three had been using bait at the bridge hole and had a stringer of 20 trout! Thankfully someone had seen them and reported them. Unbelievable! We walked over to see what was going on and were quickly turned around by the Warden. I was able to see the bucket of dead trout though. Really frustrating. On a good note the majority of folks we encounter on our rivers are law abiding fisherman who are good stewards of our resources.