Rainbow Falls Fishing Fix

I am a slacker. Just a bit behind on the blog. Between getting a cold and work getting a tad crazy, I have totally neglected my little fishing blog. I am spoiled too. I'm a little bummed to have to postpone a trip with Landon Meyer on the Dream Stream this fall due to extremely low flows out of Spinney. I'm stuck having to catch torpedoes like this instead. Ehhhh I really shouldn't be whining. Well just one more complaint. Summer went a little too quick this year. It goes quick every year. It goes quicker every year. I'm starting to sound like a goth chick. Gotta pull this write up out of the gutter!

Ben and I had such a great day with Project Healing Waters the day before, we had to deal with the only possible drawback to a day like that which is that you are left absolutely jonesing to fish. Had no choice but to go back up Saturday morning. The fish were enjoying a perfect day and were out in force to eat.

Marty and I rode up early. We started in Eagle Lake and hooked fish regularly in Eagle and in Spring. I almost made Ben wait at the gate and watch me catch fish every few casts in Spring. The fish above was hooked about 5 minutes before Ben showed up. Had to put the rod down and let him in the gate. I was a little worried that I would lose the pattern as so often happens at RFs. Things can change in a minute. Oh yeah, you didn't know? Fish are fish, even at RFs (haters, you know who you are :-). But I did the right thing and only made Ben watch me catch one. OK that's a lie. I let him in.


Didn't really matter where you fished. After letting Ben through the gate, I took a few steps over to the inlet at Palmer Lake and landed this one. Marty was hooking up like crazy in Eagle. He had no reason to leave Eagle. He was hooking up like crazy.


Ben headed down to the creek and Marty and I stayed up top for a while and landed a few more. We met up with Ben who had been killing it on the creek and headed down to Cougar. We started off in our normal spot and fished for a few minutes without a ton of action. I remembered something Ben said about a show he watched where a hardware guy always went to the side of the lake the wind was blowing towards and cast into the wind. When I got to that side of the lake I realized that the sun was throwing long pine tree shadows on the surface. There were defined shadows on the water with the sun glaring through the trees. I cast and tried to land my flies just on the sunny side of the shadow line at it's furthest point. Fish were more than willing and I landed this hog within a few casts.

Ben came over to help with the net. After that quick pic he hooked and landed this thing. Action kept up for another half hour or so and we landed a few more nice ones.

Another great trip to RF in the books! Only a month or so left this season. Should get up there at least a few more times and hopefully land a colored up brown.

Rainbow Falls with Project Healing Waters

Ben Lewis and I were lucky enough to get on the Mentors list for the Project Healing Waters - Colorado Springs trip up to Rainbow Falls. Cool for a variety of reasons. Long weekend, Rainbow Falls, October in Colorado, sunny day after a cold windy night, and getting to be a Mentor and fish with a Vet for Donaldson's (Super Trout! (good band name)), bows, cuttys, browns, and brook in a place that I've grown to love over this past summer.

Mick Stefan took the wheel as Trip Lead and coordinated an early morning meet up at Angler's Covey. Mick and Jeff Stahnke took care of business and had everyone heading up the hill in no time. Ben and I rode up ahead while the guys made a subway pit-stop and noticed a lone Jeep Cherokee Sport parked in front of Eagle Lake. 

I don't know if there is a cooler Dude than Dave Herber. First off he sealed the deal on the Rainbow Falls membership Ben and I got at the Fly Fishing Expo this past winter. He started talking about 20 inch trout taking a size 14 Adams on a quick weeknight trip up the hill after a hard days work and Ben and I were toast. Where do we sign?

When Ben and I pulled through the gate Dave was already getting a fire going and when we pulled up he offered us Doughnut Mill doughnuts and hot coffee! This guy is a Saint! Don't let the soft exterior fool you though. He will absolutely out fish anyone. I saw him fish for like 2 minutes during lunch break and he hooked 2 and landed 1. I think he had his subway in his left hand and he was casting with his right. Dave you are the man and thanks for breakfast!

I was teamed up with Rick Rood. This guy has been EVERYWHERE. The grand Army tour so to speak only the places he's been you wouldn't want to visit. Talk about some crazy stories. I had a hard time concentrating on the fish. Rick has been through a lot so I'm glad we were able to spend a day on the water. Thank you for your service Rick!

We wound up putting a dozen or so in the net. We nailed this brown right off the bat. Even prettier in person. We fished the creek in the morning and fished in and around Eagle Lake after lunch. Rick was all over the fishing. I just had to put him in front of some fish. He did the rest. It's a good thing too because I didn't want to impart any of my bad habits!

One of the best days I've had at Rainbow Falls! I can't wait for next year.

