Alicia's First Trout on a Dry Fly!

Alicia's first on a dry fly!

19 incher out of Elk!

20 incher out of Spring!

Alicia spent the morning schooling Marty, Ben, and me at Rainbow Falls and she caught her first trout on a dry fly! Not just any trout either but this sweet bow! She really was flawless in her execution. I think it took her by surprise a little (as it does all of us the first time we see a fish eat a dry fly) and she very calmly lifted the rod and held the perfect pressure as the fish made its first few runs. This was only after Alicia pulled in two other slabs up top!

We spent the morning fishing Spring, Eagle,Palmer, and Elk Lake. Alicia hammered a STRONG 20 incher in Spring Lake on a #18 bead head, flashback Hares Ear. This thing peeled some line. Alicia is getting very good at fighting fish! So proud of her.

Alicia has actually dramatically improved in a lot of areas over the last year or so. Casting, spotting fish, knot tying, fighting fish, netting..... Very cool to see Alicia enjoying this sport. She out fished all of us today and I couldn't be happier.

Marty also did very well today. He missed a brute on Spring Lake early in the morning but made up for it at the end of the morning on dries with some nice fish during the Caddis hatch.

It is bug season at Rainbow Falls as Richard pointed out in the last Tightline. Ditch the streamer rod, San Juans, and eggs and hit the midge hatch early with very small Griffiths Gnats. Trail one behind an Elk Hair Caddis so you don't go cross-eyed trying to see it on the water! Other good combos today were #18 Chocolate Shot Glass and #18 bead head flash

Marty with a nice one that crushed a dry!

back Hares Ear 12" behind an Elk Hair. Don't be afraid to move your flies. A slow retrieve with quick pauses was working well as Ben pointed out.

Great day at one of my favorite places soaking up some sun and catching some sweet fish. Always fun spending time with this crew. Even got to catch up with Richard who was, as usual, out and about working hard on the property. He has some great plans in the works for this coming off season and next season is only going to be better!

Marty again on a dry!

30 Fish Day at Rainbow Falls

Had the pleasure of fishing with Brad and Ed on Friday up at Rainbow Falls. Neither had been to Rainbow Falls before. We had planned the trip a few months back and we were all looking forward to it. I hadn't fished with either of these guys before. I met Brad a few years back at work. His buddy Ed has the sickness and passed it to Brad. We got to talking one day at work and the conversation naturally led to fishing. I had to break out some fish pics and after that it was a done deal. We were going to Rainbow Falls.

We met up at Safeway and I piled all my gear into Brad's Denali. This thing can hold some gear. Good thing too since it looked like we were packing up for a road trip to Canada. We stopped at Safeway and stocked up for lunch. We split up, Ed got the bread, I got the drinks and wax doughnuts, and Brad stopped at the Deli and got some turkey and 5 pounds of cheese (Deli counter was a little "off"). We packed up the cooler, made a few pit stops in Woodland Park, and were on the water by 9.

Creek section had filled in a bit so we headed down below Cougar lake. It didn't take long to get some grabs. Nothing huge though. Just warming up. We hit Cougar Lake for a few but didn't have much luck so we decided to see if the Creek opened up. It had and we fished it from Cougar all the way to the tubes. This was a fun stretch. We all caught good fish and each of us at one point or another got on a tear and hooked up one right after the other. Brad even netted his first fish! Have I mentioned that RF is a great place to learn? Just as the sun started beating down we got a nice rain

shower to cool things off and that seemed to make the fishing even better.

After a quick break for a cheese sandwich with turkey we headed up to the Pumpkin Patch. We got a little crazy here and forded the "river" in the Denali. Bold Country! The Denali has now been baptized and Brad is a bonafide mountain man.

By this time the caddis were hatching like crazy. Fish were rising enough to get me to switch to a dry. I saw a 22-24" trout rising in the top run and he put his nose on my caddis on the first cast. I
called Ed over because I knew he was either going to eat my dry or my pupa 12" below it on the next cast. I said, "watch this" and made a cast. My dry disappeared about 12" below the trout and I set the hook. Ed was as surprised as I was! This fish was hell bent on getting to the far side bushes and that's just what he did. Only had him on for a few seconds but it sure was fun while it lasted.

