The Road to a 10lb Brown (Part 1)

Early spawner caught further up towards the dam

So far behind on my journal! Too much fishing / fly tying, and not enough writing. I really do enjoy writing when I actually sit down and do it and I've already gone back and read a few write ups from a year or two ago. It's fun to relive those trips. This journal has actually turned into a fun twist in my fishing life as well. There are a lot of cool peeps in Colorado and I have met some of them because of my journal. I'm happy to think that I'm going to meet more of you this spring and summer. I become a better fisher every time I talk with someone and am always very happy if I can pass on a tip that helps someone else.

So since I'm three trips behind and they've all been to the Dream Stream, I figured I'd turn the last three trips into a little mini series. The trips started off good and just got better. There were plenty of 20" + fish on these trips and the last trip yielded an absolute specimen of a 10lb brown. That will hopefully provide you with a little motivation to keep reading.

This first trip was right around the time the cutthroat were beginning to run. A flow increase kicked everything off and when Ben and I pulled up to the gauging station parking lot it was already packed. Despite what some people might think the spring and fall spawns here are no secret.

We decided to check the next parking lot upstream and were amazed to see an empty parking lot. It was too tempting to pass up. We decided to fish upstream and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We knew we wouldn't have the numbers of slabs upstream but it was great to be able to move from bend to bend and fish whatever we wanted.

Nice Cutty caught by Ben

I started off with eggs but it quickly became apparent that wasn't going to be the ticket that day. On to the midges.... I really do prefer fishing heavier tippet and bigger flies but I like catching fish more. So when the pig rig isn't working you have to change things up.

I switched to my normal small red annelid / black midge pupa rig and covered a few bends. Missed a few but wasn't hooking up the way I thought I should be. I covered quite a bit of water and hadn't seen too many fish. I decided head downstream to a bend that I knew had a long deep run. I figured since I wasn't seeing many fish that they were probably holed up in the deeper runs.

No doubt about it. That day was all about finding where they were holed up. After a few depth adjustments I was into fish. At that point any fly seemed to be good for at least a hit. I wound up catching fish on eggs, midges, and leeches.

Mini hawg stuck on a Polish rig

Another method that worked great once I dialed it in was to use a Polish nymph rig. I had recently picked up a DVD called "European Nymphing with Jack Dennis & Vladi" (yes Vladi as in the Vladi Worm). This DVD won't really wow you on production quality but it is absolutely packed with information on the history of European Nymphing, different rigs and techniques, flies and gear. After watching I realized that I've used some of these techniques for a while without really knowing it. But I did change up a few things to get closer to a true Vladi rig and it worked great. My anchor fly was a large tan woven bead head (that looks to me just like a cranefly larva) and my point fly was an egg. Worked really well and pulled my biggest fish of the day on my anchor fly using this technique.

Little did we know that this was just a quick warmup to what awaited us the following weekend.

Work Sucks, I'm Going Fishing

Spots!

I have spring fever. It's too early to have it but I do. We've been getting some nice days here in Colorado and I always get excited when we do this time of year because I know spring is not far off. Not far off but not really that close either.

Friday was a nice day except for the wind. And the wind was terrible! I couldn't help it though. Like I said I have spring fever. I starting thinking about fishing about 10 minutes into my work day. Terrible... Like a bolt of lightning a thought hit me. Wrap things up early and get your ass to the Blue. I didn't fight it one bit.

I cranked through my email, made some calls, hit up my Account Manager to see if anything was hot and then another thought hit me. Who's coming with me?

Back on the phone. The Old Man had a meeting he couldn't get out of. Ben was slammed. Marty's arm is giving him hell. Damn.... This was going to be a solo trip.

I packed up the White Buffalo and was on the road at noon. I was feeling great! The sun was shining, it was Friday afternoon, Soundgarden was cranked, and I was heading for trout water. The only drag was the damn wind. And it was getting worse. It was hard keeping the wheel straight.

By the time I got to Silverthorne the wind had died down some but it was still pretty gusty. Gusty enough to blow all but a handful of dudes off the river so I had my pick of water for the most part. I decided to hit the run above the gauging station since it was open. 

This is a great run to develop your fish spotting skills. Why? Because you can just about be guaranteed that there are fish in front of you. You just have to scan the water till you see a sign of one. There is a ton of material to help you with this but in my experience two pieces of advice have helped me most. One, don't look for a fish. In other words if you are looking to see a perfect outline of a fish you probably won't get it. You'll need to look for a sign of a fish and then stare at that area. Two, try to unfocus your eyes and look through the bottom of the river bed. This is the best way I have heard it explained and it's helped me.

