Colorado Fly Fishing Guide Academy!

A while back I ran into Jon Easdon while picking up some goodies in the Covey and he let me know of a Guide School that the Covey was organizing. He asked if I would be interested and it was a no brainer. Absolutely!

Becoming a Colorado Fly Fishing Guide, especially for Angler's Covey has been a dream of mine since I was 12. Most of my Christmas lists around that time had nothing but gear from Angler's Covey. Christmas mornings consisted of lining up reels and casting (badly) in the backyard no matter what the weather was like.

Twenty some odd years later and this dream is very close to becoming a reality! Last week blew any expectations of a guide school that I had totally out of the water. I have to admit I was very nervous going into it. I had doubts if I had what it takes to guide along side some of the best guides in Colorado.

Enter Robert Younghanz and Neil Luehring. I've known Robert for a while and have taken one of his entomology classes. I knew Robert's teaching style going in and I knew we'd have a lot of fun during the week. I met Neil on the first evening of class and was immediately comfortable talking with him. He has a very calm teaching style and has a knack for explaining things that really connect the dots. Neil and Robert worked really well together.

What did I learn???? Where do I start... I can tell you that there is a huge difference between being a good fly fisher and teaching someone to fly fish. There are also a lot of other things you need to consider as far as the business aspect of guiding is concerned. We covered it all. From setting up an LLC to social media to safety and gear requirements. We heard from guides with 30 years experience and guides with 3 years experience. We learned about photography and things to keep in mind when guiding female clients. Flies, casting techniques, trip preparation, customer service, etc, etc... It was a TON of info.

I have GOT to FISH!

We hit Pueblo and Deckers on Saturday and got a good dose of entomology from Robert. We teamed up and did some role playing on the river guiding our fellow students. This was a really good way to work some kinks out before jumping in with a real client.

I'm pretty sure Robert and Neil knew we were chomping at the bit to wet a line after a week of talking fishing and a day of being on the river. They cut us loose at the end of the day for an hour of fishing and it was like the running of the bulls when we turned for the water! Robert mentioned a nice run that he liked just upstream and we were off. I think he did that on purpose :) My new buddy Bob took about three steps to the river and immediately started schooling us. Age errr.... I mean experience sure does pay off :) Love ya Bob!

By this time everyone knew each other pretty well and I have to say that it felt like a group of old fishing buddies. I was totally blown away by how awesome our group was. I'd go fishing with these guys any day. No egos or grandstanding. Everyone was very cool and we had a great time. So glad to make what I know are going to be some life long friends.

Lunch is served!

Before I knew it Sunday was upon us. I couldn't believe it. It was Saturday night around 9PM and I had to tie flies, get a lunch together, and pack for the next morning where we would be GUIDING A CLIENT!!!! What!!!!!???? So this is what being a guide is like :)

I think we were all nervous but I was a lot less nervous than I was before going through this class. I had a game plan. I knew how to approach different situations and how to describe certain techniques. I had a toolbox to use. This really did boost my confidence and we all know what confidence does when you're fishing. Same thing with guiding. Not being cocky but being confident. Big difference.

On top of the world

I met Eric riverside and we were off! Eric had never cast a fly rod before but was a very quick learner. He went from never casting to landing a trout in about an hour! His first ever trout on a fly rod. I can't tell you what that moment felt like. I'm not sure who was happier!

I can't imagine working towards this feeling as a way of living. It's a lot of hard work (yes it's not a day of fishing on the river). Reminds me of a Tom Petty lyric, "I don't mind workin but I'm scared to suffer". Guiding is  hard work. But good work with an absolutely HUGE payoff. Not talking about money. Seeing Eric learn to cast, control his line, set the hook, fight and land a fish was surreal. I've always known the tug is the drug but teaching someone else to find that kind of joy on the river is just as potent. I look forward to many years of chasing that moment down again and again.

Fun Weekend at the East Portal

Mike, Ben, and I had an awesome two and a half days on the Gunnison last weekend. We finally planned a camping trip with Mike who has a pop-up camper. Talk about camping in style. Can sleep six, has a heater, fridge, stove, lights.... We must be living right! Still took a day for me to figure out that I could put my waders on in the camper instead of doing a balancing act on my raincoat though.....

We took off early Friday and when we pulled in we had our choice of camping spot. I think there was only one other car in the parking lot. Sweet! First thing I noticed is that they fixed the spillway that was damaged last summer. I preferred fishing that spot before it was damaged so it was good to see it fixed.

Mike backed the camper in to our chosen space like a boss and we got to setting things up. Everything went off without a hitch, minus having to make a foil fuse for our creature comforts, and we were fishing in an hour.

We started off at the spillway and it took us a bit to figure out what was going on. I had stoneflys on my brain and even though it was later in the afternoon and only mid May, that's what I started throwing. I think the trout laughed a little when they saw that. Wait till June and wake up early if you want to toss big bugs.