We fished the Pumpkin Patch for another hour or so with pretty consistent action. By this time we had been fishing for 8 or 9 hours. No one was going to call it! We decided to head up and check out the culverts on the way out. I think you have a better chance of hookup up on a pig in this section than any other section on the property. Especially the inlet of Palmer. I've seen a lot of big fish caught there this year. So we had to hit it. Brad and I were done but Ed was still going strong. He hooked up right away and wound up catching a few of the nicest fish of the day in this section.

We finally called it at 10 hours or so of fishing. Helluva fun day on great water with two really cool Dudes. I think Brad turned a corner on this trip. He might be beyond help at this point. Don't fight it Brad!

Streamer fishing - The Benfinity Retrieve - Rainbow Falls

Yikes! Late Entry here. From Nov 1st -

Ben had done very well the previous weekend on streamers. He started experimenting with different retrieves and found a pretty counter-intuitive (at least for us anyway) way to fish streamers that we hadn't figured out before or heard of.  He texted me that he had a new technique but left it at that. This of course got the wheels turning. We finally caught up and he explained what he was doing (Jumping forward here for a quick second but since I've had a chance to fish this technique for at least 5 hours water time, I've since come up with a name for it). Ben came up with the technique and it seems to take an infinity to complete one cast so -

THE  BENFINITY RETRIEVE

Ben began to explain the Benfinity and it went as follows

. Cast  your streamer out and when it hits let it sink. For a LONG time. Just barley keep enough tension on your line in order to pick up a hit. This means pointing your rod straight at the fly with rod tip just off the surface of the water. Run the line over your pointer finger of your casting hand and pull straight back with your non casting hand until you can JUST BARELY feel tension. You don't want to move your fly much. Let it sit for 5 - 10 seconds on the bottom and then pull VERY slowly to move your fly along the bottom a few feet and pause again for 5 - 10 seconds. If you see your line move (just where the tip starts to go under water) in any sort of unusual way or feel a slight "tic" STRIP SET!

Sounded good to me. I couldn't wait to try it out so when we showed up Friday evening I jumped out of the truck and grabbed the streamer rod. Two casts later and I was hooked up. I was fishing just off the side of the bank and I could see them picking up the streamer off of the bottom during a long pause. Crazy.... Some would pass it over and then come back and clobber it when you barley moved it. A lot of hits came on the sink. Just as the fly was about to hit bottom it seemed. That's how I picked up the brown shown above. She hit about 5 seconds after my fly hit the water. Probably about 2 foot off the bottom. And the take was barley noticeable. I would say that has been the most counter-intuitive thing I've learned over the summer streamer fishing. Takes on streamers can be super subtle. . 
It's fun when you can see the take. Bigger trout don't always get all crazy every time they hit a big streamer. From what I've seen that is the exception. It does happen and it's awesome when it does, but most bigger trout will simply swim up deliberately, open their mouths and swim forward over the prey item. It's very casual! I've seen it happen a lot on the end of a retrieve when a trout has followed the fly in. Lots of calories, not a lot of exercise. Seems to be the big trout mantra. I seem to be following the same pattern lately!

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!

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.

Rainbow Falls Round 2

You shouldn't be surprised at all. With a night of fishing like we had the night before it was only natural that Alicia would want to get in on it after hearing about it.We left around 5 and the weather was looking great for another night of really good fishing. It was even a little overcast. By the time we were fishing it was drizzling some. Perfect!

We stopped at the culverts on the way in. Water level was down quite a bit but was still higher than normal. I knew exactly where I wanted to put Alicia and knew exactly what fly was going to be eaten. 

Game had changed as it always does. Not a fish to be had with the flesh colored Slump Buster. Talk about a backfire. I was talking this up big time. Pretty much guaranteed Alicia a big fish on the first cast and wound up looking like a chump! That's what I get for assuming what I knew the fish are doing. That is never a good thing to do. After a little looking around it was apparent what they were eating. A quick rig change and Alicia had me netting full time.

When things slowed down a bit I was able to take a few casts and wound up landing a couple of really nice bows. This trip was a good reminder to never assume anything with trout. They have spent thousands of years figuring out what to eat when. That beats a summer's experience at RF any day of the week. Lesson learned! At least for a little while.