Dave put together an awesome vid of the trip. You can see a fancy net trick at the 4:10 mark!

Arkansas River (Pueblo)

Poor little guy lost his lower lip somewhere in the bait section.

With a late night trip to RF the evening prior, Ben and I got a late start on the Ark on Saturday. We decided to fish up towards the dam. The water was dirty and warm. I NEED to get a thermometer. I've been saying that for years. Need to just make it happen. I'm not sure how warm the water was but it seemed noticeably warm. I'm going to go ahead and blame the fishing on the warm water. I've never done great in dirty water but have certainly had better days than we did on Saturday in it.

The flow was in the mid 200's. Great flow for that river. It was harder to find the deeper runs below the dam with the dirty water. I have a general idea of where they are at but without being able to see the bottom they were harder to find. We sort of worked our way down the north bank to find the drop off. I did find one pod of fish but only managed to snag one brown and a sucker. Ben pulled probably the biggest sucker I've seen come out of the river. Now he has the record for trout and suckers between us! Show off.

After fishing this section for a while we went down and hit the Martini hole off of 4th street. We fished it hard and Ben fished the nice runs above it but we didn't have much luck. 4th street section seems to either be great or terrible depending on the day. 

It's been a tough October fishing so far! We are putting in our dues for sure this month. But you know what they say about a bad day fishing....

Rainbow Falls 10/4/13

Another weekend kickoff at Rainbow Falls last night. Temps dropped significantly yesterday and it was a cool 40ish when Mike, Ben, and I pulled up on Cougar Lake. It actually started snowing on us a bit! What happened to summer?

I decided to mix things up a bit and fish the lakes with a two "fly" nymph rig instead of slinging meat right away. I used a pink San Juan up top and a Chartreuse egg on the bottom AKA Steak and Eggs. Now if you fish with a bamboo rod and don't use synthetics when tying flies this might not be the rig for you but it catches a TON of fish so it works for me. This 20 incher hit the egg. Yes the grass is still green and I'm all bundled up but I'm not used to fishing in the cold yet!

We pulled a few more out of Cougar and decided to run up and hit Elk where I don't think I'd be comfortable wading knowing the beasts that lurk in it's depths. I keep expecting to see Jeremy Wade filming there after hearing about some of the yellow alligators pulled from Elk (like this one caught earlier in the year - yes have to show it again - look at that kipe! - and since the water is shut off on the Dream this will have to fill in for my big brown this year). Sad... how many selfies I have. My teenage daughters aint got nothin on me.

Elk was on fire for 20 minutes or so! We were all hooking up regularly on pink, apricot, and chartreuse eggs. Mike hooked up and lost one due to a poor knot and right after that Ben and I hooked up. If someone could tie a knot we would have had triples on Elk! Sorry Mike..... (by the way Mike didn't tie that knot....)

On top of my crappy knot tying I turned to Ben and said, "Man I hope this keeps up". Strike two, someone flipped the switch and everything
stopped. Why does anyone fish with me?  At that point I decided to go hit the far corner of Elk. I walked all the way to the far corner and was still receiving direct mind bullet hits from Ben.

We continued to fish for a while after dark without much luck. Still haven't figured out night fishing at RF. I'm thinking we need to hit the wee hours of the morning. That may take some smooth talking with Richard to pull that off.

Black Magic Woman (Dream Stream Take 2)

How can a place so pretty be so cruel? I had a major flare up of troutenvyitis and decided to hit the Dream Stream again last night after work with Ben. Facebook is filling up with MONSTER brown trout supposedly caught in this beautiful yet cold hearted bitch of a river. And I only say that because of what she pulled with me last night.

We started at the bridge and fished our way down. We hit the bridge hole for about half an hour without so much as a bump. I did have a large brown follow me right up to my feet and then turn at the last minute. That gave me false hope. She knew what she was doing. We worked our way downstream as the sun was setting. The river is LOW. Very hard to find deeper water. Especially in the dark. We worked our way down a ways and then came back up to the bridge without a hit.

It was completely dark and with the water being so low we figured we'd just try to get dialed in better at the bridge hole to see what we could snag. For me that managed to be a massive clump of weeds. I pulled my line in and grabbed the clump of weeds with my left hand and brought it up under my head lamp so I could clean my hook off with my right. I noticed the two giant meat hooks in my hands at precisely the same time the freak of nature I had pulled from the depths started moving frantically to get back in the water. My heart was still in my throat when I stopped peeing. I didn't know there were lobster in the Dream Stream. Oooooo you evil woman.....

Big thanks to Ben for not being around at the time and for taking the awesome pic (the only pic) of the trip. I did manage to catch a 6" brown so I didn't get skunked but she got her dig in. I'll be back!