Rainbow Falls

I'm not ashamed. I came home and mowed the lawn. Took a quick 2 hour nap and woke up to find out we had a change of plans and our evening was open. Alicia was up to get out of the house. I hadn't been to Rainbow Falls in a while so what the hell.

Back up the hill for round 2. It was a really nice evening. A few light showers mixed in with sun and nice fish. Not as hot as it was this morning but we caught a few nice ones. Nice to get out and decompress after a hard day of fishing.

It did really suck though to have to lather up with the sun screen again after cleaning up. I had to convince Alicia that fishing twice in one day is cool. It was a hassle really. I mean a basically took a break in fishing for a nap and a shower. Is this what it has come to? I need a hardcore 2-4 day backpacking trip with lots of miles between the end of the road and the trout. Who's down?

Oh yeah, the picture. Saw this up on the bank. Not sure how this guy died but I'm sure it was a sweet brown. Crazy teeth!

Rainbow Falls

It was ON this morning at Rainbow Falls. I haven't fished it in a few weeks and it was nice to see it fishing so well. Ben and I started in the creek as usual. An unweighted natural squirrel and copper body slump dead drifted was just destroying them. I used about 3' of 12lb flouro from the fly line and then 2 feet of 3X flouro from that to the fly. Just dead drift the fly and watch the end of your fly line. It'll stop or dart a little. Set the hook and it's on. For a while we got tugs almost every cast. We had to force ourselves of the creek because we wanted to hit some lakes.

Every lake we hit was fishing well. Cougar, Elk, Spring, Palmer...... A small black slump worked with very short hard strips was unbeatable. I had some takes today that almost took the rod out of my hands. Too much fun! Some of these guys were fresh from the mothership and took some runs that would do justice for fish twice their size.

A conservative estimate is 50 fish between Ben and myself between 7AM and noon. Awesome time! No monsters but at least 3 fish were over 20".

Nice mix of fishing lately. Small streams followed by these bubbas. No GoPro footage this trip. Someone forgot to charge the damn thing last night. Not sure what is on tap for next week but the week after is the Fork and the Pan.... he he he he he he he

Middle Fork (Tomahawk)

Mike and I getting ready for some great fishing

Had a great time with Mike and Ben on the middle fork of the South Platte at Tomahawk this weekend. I think this is some of the prettiest water around. Every bend offers a nice run and a few trout. The water was higher than I've ever seen it and the fishing in the morning was great.

It took a few runs to get things figured out. I had a dry and a nymph rod setup and I started out tossing hoppers. I wasn't getting many looks so I switched over to nymphs pretty quickly. Within a few casts it was apparent that the water much faster and deeper than it ever has been when I've fished it before. I really had to use a surprising amount of weight to get my bugs on the bottom. Once I figured that out it was on.

San Juans worked as great attractors. Size 20 Two Bit Hookers and 20 brown Barr Micro Emergers were very effective. I noticed a small golden stone crawling up my leg an immediately tied on a size 16 Flashback Hares Ear which just killed it for about an hour. Caddis were hatching in the PM and Mike did very well on a size 16 Elk Hair Caddis. I had sporadic action on a size 16 Graphic Caddis but things died down pretty good in the PM. I remember the same thing happend to Mike and I last year we fished here. Top rig - tan Sparkle San Juan Worm trailed by a size 16 Flashback Hares Ear. You could leave this on all morning and have a blast. I tie a little Ostrich Ice Dub in the thorax of my Hares Ear and the naturals I saw had the same coloring.

Most fish here are tiny. There is a nice mixing of larger trout though. We landed 4 or 5 over 10 inches and one brown was probably around 14. It's nice when one of these fish hit because you are expecting a little guy to come flying out of the water. Instead your line starts running. Great feeling.

Wet wading was great but I recommend wearing some light wading pants if you are going to wet wade because you do wind up doing some bush whacking along the river. This river can get pretty slick too and I did the dance several times which lead up to full submersion on one occasion.

Beaver Creek (Below Skaguay Reservoir)

It's been a few years since I've been to Beaver Creek but I finally made it back to tag some scrappers. It's always good to mix it up a bit and this place is a nice break from chasing the hogs. Angler's Covey has you covered on directions.

Marty, Ben, and I left Manitou around 5AM. It's about an hour and a half drive to Skaguay. We walked about a half hour down from the dam before we decided to turn around and start fishing back up to Skaguay. It was hard to walk past good water (especially for Ben) but we got down a ways and didn't see another person till we were within a quarter mile of the dam. I'd like to hike down into the canyon one of these days but I've heard that it can get pretty gnarly. Probably better to do that on an overnighter.

The little trout that prowl these waters are very opportunistic feeders and fly selection isn't too important although I did have to go through a few droppers that I thought would be sure winners. I like to use a 3wt 7.5' rod and I normally use a hopper dropper rig. I did try throwing small streamers but didn't get too much action. Best tip for this place is to hug the bank with your hopper. Any hopper pattern trailed by 12" of 5-6X tippet and size 14-18 nymphs (Flashback Hares Ear #16, Copper Cheese #18) will work. Remember to pinch your barbs down since these fish are so small. You really have to put too much pressure on fish this size to removed a barbed hook (even smaller hooks). These little guys do spook easily so stay down and make a little longer cast. If you do it right every bend will give up a little action.

This was my first trip since Alicia got me a GoPro for my birthday and I was excited to check it out. The head mount is actually really comfortable worn over a hat. I couldn't even really tell it was there once I got it adjusted correctly. Using the GoPro is super easy. Two buttons really. One to turn it on and one to start and stop recording. Batteries died before my memory space ran out at about 3 hours of recording. Not bad. Video editing is so so with Windows Movie Maker. Really need to check out some other programs. Actually eyeballing a Mac. Will post the video on FB when it's done.

Very refreshing trip. Absolutely beautiful area. Just being in an area like this is good for the soul. 

Rainbow Falls

Almost forgot to write this one up! Slacker! Ben and I decided to kick off the 4th weekend with some trout harassing at Rainbow Falls. We only fished for a few hours. Fairly slow morning. We picked up a few at Cougar Lake on streamers and then headed up trout creek. We picked up a few on the way to the tubes where we finished the morning.

Streamer fishing has slowed down a bit but there are a few things that I've seen that will trigger a grab. Smaller streamers for one. Go down to a size 12. Larger streamers are getting bumped but not eaten. Loose the bling. Simple black patterns seem to be best. I'm using a size 12 black slump buster a lot. The other thing that I've noticed is that they are getting very specific on the retrieve they want. Very short fast strips followed by a short pause. I'm doing 4 hard, short, fast strips followed by a 1 second pause. Look at your fly in the water when you are doing this. If your fly turns sideways your strips are to long. Don't slow or soften your strips down just shorten them. Strip, strip, strip, pause.. strip, strip, strip, pause. I hold my rod down around my waist and I point my rod tip towards my fly. My rod tip is right at the water level. You should have a straight line of fly line between your rod tip and your fly. Make sure to strip set because I've had several bump the fly and then come back and eat it.