Rainbow Falls Post Flood

Having to reach back in the memory bank to write this one. Can't believe how time flies. I'm three blog entries down again. Slacker!

There is a silver lining in everything and big rain can work wonders for fishing. I knew RF would be crazy good. It was just a matter of getting up 24 without running the truck down a class III.

I was in the home office last Tuesday head down in network configurations and decided to step outside for a breather. On my second step outside I was texting Ben. Ben and I hadn't been fishing in a few weeks. Life had thrown a curve ball and Ben had to run out of town for a few weeks. I was really looking forward to getting Ben out on the water again and as soon as I stepped into the absolute perfect day, I instantly thought of RF filled to the brim with fresh cool water and knew what we'd be doing that evening.

Ben was down and I was loading my rod in the fish pimp taco at 4. Um, I was putting my rods into the rod holder on Ben's truck at 4. The creek looked great! Water was cool and high. No brainer on fly selection. Pink Sparkle San Juan. They could not help themselves. It wasn't even fair. We fished down to Cougar and pulled fish the whole way.

We decided to head up and hit the culverts above Palmer. We saw them on the way in and I've never seen the water that high before. I had tied some flesh colored Slump Busters and hadn't tried them yet. I took one look at the white water plunge dumping into the first culvert above Palmer Lake and knew that a bottom bouncing Slump would be killer. New color to try anyway so what the hell. There were some big bows loving the cold white water and they were all over the Slump as soon as it hit bottom.

This guy was 21" and hit on the first or second cast. As soon as I released him I hooked a really nice bow that was in the 24" class. Big male, green back, brick red slab marking. I had him on for a minute or so but he took a quick turn and came unbuttoned.

We fished till dark and continued to catch fish. The drop in water temp certainly has turned things up a notch or two at RF. With big browns starting to follow me in more and more, more water, and dropping temperatures, October is going to be unreal! I feel a 10lb brown coming on.

Rainbow Falls This Week's Conclusion

Back up the hill Monday night for the final trip of the "weekend". Mondays are better with Monday Night Fishing. Great to have fishing just up the hill.

We hit the falls section and all caught some nice fish. Dad landed a few 20 inchers (putting on a RF clinic like an experienced Member). Mom did really well. She picked up the fish fighting technique and was fighting fish like a pro right away (see previous post). This is a great tip if I haven't mentioned it already.  

I walked up and around to Ute Lake. I was fishing with an experiment streamer and was getting some good takes in the creek. Four or five casts in and this nice bow hit. What bit was a 17" male
Donaldson's Super Trout. If you fish RF you know this class of fish to be a little feisty. Hooking up with these guys in still water is a very cool experience! An unexpected treat courtesy of RF.  There is something about moving water that I can't keep away from but I'm starting to get the still water thing. I need to get out on some still water with Mr. Kleis and get schooled. Spring, Spinney?

Was a really nice evening and was good that we got out Monday before the deluge. Hard week for Colorado. The water we need. Just not so fast.

Rainbow Falls Ring Search

This is how I know The Mart had a plan all along to go fishing twice last weekend. Later events would reveal that The Mart knew how loose his ring had got over the last year since he ditched 40lbs. In fact we would later learn that The Mart was specifically instructed to leave his ring at home when fishing. Sorry to call you out Bud but good work like this cannot go unsung.

I got a text Sat morning, " Lost my wedding ring last night. It may have fallen off in the truck, or it came off while we were fishing". The only logical thing to do was to go back up there and look for it. I looked over at Alica, "You wanna go fishing"?

Rigged Alicia up, threw the rods in the Jeep, came to a rolling stop in front of Marty's place, and were looking for the ring in an hour. Started retracing our steps below the falls. We looked for about 10 minutes when Marty said, "Hey Jamie you got your camera on you"? I'm not sure what kind of question that was but I replied that I did in fact have several cameras available. "We can look at the pictures from last night to see if I had my ring on". "Look at the big brain on Marty"!

That's when we discovered the evidence shown above. Time to move down the creek. Ran into a fella fighting a fish at the next run on our search. We explained what was going on during the fight and the gentleman was nice enough to let us look. We waited till he landed a nice 17" bow he had hooked but still no dice.