As expected there was plenty of red moving around in the water. One was an easy eight pounds. I'm always torn between going light on tippet and hooking up more or going heavy and hooking up less but having a descent chance to land a pig. The fish in this river absolutely lose their minds when they are hooked and a beast on 6x or 7x will put you in a tight spot fast.

Big bow in the recovery room

This trip I decided to go heavy and rigged up with 4x flouro since it was fairly cloudy. I didn't do much for the first two hours but as the sun dropped I think the 4x became less and less important. Ale eggs and Mayer's Mysis started getting hammered hard. These were NOT light takes. I had 15-20 minutes of hooking up every other cast. Totally made the trip worth it. Didn't hook any pigs but I did land a nice 21 incher.

All in all a great trip up to the Blue. Any time you can have that river pretty much to yourself it's a good thing. May have to make a habit of these Friday evening Blue trips!

Quick Morning Trip to Deckers

Deckers continues to surprise me! I have only been a handful of times in the past 5 years or so. This past summer was my first trip up there in a while. I have no idea why I haven't fished this area more but that is going to change.

There is no doubt that Deckers can be a crowded place but it doesn't seem to really matter. Every rock seems to have a trout behind it. You really don't need to get into the prime runs to find fish. It seemed that anything knee deep and fairly slow held a trout. And they are all SUPER healthy! 

Best patterns were a chamois leach and ale egg. I tie my leaches a little longer than the ones you find in the shops. Keep them about the same width as the ones you can buy but tie them 4" long. I use red GSP thread to really crank down on the chamois. I think it's key to find the softest chamois you can find. I've used leather leaches before but they are no where near as effective as a chamois leach.

Another pattern that was getting bit fairly consistently was a purple DM midge. I picked up half a dozen size 20 from Combat Fly Fishing before the Frostbite Fish-Off and they have worked everywhere I've tried them since then.  I've been fishing purple and red and both have done well but I think I've hooked more on the purple.

Not a super eventful trip but a fun one. Will be back to Deckers at least once before summer for sure!

Frostbite Fish-Off 2014

I remember hearing about the Frostbite Fish-Off in Pueblo Colorado just before the 2012 event. It was either too late for registration or I was too chicken to sign up so I didn’t get to fish but I did show up the day of the tournament and walked a few beats. The tournament looked great. Unfortunately walking along beautiful trout water without a fly rod in your hands is not natural. In fact it is as wrong as..... well I won't finish that thought but it's wrong!

The Frostbite Fish-Off is run by the Southern Colorado Greenback Chapter 509 of Trout Unlimited. An entire Army of volunteers make this tournament happen. Ben Wurster and Lou McCullough from Steel City Anglers walk point in this effort and they have done an outstanding job to make this event a fun but competitive event that raises a good amount of money for Chapter 509. All of the proceeds from the event go directly to improving the fishery and many stream improvements have happened and continue to happen due in part to the money raised by this event. Lou McCullough provided a little history on the event.

One example of recent stream improvements

 "Ben and I started the FFO after Ben was a controller in the Carp Slam in downtown Denver organized by the Denver Chapter of TU.  I knew a lot of guides and people in the business and we had the support of Team USA, Rob Kolanda and company.  I sent out hundreds of e-mails and we had 23 teams the first year.  It was an insane experience, with over 100 people at Garlic and Onions, the venue for the first year.  The money we netted over the first 2 years went into a total contribution from Cheyenne Mountain Chapter of $11,100.00 which was doubled by a GOCO grant. Coupled with a Packard Grant and $100,000.00 from CPW and other sources we totaled $340,000.00 for the Arkansas River Legacy Project Phase II.  It has been a real adventure, meeting new friends and spreading the word about the Arkansas River tail water.  Now the river is one of the top ten tail water fisheries in the country, thanks to Pete Gallagher of Fin-Up Habitat Consultants and his incredible design for the structures".

Ben Lewis and I joined “forces” and created Team Chuck and Duck for the 2013 tournament. At that time, neither one of us had fished in a tournament before so we didn’t really know what to expect. Ben and I had drawn two good beats the night before (a fun event in itself) that we had both fished before so we were feeling pretty confident the morning of the tourney. As we walked to our first beat with a dozen tangled rods however, I began to question my confidence in two dudes with way too many rods who could only come up with “Chuck and Duck”.

When it was all said and done fish were caught, old friends were caught up with, new friends were met, and Ben and I had an absolute blast. We endured paparazzi, mobs of crazed female spectators, fish that ignored us the entire morning save our last THREE MINUTES of morning fishing, and a last hour of the day, buzzer beating, jaw dropping, ROD BREAKING fish hook up! Fun was to be had each step of the way. 2014 had big shoes to fill.

