Frying Pan River

Another great trip to the Pan this weekend. Ben, Marty, Dad, and I headed up on Friday afternoon to Basalt. We pulled in to The Greene Drake around 4PM and unloaded the mass of gear in the car. If you haven't eaten at Basalt's only Pizzeria you are missing out. Didn't catch the name of it but it's the only Pizza joint in town. There have been several other Pizza places in the same place but they had been shut down for a while. Good to know there is a new one that is worth checking out. Hope it stays open for a while. It's over by the 711.


After stuffing our faces we headed over to Taylor Creek Fly Shop. I have always been impressed with the mount they have on the wall. I asked Scott (can't remember his last name) who was working there about it and he stated that one of their guides found it dead one day. They called DOW and they allowed them to mount it. It was something like 25 pounds! Amazing the type of fish the Frying Pan can produce. I'm not sure how you would ever land something like this but it would be on my mind trying to fall asleep later on at The Green Drake!

After that it was back to the hotel for a marathon Klies's Mysis tying fest. I tied up 18 or so of this saweet pattern in various sizes / eye colors. John has used these on the Taylor with great success but to my knowledge this would be the first time this pattern was fished on the Pan. I was really excited to see how they did. We have the toilet bowl pretty dialed in so I knew we'd be putting this fly right on the nose of some huge trout. It was going to be hard to get to sleep this night!


Normal crazy drill in the morning. Wake up early, drive to the toilet bowl, turn the corner to see if anyone is there, warm up in the truck till brave enough to head out into the cold. If the fishing wasn't so good I would forget about this hole altogether. It gets pretty crowded and not everyone is polite about crowding in. We were the only crazies this morning and it wasn't hard to figure out why. It was 4 degrees on the thermometer and the wind was blowing like crazy. It must have been at least -10 degree wind chill. Way too cold to do any sort of productive fishing. But...... if you want to fish the toilet bowl you have to get there early.

Once the sun came up and we could feel our faces we started dredging Klies's Mysis right below the damn. Ben hooked up on his second cast with this really nice male bow. Couldn't believe the kype on this guy. Orange Klies's Mysis #16 on the board! Could be the first Pan fish caught on that bad boy. Ben, hands numb, a little delirious from the cold, flipped his half frozen line back in the water and WHAM! Another victim! This was a BIG GIRL! At this point I'm sure Ben had no feeling in his hands. I can imagine that fighting this fish was like holding the rod with your elbows! He was able to get this girl in the net and show her his "O" face. Really fat 23" hen! What the hell were we on to here? This was shaping up to be the most epic day on the Pan ever.

The action kept up for the next hour. Ben had to run up to the car after this second catch to keep his hands from falling off. Almost immediately after he left I stepped into the head of the run and hooked a BEAST! This thing tried to jump but was only able to get her shoulders out of the water before flopping over. Marty was right below me and was just as blown away by this as I was. This was a 25" class fish in the 8lb range. She took me right up under the damn almost all the way up to where the water drops in. In my experience fishing this hole, only the big guys and gals are able to do this. I knew this was a big fish! She stayed in the head of the run and I was confident I was going to land her. Dad was bringing the big net up to the head of the run when the hook pulled out........ Ouch!! Tough to lose these fish but we were only 15 minutes into the trip! Guess what she hit? That's right folks. Did I mention that the Klies's Mysis is currently under investigation by the DOW? They are trying to determine if that fly falls under the "bait" category.

Whoops! Like the belly shot though

We kept at it and kept hooking into big fish. I landed a 23" and a 24" bow and Marty landed a 22" bow. This was amazing. We were an hour into our trip! Then....... someone flipped the switch. Everything stopped. I really think that fish migrate throughout the day in the toilet bowl. I think there are always fish with their noses on the damn outlet but you can see fish moving in and out of the main run. In  the afternoon Ben and I went to the far side of the hole and they were stacked up like crazy. A number of factors could influence this movement but I think that pressure in the main run has a lot to do with it. It seems like on past trips the migration continued for most of the day with action coming in waves. I also believe that Mysis Shrimp swim in schools and that the amount of Mysis Shrimp coming through the damn happens in quick spurts.  It seems like when one guy hooks up on a Mysis pattern someone else does almost immediately. These schools could be in different areas of the reservoir during different times of the day.  The fish in this hole may have become conditioned to this and know the times of day that the most shrimp are available and move into the head of the run and deal with the fishing pressure because the pay off is worth it in caloric intake. I'm sure the weather and any hatches that occur also play a role in this migration but haven't seen any noticeable patterns to key in on yet.

Even though it was a slow afternoon it was a great trip overall. Any time you land fish of this size it is a good day! We also had the chance to land some bigger fish and that is all you can ask for. Size #16 orange eyed Klies's Mysis seemed to be the ticket for most of the day but we did also land some on #12 - #14 with yellow eyes and black eyes.

I'm beginning to miss the lower sections of the Pan. The last several times we've fished it the toilet bowl has been open. It's hard to walk away from it. I miss fishing the flats, beatis bridge, the bend hole.......etc. One of these trips the toilet bowl is going to be taken. I think I'll be OK with that. Looking forward to hitting the rest of the river this summer!

Arkansas River (2013 Frostbite Fish-Off)

Had an awesome time at the Frostbite Fish-Off! This was the first tournament that Ben and I have been in and it was a really fun experience. This tourney is run by the Southern Colorado Greenback Chapter of TU  and Steel City Anglers. Most of the proceeds go to the Arkansas River in Pueblo so it is really worth supporting and a helluva good time. In fact, there are pictures of the river improvements currently in the works on the river on Steel City Angler's FB page that were made possible, in part, by the proceeds of this tourney.