Ben and I did a quick seine and it was more than apparent what we should be throwing. Size 20-22 dark baetis nymphs and scuds! There were a TON of dark (almost black) beatis nymphs and a few large dark olive scuds in each sample. Time to re-rig. That's what you get for assuming you'll show up and start slaying them in the middle of the afternoon on huge stone patterns! Hey, stranger things have happened......

At about that time I started noticing BWOs coming off. This was going to be good. We switched to pheasant tails and RS2s and started hooking up pretty quickly. We landed some nice bows but the action switched off pretty quickly. It did seem that the concentration of fish was not as heavy in this section as it had been on previous trips. Or should I say concentration of fish we could catch. We decided to call it an evening.

We got back to our camp site and Ben started cooking up some chicken that he had marinating. It was good. Damn good! We really went all out on food this trip. First camping trip of the season, first time taking Mike's camper out. We did it up right. So much so that Mike had to take a few pics! Chicken, steak, bacon, eggs, cowboy crepes.... And I think we may have actually LOST weight on this trip. Not the easiest river to wade.

We decided that we would head downstream in the morning to see what we could find. I've been to the East Portal a handful of times and we had always fished the spillway up. We've always done well so we didn't really have a reason to go downstream but we thought we might be able to find some good water to fish so we decided to go exploring.

Downstream is way better.... Just a ton of good water. It was fairly crowded though so we had to pass up a lot of it. I decided to just walk a while and get past the bulk of the crowd. I'm glad I did because when I finally stopped it was on one of the prettiest sections of river I've fished. I could stand in one spot and hit three different runs. It wasn't just a pretty spot either. It was chalk full of brick red 16-20" rainbows that were willing to hit a fly hard. No subtle takes for the next two hours.

These fish were amazing. Absolutley beautiful rainbows and browns that hit like a freight train and fought just as hard. One of the runs I was fishing from my sandbar perch was the inside seam of the main river channel. When fish would hit in this area they would take a quick turn to the current and torpedo downstream. Line peelers for sure. I kept thinking, "get your arses down here Mike and Ben"! For the next hour or so I had this little slice of
heaven all to myself. I must have landed a dozen fish by the time Mike made it down.

I had been watching a very large brown rising at the head of the pool I was fishing. He was out of reach from where I was standing and I didn't want to move so I just watched him steadily rise to BWOs... Mike FINALLY made it and I knew he had a dry fly rig so I pointed out where I had seen the rises. Mike took one cast and got a bite! I think it surprised him a little and he set a little too fast. He didn't make the same mistake when the brown rose again on his second cast! Unreal.... It wasn't to be though and the weight of the first few head shakes snapped the line.

The disappointment didn't last long though. I gave Mike a few RS2s and he was dialed in quick. He landed some absolutely stunning rainbows over the next hour or so. Some of the best fishing in recent memory.

We had to walk away from catching fish...... Ughhh.... Ben hadn't made it down and we hadn't eaten lunch. We figured it was at least noon so we walked away and decided to go find Ben. He was upstream a ways and had spend the morning catching some nice fish on dry flies. We made it back to camp and started getting lunch together. I asked if anyone had the time and Ben looked down at his watch in amazement. Four PM!!! LOL.... Time traveling on the river. We would have to treat our shock with a huge steaks.

We headed downstream on our final morning and hit the same spot we had found the previous day only from the other side. Unfortunately it wasn't nearly as good from this side so we worked our way back upstream. Mike was soon dialed in and hooking up on RS2s. Ben was killing it on dries just upstream from Mike. I hooked a few but was really just enjoying being in such a beautiful place watching my buddies land river gems.

It was a great weekend and I wish I could do it over again. Time absolutely flew by. Our only worries were how long to leave the baked potatoes on the fire and how many RS2s we had left. Small first world problems. So lucky to have the opportunity to decompress in the mountains of Colorado. It's an addiction but a good one. Already looking forward to our next trip to this amazing canyon.

Great Morning TOUGH Afternoon on the Ark

Ben and I headed back up towards Cotapaxi to try to get in some more dry fly action this weekend on the Ark. Plan was good, reality was not so good.

The morning started out very similar to last weekend with stone fly imitations getting hit REALLY hard till about 10:00 AM. One thing that was different though was the water clarity. The water was pretty dirty below Cotapaxi and only marginally clearer up towards Salida. I think that slowed down the nymphing in the morning some but we still managed to get fish in the net pretty regularly. This bow hit a flashback two tone stone (hares ear with peacock Ice Dub thorax really) on my first cast. One of the prettier bows I've caught in this stretch.

We took a break around 1-1:30 and decided to get our dry fly rigs. Around this time a storm started blowing in. Wind picked up and blew a lot of people of the river. Between the dirty water and the front moving in things just stopped all together. It was a very tough afternoon. I finally hooked a brown on a streamer after about three to four hours without a hit. Dirty water + front in this case = humbling afternoon :-) But as they say, just being out on the water beats most anything else.