Feeling the pressure just before the morning session

The 2014 Frostbite Fish-Off did not disappoint! The tournament this year started off with the news that we were going to fish two outstanding beats. We were going to fish beat 4 in the morning which had recently been worked on through the ongoing stream improvements and featured several beautiful weirs, a long deep run with large submerged boulders, and a run fed by the hatchery outlet. In the afternoon we had beat 2 on tap that featured a long riffle that tails out into a deep pool with a gradual drop off toward the north bank along the entire run. We would not be able to blame our beats if we didn't post some respectable numbers. The pressure was on!

Ben got us off to a great start with a 19" rainbow within the first 10 minutes of the morning session.  I was able to post 17" of rainbow trout about 45 minutes later. We had two fish on the board and needed two more to max out our morning session. We needed to keep up the momentum. At that point Ben stepped in and turned it to 11.

Ben is starting to make a habit out of pulling absolute slabs out of Pueblo on the biggest nastiest flies that have survived since his Alaska days in the deepest recesses of long forgotten fly boxes. Good for Team Chuck and Duck that Ben sticks to what works!  I don't want to give away his secrets but I'll say that he was chucking a purple leach type pattern that almost looked as though it was sucking on a hot pink trout egg. Almost as if a leach was swimming around sucking on a leach. I'd probably call it a huge purple egg sucking leach..... and it's awesome.

Ben Lewis winner of biggest fish 14' !

This awesome. When combined with the correct retrieve of course. This fatty could not resist the purple nightmare dangling in front of its face. Getting to net this thing was a treat enough. When it kicks in that you get 21" out if this beauty since you are fishing in a tournament, the world is yours. But it got better.

While I was dinking around with midges and leaches, Ben was dredging away to seal the deal. And it turns out our 21" slabba had a friend that also had an eye for purple. He held out as long as he could but not long enough. With 10 minutes left in the morning session, his glutinous Prince loving friend (the trout's not Ben's) let loose and bit down hard on the purple dancing dream that had been swimming around his head for the last 20 minutes. No way! Catching two trout over 21" in that short period of time is no small accomplishment folks. There was no way we weren't winning.

Are we friggin winning!?

And we were! This was crazy considering our main goal going in was to not finish last. Lunch was fun and all but it took an eternity. We were looking to get back in the water. Our normal lunches on fishing trips take about 4 minutes. We were winning a fishing tournament! Crazy...


After a quick wardrobe change, we kicked off the afternoon session. Ben hooked up quick and landed a 16" bow. We were on the board in the first half hour. So far so go. Then I was lucky enough to hook and land a 17" bow about a half hour after that. On a good pace! 20 minutes or so later I hooked up but felt the dreaded release and hook. I knew he came unbuttoned and my second fly found his tail. Foul hooked trout don't count so after a quick net and release Ben was fishing again.

Love this part

We needed one more fish! We got down to two minutes when Ben hooked up! I told Ben that I would get in position while he netted. I tied on the nastiest egg cluster pattern I had and threw a slab of mojo mud on the line. I told Ben that as soon as the fish was landed I would cast. I kid you not, with less than a minute left I saw a nudge and set the hook to a solid pull. Jim Good gave me a heads up that I had 10 minutes to land it. A nice 10-15 yard run of line and I was living the dream. Then my monster trout started coming right in.

No...... please no...... not now.... please not now. I've felt this fight before. I've been burned by this fight before. Yes, it was...............a sucker. A beefy egg faced sucker! Last year I broke a rod on a huge last minute bow.... And now a sucker burn with the clock at zero...... terrible 1st world problem to have.

BUT,...... we had put three descent fish on the board. We knew not posting four fish in the afternoon would make it very hard to place but we also knew that the conditions on the water were tough.

I think both of us figured we'd done well but didn't know if we did well enough to place. I couldn't believe that we were even considering the thought of placing. We have a LOT of REALLY good fisherpeeps (cannot forget our ladies) teaching our trout lessons year round in our great state of Colorado. Just to be close was a great feeling.

Team Chuck and Duck Bronze 2014 FBFO

Lou provided a really nice introduction welcoming Team Chuck and Duck up front to accept Third Place at the awards dinner! Bronze Baby! And Ben gets the Biggest Fish award and a new rod to boot!

I've never won an award for fishing before. This was sweet! Bringing home hardware from a hard days fishing. Life is really good. I'm making Ben Most Valuable Fisher (MVF) for the 2014 FBFO. Thanks buddy! Can't wait for next year.

On a very personal note, I would like to thank my Dad who introduced me to fishing at a young age. I learned from the get go that fishing isn't all about catching fish. Thanks Dad! Looking forward to many more write ups.

For more information on fishing the Arkansas River Tailwater in Pueblo Colorado check out my blog at http://jamiesfishingjournal.blogspot.com . To book a trip to this great fishery head over to http://www.steelcityanglers.com/ and talk to Ben and Lou.