Next stop Cougar Lake. I wanted Alicia to get fishing so I set her up on the creek below Cougar. There is some really good water in this section that isn't fished as often as some of the other stretches. This section during a caddis hatch is just silly. Too early in the day for caddis so we switched to a small black beauty. Alicia did great!

We had run into Ben Wurster from Steel City Anglers up at RF earlier in the year and he had given Alicia a really great piece of advice for fighting fish. Alicia keeps the rod right up against her mid section with the rod tip high in the air. She never loses contact with the butt of the rod and lets the reel do all of the work. Really good advice for a beginner! Works like a champ. Alicia hooked and landed several nice bows completely by herself. Three or four trout later we decided to head to Elk Lake since our search at Cougar came up empty.

We pulled up to Elk Lake and were getting ready to fish. Marty said, "I'll just walk all along the bank here where I was last night and see if it turns up". Three steps later, "There it is". Saweet! It's a great feeling when a plan comes together. Little did Marty know of yet another, bigger plan that had been hatched even before he had hatched the ring idea.

We could concentrate on fishing now! I was getting a few bumps on a ridiculous chartreuse Meat Whistle when I looked to my right and saw a dark green back with SHOULDERS coming up the bank about 50 feet out. I told The Mart to drop the dry he was fishing with about three feet in front of him.  He got it in front of her but she just kinda shot a quick glance at it and kept coming, directly toward me. There I was holding this god awful chartreuse monstrosity of a Meat Whistle with huge dumbbell eyes and way too many legs. I was a little embarrassed actually. Not embarrassed enough though to keep me from swimming it right in front of her. I think I actually saw her pupils dilate. This thing is BRIGHT! She just opened her mouth and gulped it down like she knew she was wrong. Ha! My delicate presentation paid off!  I had the rod tip right over her head. She couldn't get an angle on me and I had her in in 30 seconds or so. Crazy!

Remember I hadn't planned on fishing twice last weekend? I really hadn't but things just worked out that way. That kinda made the plan I hatched early Friday afternoon to fish on Monday with my Folks seem a bit overkill. But what was done was done. 

I actually overbooked my guest limit to RF on Friday. Joe, Marty, and my Folks all said they were down to fish that evening. Crap! Didn't think that was going to happen. I felt like a friggin airline. The Old Man was more than cool with it and actually got a laugh out of it. We planned to hit it up on Monday evening. So I wasn't going to fish twice last weekend but had the next best thing planned.

Anyone wonder if we looked in the truck before going up Sat morning? We were wondering the same thing as soon as we got up there. I told Alicia, "because if we found it we wouldn't come up here". Alicia's mind bullet scored a direct hit. "Just kidding babe"! Or was I?

Rainbow Falls with Joe V and The Mart

Is the wedding ring still on in this pic? No, not what you think.

Wound up talking fish a bit at work this week. Not necessarily a rare occurance I'll admit. You run into someone you fish with and it's going to happen. Law of physics. This weeks victims were Joe V., a good friend of mine and one of the best Network Engineers I've worked with, and veteran fishing buddy The Mart. Joe lives up the pass so we decided to hit Rainbow Falls after work. Joe has been to RF before but I've never got him just below the falls. I don't like to crowd in on people and we haven't been up there when those runs are open but our luck changed.

I had rigged Joe up a 9' 5wt setup in the garage before we left and threw out the offer as soon as we jumped out of the trucks. Joe was down and he hooked up pretty quickly. Great feeling when you can help someone catch a fish. Joe and I are in the trenches at times during the week and RF is a sweet way to end a week and kick off a weekend. Especially when you can catch fish like this.

We fished most of the Creek and did really well in the lower stretch. Decided to go hog hunting for a while in Cougar but didn't have much luck. I did have a follow by a nice brown but he wouldn't eat. In a month he'll eat it :-) . We hit Elk on the way out for a few more before sunset.

We caught somewhere around 20 fish between the three of us in two hours or so. That my friends is the remedy. Joe is down for a membership next year Richard. You ever think about starting a referral program? :-) Little did I know that Marty had hatched a plan. I didn't think I'd be back so soon.......

