Arkansas River (Pueblo Piggy)

"Oh  my God" is what Ben Lewis managed to get out after hooking the nicest fish I've seen come out of the Arkansas in Pueblo.......

More on that later. Check out this sweet pic of the trout I caught. This thing fought like a mad man! I couldn't believe the runs this thing took. Ok..... it came right in and this was like the first fish I hooked after a few hours of whipping the water.

But Marty. Marty on the other hand had to chase this one downstream for a good 200 yards before bringing him into the net. Marty had to stop fishing for a half hour just to catch is breath. The tail walking this thing did was just incredible. This was after hooking two dozen in a row. ....... Uh.... not really. Same Same. First fish Marty hooked all morning and it came right in too. WTF.... This section (clearly identified in the picture) is usually one right after the other. Flows were up, plenty of water, and three guys trying every trick in the book wound up landing 4 or 5 total in 3 and a half hours of fishing. And then......................

"Oh my God". Ben is just upstream from the bridge from me. He repeats, "Oh my God". I stopped fishing immediately and started for the other side of the bridge. I know Ben pretty well and this was not going to be a small fish. I had no idea what he had really hooked though. I had to go up and cross on the bridge to get to the far side and by the time I got to Ben he was trying to stuff this toad into his net. "Oh my God" is all I could say. What a friggin SLAB!! Ben had to really put some heat on him to keep him out of the current. After a push or two for the main channel this guy just gave up and came right in. He's been through this before. Go on, measure me, take my picture, and put me back. And that's just what we did. I couldn't help myself. I had to ask, "can I let him go". I know. Save the hate mail. Ben was cool and let me let him go. What a fish! A true trophy trout. Colorful (picture doesn't come close). Dark green back and brick red sides. Perfectly defined spots. Huge snub nose. Very healthy. No real scars to speak of. Pretty much a perfect specimen. I thought I would have a minute with him while he recovered. Usually a big fish like this takes a minute to catch his breath. Not this guy. 3 seconds max and he was off! So awesome. This is why we fish. Great moment in time. The trick? A super slow retrieve with an articulated streamer. The take? A barley noticeable "tick" at the end of the line. Guess what? Streamer fishing at Rainbow Falls really pays off! Ben, would you have detected that take last summer?

Oh I suppose you want to see the fish. Try not to drool. Any guesses on length and weight? Yes Ben had good coaching on this pic but don't let that fool you. This thing was a beast.

Rainbow Falls with the Fitch Clan

Another late blog post..... These things pile up quick. I'm doing a lot of fishing! First world problem and happy to have it. Especially when I can go fishing with Fitch Clan. Always enjoy fishing with Michael, Steven, and David. These guys are good. It was a pretty slow night at Rainbow Falls but we all wound up catching fish and had a good time doing it. David was on camera duty and snapped some great shots. Enjoy! Oh yeah, check out the latest edition of "The Tight Line" featuring some sweet pics of Michael and Stephen!

Rainbow Falls (Father's Day)

Great Father's Day weekend! Hit the East Portal on Saturday and headed up to RF Sunday evening. I told the girls that all I wanted for Father's Day was for them to come up to RF with me and fish and pretend they like it! Kensy lucked out and had to work. Madi wasn't so lucky.

We hit a few runs on Trout Creek but things were off. The Pike's Peak Fly Fisher's annual picnic was the day before at RF and I think the trout were pretty worn out. We decided to move down to Cougar Lake. I stripped streamers for about an hour or so with one bite. I decided to switch to a nymph rig and try a slow retrieve. Tied on a 14 Zug Bug and a 16 Graphic Caddis. Third cast and the indicator took a dive and I set the hook. A MONSTER rainbow came up and rolled on the surface. Alicia was standing next to me and let out a gasp. This thing was a true beast. Not just because it got away either. This was a 30" class fish. I was in shock. I only had him on for a few seconds. Just long enough for him to come up and show himself. I have no idea how he came unbuttoned. I got a solid hook set and had that feeling like as long as I let him run he would be netted. This was a really tough one to lose. Especially after having a huge brown follow me up last trip in this same spot only to refuse at the last minute. Carma bank is filling up. I feel a toad coming up soon.

