Swimming in the Taylor

Thank God it stayed up at 500. I had been watching the flow on the Taylor for a week or two and
things had been looking good. I think it went from 80 or so to 400 and then crept its way up to 500. I've been saying for the last few years that if the Taylor hit 500 again I would quit my job if I had to and get my happy ass up there. Well... here I was a week into 500 flows looking at other people's slab pics.

Well we made it up this past Saturday and it didn't disappoint (for the most part).  The kick in the ass that I needed to get up there was that Marty had been cleared by his doctor to fish. This is a big deal since Marty hasn't gone fishing since our day on the Dream with -18 degree temps. We were toying with the idea of leaving Friday evening and camping but there was a good 10% chance that it would rain and that made me hate my tent. So we decided to go old school and do it in a day. Well soft old school.. we left at 4am instead of 1am.

And were the first to show at the bridge.... Winning! We decided to head up to the top of the public water and work our way down. We saw a bunch of reds on the way up that were particularly concentrated at and around the wire. We stopped to watch for a few minutes and then kept heading upstream. I didn't see any monsters in the top riffle. I was hoping a large trout that had led a quiet life eating shrimp cocktails above the public access had hastily wondered his way downstream in the heavy flow but that was just twisted wishful thinking.

It was tempting to take some casts at the wire but
we made the right choice and kept walking. It wasn't hard to find the feeding browns on the sides of the main channel. It also didn't take long for one of them to eat a Kleis's Mysis.This fly, San Juan Worms, eggs, and a chocolate DM midge all fished well in the morning. A #20 olive RS2 was hot in the afternoon. We hooked fished fairly consistently the whole day.

Marty wound up hooking more than just fish though... I saw him walking downstream towards me and he was saying something but I couldn't quite make it out. When he got closer I heard him say that he could use a hand. I couldn't really tell what he was talking about till he walked up to me and I saw the fly stuck in his face! Luckily it was a small fly and came out easily. Unfortunately this was not the end of Marty's bad luck.

We met some cool guys on this trip like Nick Pep who I happened to walk up on while he was netting this sweet bow! This was the biggest fish I saw or heard of being taken that day. Glad I was able to shoot him a pic! We also spoke to some cool guys at lunch and it turns out one of them, Stephen Hofer, follows my blog which is very cool!

The PM fishing was good but not as hot as the AM fishing. We did wind up hooking up quite a bit though and I had to ask Marty for help on a fish that I had foul hooked. He was downstream from me and I figured I could use some net help. Marty grabbed his net and was getting into position when the fish ran right at his legs. Marty did good to avoid the line but had to take a step backwards in the river and that spelled DUNK. Luckily we were it light current so it was just a quick dunk but if you have ever taken a 42 degree dunk you know exactly what kind of wake up call it is! Nothing like freezing water going down your waders to remind you that you are alive! The best part..... all of it is on the GoPro :-) For those of you reading this in an email I grabbed this quick screen shot of Marty getting his heart settled back down into his chest (video below). I think most of us know exactly how Marty is feeling in this pic!

One noticeable absence on this trip was the BIG (8lb +) fish. Not because we didn't hook any but because I didn't really see many. I think they know how to use the big flow. I dredged in the Avalanche hole for a while but I couldn't hit bottom in the deepest section. I did see some big fish in the fast section between the Avalanche Hole and the Speed Limit Hole. They were holding in pockets that were just about impossible to get to. Even if you did hook one it would be damn near impossible to land it in that heavy water. Trout continue to amaze me.

Great to have The Mart back on the water. Never a dull moment Bud! Really cool to meet Nick and Stephen as well! Hope to see you Dudes on the water again.


MARTY SWIM from Jamie Roth on Vimeo.

Memorial Day at Spinney

I wasn't planning on fishing this weekend. I could only get through two of the three days this weekend. I decided last night that I'd set the alarm and if I wasn't too comatose when it went off I'd get up and hit the road.

This turned out to be a fail safe plan for not getting a good nights sleep. I was awake before my alarm went off. Not comatose at all so I hit the road.

I figured it would be packed when I got up there but there was only one other car at the dam. I walked out and spoke with the guy a bit. He left at 2AM to get there early. I'd say he's crazy but the Old Man and I used to leave for the Taylor/Pan at 1AM.

Fishing was descent early. A 6mm fire orange egg trailed by a #14 red Copper John was the best thing I could come up with. I landed 3 or 4 trout and at least that many suckers. Sucker burn was in full effect today. I didn't catch many trout but 2 of the ones I caught were 19". Fat too.