Rainbow Falls

Love the fact that I can catch myself thinking about fishing at work, shoot a quick text to Ben, get picked up in a fishpimped out Tacoma (to include custom rod holder that holds 8) at 4 , and be casting at 4:40. My Rainbow Falls card is the most valuable plastic I've ever had.

24 was closed but the rain had passed and nothing but clear skies up the hill so Ben and I hit the road. No traffic, 24 wide open, quick 35 minutes to the gate. Catching fish like this 10 minutes after that.

The weeknight trip up the pass is a great way to pause everything and recharge. The fishing is fishing. Best way I've heard it put is that it's a "target rich environment". It is. And 20" fish are common. Catching a 20" trout every week is good medicine. And I'm a better fisher for my troubles. Rainbow Falls is streamer school. If you want to learn to fish streamers, get a membership and you will learn just about every possible way a trout can take a streamer.

You'll also become a better fly tier. I've come up with several patterns trying to match the caddis and have had real success on some pattern variations. Some are prettier than others. One I named "The Purist". Not something you teach the kids and surely not a caddis but the trout gobble it up...

Creek and lakes were both on. Good grabs on slow slump buster retrieves in the lakes, and fish every other cast on caddis in the creek. This gal took a natural rabbit slump buster with a silver cone. I cast out and let my fly sink and wait. Sometimes it takes a good 10 seconds and all you'll get is a "tic". That tic equals fatties like this if you strip set.

We decided to call it on a good note after Ben landed this nice one just above Cougar Lake. This was after Ben and I landed half a dozen each in half hour. We didn't even make it to Cougar. The fishing was too good in the Creek.
Gonna have one hell of a Rainbow Falls picture album this winter :-)

Rainbow Falls (Night Fishing)

Decided to go after some big browns at Rainbow Falls Friday night. Ben and I met Joe Van Havermaat at the gate around 5:30. Turns out we picked a pretty busy night to do some night fishing. There was a church group there that was camping out over night. Ben and I didn't handle the news as well as we should have. I apologize to the gate guard for the grim faces. Something about hearing that there are going to be 60 dudes on site the night you decide to do some night fishing chapped our arses. Then we learned that they wouldn't be fishing till the morning. Praise the Lord!

We hit the creek for a while before dark and just killed it on caddis pupa. It was damn near every cast. I fished the creek below Cougar for the first time and had a great time. Some really nice fish in that section. Incredible site fishing. Joe V missed a really big brown we were all chasing down there.

We hit Elk lake after dark and within a few casts I landed a 20-21" bow on a black Meat Whistle. This take really got me going. Right at my feet, big grab, and huge first run. I thought I had hooked the brown I was after. Still a nice fish though and really got me excited. Unfortunately things didn't improve after that. We fished for another hour and a half without much to speak of. Photographer for this trip sucked and didn't get a single fish shot.

Not giving up on the night fishing though. Looking forward to doing some this fall when the water is cooler and the browns are tweaking.

Rainbow Falls (Alicia's first 20"+ Trout)

Alicia's first 20"+ trout. 21" male. Really nice fish!

Last minute spontaneous trip to Rainbow Falls tonight with Alicia. Been a busy week so far and we found ourselves with a little free time all of a sudden. 40 minutes later we were fishing.

Fishing was really good tonight. Had to change tactics a little but once we started fishing the right caddis it was great action. Alicia is on "The Board" with her first fish over 20"!!! That is a major phase in the development of the sickness. Next step is to get her to start tying flies :-) Oh life just gets better and better.

After giving Alicia a big high five (which was really weird) and putting the camera up it dawned on me that I was on a fishing trip with my Wife and she had caught a bigger fish than I had. "Hey honey, time for a fly change. Let me put something better on for you". he he he he he

Not to be outdone... an hour later I caught the same fish. NO I wasn't trying. Seriously. But we recognized his beat up grill. Technically he was a little bigger when I caught him because he was back feeding for a while after Alicia caught him. I think it shows in the picture too. 

Richard was out with Asia feeding the fish just before dark. What a site that is. Really gets the water boiling. What was already good fishing became just downright unfair and I really didn't feel good about myself. Not bad enough to stop fishing but bad. I'm over it now though and it was a really great trip. A memorable first 20" trout trip!

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