After that kick in the jewels we decided to head back to Trout Creek. We hadn't landed a fish! I was really starting to get worried. I would have stayed all night before getting skunked at RF. We drove up to the first few runs and saw Ben's truck from Steel City. I didn't noticed that it was Ben's truck on the way down to Cougar lake or I would have crowded in on him sooner :-)  I asked Ben if we could fish below him. Ben said no problem and Lou said F3ck no. Get the f3ck out of here. LOL. Love these guys.

Within a few minutes we were hooking and landing fish. Phew.... I was getting worried there for a minute. Ben shared a sweet Caddis pattern and they were killing it. Ben and Lou had been there for a good part of the day and had landed a ton of nice fish.

The action had really picked up so I decided to see if Madi wanted in on it. She did a great job netting a nice bow for me and fought a rainbow for a good few minutes. She said it was fun, shrugged, and walked off LOL... The fishing gene must skip a generation. I believe I could sense Kensy silently thanking her lucky stars that she had to work. I wonder if she was actually on the schedule?

Gunnison River (East Portal)

Back to the East Portal for the first time this year. We were originally planning on hitting the East Portal this spring when the road first opened but it didn't work out this year. Definitely on the radar for next spring!

The Old Man and I headed up to Montrose Friday afternoon. New Alice in Chains, QOTSA, and Sabbath on the ride up! Great ride.  We checked into the Super 8. $80 to save a 4 hour drive at the butt crack of dawn is a no brainer. Coffee is ready at 4 AM and the turn off for the Black Canyon is 5 minutes up the road.

After checking in we hit the strip to find some grub. MacDonalds , Arbys, a few other small places, and Colorado Boy Pizzeria! I could eat Pizza every day of the week and thrice on Sunday. I'm always down for new Pizza and Colorado Boy didn't disappoint. 11" personal pizzas cooked to order in a brick oven. I went for the Pizza Calda (san marzano, mozzarella, pepperoni, mushrooms, hot olive oil, kalmata olives and fresh arugula). One word, delish. Very reasonably priced too. East Portal = stop at Colorado Boy from here on out. Shown here, the Calda in HDR. What a dork.

Caught up on a few blog entries later on in the room. Seems my fishing is far outpacing my writing. I'm struggling every week to keep up. But I haven't missed a trip yet and I'm not about to start.

We hit the canyon at daylight. Wanted to toss some stones early while the fish were looking for them. We waded out to our honey hole and Dad hooked up on the first or second cast. I hooked up a cast or two after that. Ah yes, good to be back on the Gunny. Fishing was hot and heavy for the first half hour then slowly tapered off. Any sort of stone pattern in 12-14 was good for a bite. Rubber legs in a 12 seemed to be the most consistent fly of the morning. I have to say the Gunny has some of the prettiest bows in the state. The colors really come through in the pictures but they were even more vivid in person.

Crazy event of the day - Dad set the hook and snagged the bottom. He was trying not to retail snap
when I hooked a nice bow, probably 17" or so and he was heading for some faster water. Dad put his rod down, got below me,  and was wading out just above the heavy current in a really rocky run. At this point I notice Dad's indicator dart upstream and a 8" bow jumping like crazy out of the water. This little dude had swam up to Dad's hung up rig and picked his fly off a rock! He was fighting
like crazy on a line with no one on the other end. At this point my bow was just about to enter the fast water. We were both distracted watching Dad's rod catch a fish without him, and Dad took a spill. In the process he had to let go of his net which was now heading fast towards some pretty heavy rapids. Dad dove on his net. Picture bending at the waist and doing a power belly flop without leaving your feet. I was holding the trout just above the heavy current just in front of Dad. He came up with the net and started looking all around for the trout that was right in front of him. LOL, he said, "where's the fish.... oh!" and netted the fish. Hilarious! I'm getting a Go Pro.

We didn't manage to hook the big boy we were after and things really died down around lunch so we decided to grab our lunchables and then hit some new water. Pizza Calda to lunchables? Next trip, Pizza Calda for dinner, Pizza Calda to go, Pizza Calda for lunch on the river.

We headed upstream to some runs we did well in last summer. We fished for a good hour up and down these runs without a hit. Crazy! No hatch to speak of but nothing would touch the standard between hatch go to patterns. I even got crazy with a pegged egg sucking leach on a dead drift. Nothing! Stumped on this one. There were fish but they weren't eating anything we had.