The wind never materialized and it got just as packed as I thought it would so I decided to beat the flash food to 24 and get home early.

Still a great few hours on the water. I did have something interesting happen. I was fishing with Lady Gaga (a hideous huge white streamer I toss from time to time) and got a full stop. I thought I was on the bottom but I always wait for a few seconds. I felt some movement and then my line came flying back in my face.... Pike??? Not sure. It felt strange, like a log, and the movement was very subtle. I figure a big pike would move a little more. Probably a stick but I got some good daydreaming out of it.

A Bird, a Bass, and Two Dinks

They aren't lying!

Ben Lewis and I decided to do something a little different after having to postpone a guide trip due to a crazy Colorado spring snow storm. We were going to hit the Dream Stream with Landon Mayer but with a forecast of over a foot of snow we decided to reschedule. This left Ben and I with a free Monday. We decided to head down to Pueblo in two trucks and cover as much water as we could with only streamers.

I've tried to do this a few different times but had always switched to nymphs as soon as I thought I knew what the trout were feeding on. It really takes patience to fish streamers and that is something I've always been short on. This time I only brought my streamer boxes so I'd be forced to stick with the plan. All of the bigger fish that I've seen come out of Pueblo have been taken on streamers. Ben has stuck some serious pigs on streamers and I broke a rod on one at the end of the 2013 Frostbite Fish-off. With the flow around 300 (down from 900ish) I figured the fish would have been used to seeing some bigger prey items. What the hell, it was worth a try.

We parked Ben's truck up at the dam, loaded up in my truck, and drove all the way down to reservoir road. I figured that would be a good day's worth of fishing if we kept moving. We got out and took one look at the water and it looked great. Perfect flow and a lot clearer than I thought it would be. The long channel along the near bank from the reservoir road parking up to the first bridge looked fantastic. So fantastic that I think we spend nearly an hour covering that water which, in retrospect, was WAY too long since we had to get to Ben's truck up a the dam. I had a 12-14" brown bump me and follow me in in this section but that was it.

I didn't want to think it, but from the amount of birds that were hovering over the water I knew there was a killer hatch going on. I've never seen this many birds on the water and I thought that it only made sense that this was the day we chose to leave everything home but the streamer boxes.... On top of that we hadn't seen another soul on the water the entire morning.

We kept at it though and several weirs above the water treatment plant I got a tug and was hooked up. Unfortunately my fly was nearly as big as the rainbow on the end of my line. But I held him up and thanked him for being a little skunk saver before letting him run off to get big. 

I only managed to hook one other dink until we got to the flag hole and I hit a bird on my forward cast. Luckily this little dude wasn't hurt and once I unwound the line from around his wings and neck he was good to go. Neither one of us liked the whole experience and he let me know! Didn't know a little bird could get so loud.

That was it till we got to the hatchery outlet and finally had a good tug. I could see a shadow following my streamer and at the last minute it darted up and grabbed it. I really didn't know what to think of the shape that grabbed my fly.
At first I thought it was a short, fat little brown but it was way too dark. After an initial run it came right in and realized it was a bass. My first in Pueblo. I've heard that they are in the river but had never caught one. I have caught a walleye before so the bass makes for my 5th species on this river (rainbow, brown, bass, walleye, sucker). Would be sweet to do that in one day!

Tough day and a lot of walking but it was still nice to cover all of that water in one day. We didn't see another person on the river which was another first. If we had fished the midge/baetis hatch we would have probably landed a few more but we stuck to the plan (mostly because we had no other choice). We were exhausted by the time we got to the truck. We probably should have started at Pueblo Blvd and worked our way up. I'm thinking this day counts for some time in the trenches and hoping that pays of with a pig at the Taylor next weekend :-)

Stillwater Zap

Ben hooking up early

Been in a bit of a writing slump as of late. Have two half written blog posts that I just can't seem to whip finish. I like to write when I can just sit down and have it pour out and that just hasn't happened lately for one reason or another. But today I have a sudden urge to write pages. I got two shocks to the system yesterday, one good and one bad but both have me dying to type away. Let's start with the good.