We showed up on Friday night to draw our beats and I ran into Chris Ramos and Mark Puterbaugh. I went to high school with Chris and had the pleasure of meeting Mark. We sat together for the beat drawings. Ben and I decided to go with Team Chuck and Duck for our team name due to the finely tuned casting technique that we have both acquired over years of dedicated practice. The teams were called up one by one to draw a morning beat and an afternoon beat. There was a large map of the river laid out across a pool table that everyone hurried over to after they drew their beats. Team after team went up and drew their beats. Ben and I started to get worried after 15 or so teams out of 18 were called. I was starting to think I screwed up our application. We were the next to the last team to be called up. Ben drew beat 16 for the morning session and I drew beat 4 for the afternoon session. A quick trip to the pool table revealed that we had done pretty well. Beat 16 is just around the first bend up from the Nature Center and beat 4 included the hatchery outlet. Nice! We had good beats. Now it was up to us.

We showed up Saturday morning at 7 to sign in and grab breakfast. We signed in and decided to head to "Arribas" for a breakfast burrito. I've been told the food is good there and it is. Convenient location. Going to have to make it a regular stop. After breakfast we decided to head to beat 16 to scout out the water. This is the beat around the first bend upstream from the Nature Center. We climbed up on the high bank and were able to spot some trout at the head of the run. Most of the run was a deep slow channel on the far bank. My Dad had come down for the morning session to watch the action (I use that term loosely) and set up camp in the middle of our beat. We met our Controller and at 9AM EXACTLY I made my first cast.

A BITE! Whoahh - first cast in the first tourney I've ever fished and I had a bite. Unfortunately it surprised the hell out of me and I didn't get a good hook set. Rookie mistake. This was going to be a productive run! Ben and I took turns fishing. Only one angler could have his line in the water at a time. We didn't have a specific system worked out we just decided to get a few good drifts in and then switch it up. We did this for the next 2.5 hours without a fish! WTF over - Ben and I were pretty discouraged at this point but we Cowgirled up and kept at it. With about 20 minutes left in the tourney Ben got a hit and landed a nice 15.5" rainbow. I netted the fish and then turn around and made a cast. BOOM! Hit and landed a 17.5" rainbow. Two fish within 4 minutes out of 3 hours of fishing! CRAZY. Ben and I were thinking we were going to have to skip lunch because it would have sucked going in there and posting goose eggs. We ended the morning session with 33" of trout. Not great but not terrible.

We went back to the Sports Garden for lunch and the morning results were posted. Lots of 20"+ fish were caught including a nice 22.5" brown caught by Tim Hannan on Team Angler's Covey (Tim's write up can be read here) . Biggest fish was a 23.5" brown caught on a streamer. There were some good fishermen fishing in this tourney! 70"+ of trout put you in the running we were at 33"..... Had a lot of work to do in the PM.

We finished lunch and headed to beat 4. This beat includes the outlet of the hatchery and is an excellent piece of water. The Team that fished this beat in the morning did VERY well so the pressure was on. I hooked up pretty quick with a 14". It was good to get on the board quickly after the morning's session. Things were looking up when I hooked into and landed an 18" rainbow. This beat was going to be awesome! Two more rainbows, 14.75" and 16" were landed and we had 4 fish on the board! Saweet! Now we needed to replace some of those smaller fish with some Pigs! Queue the fish switch...... Everything turned off.... Not another landed fish for two hours. Very strange day. The weather was strange and there was a front moving in so I think it really affected the fishing.

****NO WAY THAT JUST HAPPENED*****
Towards the end of the session I broke off a rig. I knew we didn't have much time left and I asked our Controller how much time we had. He said, "3 and a half minutes". Ben was fishing the run below the hatchery outlet. I had Marty's 4wt Orvis Clearwater II that I had broken a rig off of earlier. I decided to generate a desperation rig consisting of a 4wt Orvis Clearwater, 3X tippet, and a huge olive Meat Whistle. I rigged it up and asked the controller, "how much time"? "You have 30 seconds". I told Ben that I was casting and he pulled his line out of the water. I was in the slack water just to the right of the drop off below the hatchery outlet. I cast just above the drop off and started stripping hard - strip - strip - strip - BOOM!!! Big slab of red comes up to the surface. Holy Shit!!!! This could be the fish of the tournament. I had him stuck on a big hook with 3X tippet. He is mine!!!! I started loading the reel with slack line and I heard a SNAP! Everything went slack and I looked down to see half a rod in the water. This Pig had just snapped Marty's rod in two!!!! The fish spit the hook and the tournament was over! My controller looked at me and said, "no way that just happened". He saw the fish when it came up to the surface. Unbelievable!!! There were probably 15 seconds on the clock when this fish hit. I would have had 10 minutes to land him. Not only did I loose the fish of the tournament but I have to pay for Marty's rod repair! What a kick in the nuts!!

But- it makes for an awesome story and I had a great time. I kept a section of the broken rod as a souvenir. I'm the ass-hat that tried to strip a Meat Whistle on a 4wt anyway. Another lesson learned the hard way. Can't wait for next year!!! We wound up in 7th place out of 18 teams. Not bad for a couple of amateurs. The official score card can be found here.