Hoping to see a PMD hatch in the afternoon but I think we were a few weeks to early. Last July there was a massive PMD hatch in the afternoon and a size 16 Barr Emerger would have been killer if I had any. I tied a dozen of them last summer specifically because of that afternoon. Will have to wait till next month to hit the PMD hatch.

Back to the honey hole after lunch. Things were dead. Stone bite was off. No hatch, not much activity. Tough afternoon. If we hadn't had such a good morning it would have been a tough day. I even chucked the Chinese Chicken without a look.

As usual no crowd to speak of. I can't believe more people don't fish here. It can be tough but if you know where to fish you will always hook fish in the morning and the afternoons can be great too if you hit a good hatch. I'm not complaining though. Really becoming one of my favorite places to fish.

Rainbow Falls (Mom's First Trip)

Finally got Mom out to Rainbow Falls. She hasn't caught too many fish in the last year or so and I was excited to get her hooked into some nice Donaldson. Dad and Alicia were along for the trip as well. Alicia was on camera duty and man am I glad she was. She managed to get some great fishing pics and capture some of the natural beauty at RF. This picture just blows me away. Such a great instant in time.

We started in the usual spot at Spring Lake. After a few casts.......WTF?  That throw anyone off? That's not our usual spot. Everyone knows that. Hey I have to try and keep things interesting. Throw a curve ball every now and then. We started on Trout Creek of course. I do have to say that things were pretty slow which is still great fishing at RF. Just not nearly as hot as it usually is. A lot of fish are moving downstream in Trout Creek. I think the pressure in the popular spots has caused a lot of the big fish to move down. Evidence? Yes, courtesy of my Alicia. Is this not one of the most tantalizing pics I've posted? Love this pic. If you look closely you'll see a trout that is either just a rebel or really confused. These guys are still pretty fresh out of the hatchery though so I'll cut him some slack. He'll get the hang of it.

Back to the fishing. It was pretty slow but we did manage to hook some nice ones. Mom was on a tear for a while hooking up one after the other. Just took a take or two to knock the rust off. She hooked and landed the fish of the Day! Not bad for someone out of practice. Again, great arm extension. What do we call this? Good coaching - yes you are correct. What do you call the haters that complain about a good arm extension? Correct - jealous.

I'll let Alicia's pics do the rest of the talking. Another really memorable evening in the mountains. This is the good life!

Rainbow Falls

Took a quick evening trip to Rainbow Falls with Alicia. She's really picking things up quickly. It's always a matter of getting over the initial learning curve in fly fishing. Once you have a taste of fly fishing success that's it. You'll tie size 24 flies, you'll stand in a mountain river in January for hours, you'll know what these numbers mean 100, 200R, 5262, 5263 and the difference between these numbers and other manufacturer's numbers... Ok one was a letter but these will jump out at any tying fiend. She's not there yet but she will be... muh ha ha ha ha... I love a woman that can handle a size 24 miracle nymph. Ummmm anyway...

We started out at Trout Creek as we usually do. We fished the first bend down from the tubes. We need to start naming these things. I saw a nice bow feeding in about two feet of water. We hadn't started fishing yet so I called Alicia over and said, "watch this". I tied on a bright pink Gummy Egg (which by the way if you haven't tried yet are great. Still soft but much more durable than an Otter Egg. Use clear mono thread and a little Zap A Gap and you have a soft durable egg). I cast about 10 feet upstream and watched the bright pink ball slowly drift downstream. About two feet from impact the trout slowly and deliberately lined up with the egg and opened the bug trap. Waited a half second, set the hook, and handed Alicia the rod. What a cool thing to see! I'll never get tired of watching a trout take my fly.

We caught several more in the creek but there were some folks fishing my favorite runs. I don't really like to crowd in on people so we decided to head down to Cougar Lake which is always good for a nice trout on a red Chinese Chicken which is really just a really tweaked out red, pink, and purple Meat Whistle. You can see this monstrosity hanging out of a nice trout's mouth in a previous RF post. Sure enough had a good take and set the hook. These Donaldson's really put up a great fight and this guy took a good five minutes to pull in.

Another fun night at RF. Really enjoy fishing the evenings here. Especially on week nights.