I met Jon Kleis a few years back at the Angler's Covey. I think it was at a fly tying night but can't remember for sure when I first met Jon. Sometimes you run into people and you instantly know you are on the same wavelength. Jon and I got along right off the bat. There are a few areas that we line up perfectly on. Fishing is an obvious first. Not just fishing in general but our thoughts on the sport like why we enjoy it, why we fish flies that catch fish, why we like to keep the BS to a minimum, etc, etc, etc. List just seems to go on and on.

Jon Kleiss

We have been wanting to fish for a LONG time but life happens and it's just taken a while to sync up. Things have a way of working themselves out though and through the power of the interwebs I received two tantalizing bread crumbs that lead to an awesome day of fishing at Spinney Mountain Reservoir. The first was an email from Angler's Covey that, in summary, said that I spend way too much money in their shop. They didn't come right out and say it but that's the message I got when they told me how many Perkville points I've accumulated through purchases in the shop. I started to do the math to figure out exactly how much I've spent to get those points but I don't like math and I didn't really want to know anyway. What I was interested in learning was that I had enough points for a full day guide trip for two. The next thing that hit me was that Spinney had just opened and Jon had been up there dialing things in twice since opening day. Pretty much a no brainer at that point. We toyed with the idea of Cheesman but we both knew where we should really go. It took a ton of arm twisting to get my fishing buddy Ben Lewis on board. Lots of phone calls and emails back and forth..... but you know that is a lie.

Other than Rainbow Falls, I haven't fished a lot of stillwater. I've fished Spinney once in the recent past and caught a few nice fish but I've never got the same feeling fishing stillwater that I do on a river. I hate to say it but the stillwater fishing I've done in the past felt a lot like bobber fishing. I don't have a belly boat so other than tossing streamers I'd just cast out and stare at my bobb.... errrr strike indicator until I went cross-eyed.

Had to get a shot of the doubles!

The fishing this trip started out as expected. I figured we'd be casting nymphs and working them slowly, with a twitch every now and then. That's pretty much what we did at first. We were catching fish though. John had us rigged up at a perfect depth so that our trailing fly was just barely catching some underwater vegetation every now and then. That really kept us on our toes because ticking the bottom and some of the takes we got were identical. Fly selection was not as I expected which was good. We fished a two fly nymph rig and fish were biting on both flies. We were using...... ah, gotcha on that one..... Sorry but for that juicy tidbit you'll have to hit Jon up! Ben and I both caught fish and we even had doubles. I can't ever remember getting a picture of two fish in the net. What a blast (guess which one is mine :-))! We were just getting settled in when the wind showed up.

Wind coming in on Spinney

Have you ever gone fishing and been happy when the wind showed up? I didn't know it at the time but I was about to change my mind about wind when it showed up in force mid morning. It was like someone flipped a switch and I went from calm relaxing casts with gentle takes to battling chest high white caps that made it hard to just keep upright. I was fighting like a mad man to cast and then to keep my line mended in the waves. That is where our Guide made all the difference. Jon stepped in and showed me how to work with the wind and waves and not against them. Totally counter intuitive for a guy who has spent years keeping his line mended on rivers. I was basically getting a drift on a lake! Totally opened my eyes to stillwater possibilities.

FUN FUN FUN

The wind really picked things up. We had the right rig, flies, and technique and we really started to hit them. The takes in the morning were pretty subtle but when you have two foot white caps and a trout grabs your fly, your indicator goes under! This was unbelievably fun. It felt like hooking up on the swing at the end of a river drift. Every cast was ripe with anticipation and for good reason. We spent the rest of the morning into the early afternoon landing one fatty after another. It was a mixed bag of hens and bucks. All of the boys had kypes. It was really fun fighting and landing fish in waves. I can imagine that surf fishing feels a lot like what we were doing in the middle of Colorado! I can't even describe what it's like to see a trout fight waves on it's way back out to "sea" after the release. Unreal... 

Chad Ries. Miss you already Man

It's times like these that you can take for granted. We get in our day to day routines and hopefully pepper them with experiences like this but all too quickly we are back to the grind stone waiting for the next weekend. It's rare to get a zap that level sets you again and makes you really think about how good you have it. For me that zap came from my Buddy Chad who tragically passed away on Friday doing what he always did which is to help people. You hear about "shirt off their backs" kinda guys all the time but Chad truly did set the standard for living right. Chad, you passed this life with flying colors. You are missed by many. On to the next Brother.

All of these pictures were taken by Jon Kleis in between helping us out with technique and netting fish. We didn't even know he was taking some of these. What a treat it was to get these the day after the trip. Chad, this is our church and these are for you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 RIP Brother