2015 Frostbite Fish-Off

Well its been a good stint since the weekend of the 2015 FFO and I think it's all finally sunk in. All in all it was just a fantastic day of family, friends, fun, fish, and unexpected twists of epic proportion!

This year was the third year Ben and I have fished the tournament as Team Chuck and Duck. For those of you that might not be familiar with the name, we named our team after my casting style. Especially when hucking slabs of mojo mud and rabbit.

Before I start reminiscing, I just want to thank everyone who is involved with putting on this awesome tournament. I don't know of too many events that are this much fun AND support such a good cause. Everyone at the tournament from the beat controllers to the meal volunteers did a fantastic job and they were all a pleasure to spend time with. Ben Wurster and Lou McCullough did an awesome job as our fearless leaders again this year. Always good catching up with those two. I've learned a lot from them over the past three years about fishing this river. Any time you can help someone catch and release a true gem of nature, you have done the world some good and I am indebted to you both!

I also want to thank all of the sponsors who stepped up. Every year there are a ton of cool prizes for the grab bags, raffle, biggest fish, and top teams. I can't remember how much Ben Wurster said the total amount of sponsor donations came out to this year but the amount of goodies up for grabs this year was incredible. Ben and I had no idea what we were in store for. On to tournament day!


It was good catching up with everyone Sat morning before heading out to our beats. I've "met" a lot of folks through social media over the past few years and its always cool to actually meet some of my cyber friends in real life. Sat morning I finally met Jim Browning and his Son Kevin. Two of the nicest, most down to earth, talented Dudes you could meet. We all hit it off right away. It was like seeing an old friend you haven't seen in years. Strange feeling when you just met someone for the first time. Nice to finally meet you guys and hope we get to fish together soon!

I was also able to catch up with an old high school buddy. Chris Ramos and I have known each other for a long time. We didn't run together in the same crowd in High School but we somehow quickly discovered that we were both fly fishers. It's amazing how this sport brings people together. Always good to catch up with Chris and see where he's been guiding. If you are looking to fish Cheesman Canyon or any water for that matter I would highly recommend going with Chris. He would wind up catching the biggest fish of the tournament this year. No surprise to me. Congrats again Dude!

Ben Lewis and I missed the beat drawing the evening before so we showed up the day of the tournament wondering where we would be fishing. We've had pretty good luck every year we've fished this tournament and this year was no exception. We drew beat one for the morning and beat seven for the afternoon. Two good beats but we were a little nervous since we had never fished the beat one stretch before.

After sucking down a fat pill and a few cups of coffee we headed out to our first beat. We knew it was going to be a beautiful day so we were a little worried about what the crowd would be like on the river. We got up to the dam and I decided to walk up around the bend to see what the water was like just below the dam. W! T! F!!!! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. This has got to be some of the nicest water on the entire stretch of Ark in Pueblo. It looked like the Toilet Bowl on steroids! I couldn't believe we had never taken the time to walk up to the dam before.

The only drawback was that it was a TON of water to cover and a good part of it was pretty much unreachable. Just like fishing the Toilet Bowl it would take some time to figure out how to dial in to the fish. Time is something we didn't have a lot of. We decided to hit the low hanging fruit and started at the tailout where the river narrows and drops into a nice bouldery cut. Ben hooked up almost right

Dramatization. Thanks Marty!

away. I grabbed my net, took two steps, and went for a swim. I emerged rod and net in hand to see our first fish of the tourney in Ben's net. A dink, but we were on the board! Lucky for me it was already starting to warm up. As Ben Wurster would later say, "We may need to change the name to The Banana Belt Fish Off"!

I wrung out my sleeves and cast just upstream from where Ben hooked up and had another dink in the net in a cast or two. It was good to get some fish in the net right away but everyone knows what can happen when you catch a fish right off the bat.....

We went the next fourty minutes or so without a hit..... I was worried. I was thinking we had the first cast fish stink on us and that we were going to post a few dinks for our morning session. Our goal for this tournament has always been to not finish last and I was thinking we might be in some trouble.... I knew there had to be monster fish in this stretch but we were not dialed in and we didn't have time to figure it out. We decided to head downstream.

How many nets does a guy need?

Our luck changed when Ben hooked and landed what would wind up being the nicest fish of the morning, a sorely needed eighteen inch bow! Now we had a descent fish on the board. We continued to hook fish for the rest of the morning session in the lower stretches of beat one but we didn't hook anything big. I'm not sure how many dinks we wound up catching but they were all in the ten to twelve inch range.... Most of them we didn't record. We did wind up posting four fish for the morning session though which we had learned the year before is really one of the best things you can do, even if you're not posting four monsters. Big thanks to Richard Purcell, our morning session Controller, for running all over to measure the dinks we were pulling in. He got his exercise for sure!

Lou at his last BPOE dance

Back to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE) for lunch. The BPOE was a change (for the better) of venue this year. Really thought they did a good job and provided a nice facility. It was a little further from the river but it was close enough to get to the river in ten to fifteen minutes depending on what beat you were on. The only strange thing was that I think they still had some decorations up from what looked like some sort of prom.... Kinda weird seeing a bunch of trout bums hanging out on the prom dance floor....

We headed out to beat seven in fourth place. Like I said, you don't have to catch monsters all day long but you do need to post four fish each session. Makes you appreciate a twelve inch trout like it was your first trout on a fly rod. We were not in last place, I had dried out for the most part, we had fresh rigs, and were feeling pretty confident going into the afternoon session.

Pump house is open?!!??

We decided to get there a little early to see if we couldn't claim a stretch of water for the PM fishing. It was REALLY starting to fill in. Beat seven is a pretty popular spot for fly fishers, hardware guys, and bait casters alike. We walked up the stream a bit and the best run by the pump house was OPEN. Bubbas everywhere up and downstream but the run we wanted was OPEN. We did some range walking in the waders and were out standing in the river, fly rods in hand, but unable to cast until the afternoon session started..... What made it worse is that I could see at least four trout and two of them were in the twenty inch class.

It was hard staring at them for a while before the afternoon session started but it was good in the sense that it really gave me some time to study them. I could tell how they were moving and I could pick out how the biggest fish in the run always moved to the same two places moving in and out of her preferred feeding lanes at will. The others were happy to move out of the way. Interesting thing to watch. I should probably do it more but I'd need to leave the rod in the truck.

We started whipping the hell out of them as soon as the whistle blew so to speak.... Poor trout.... Of course just because you know where the feeding fish are and what is hatching it doesn't mean that you are going to just start hooking up at will and it took some indicator/weight/fly size/pattern changes before our first take. These fish see a lot of flies and they weren't making any concessions... tournament or no tournament these fish denied our best on multiple occasions. It didn't take too long though and we had two nice fish on the board. Not too long after that we had four fish on the board.

That was a great feeling! Having eight fish posted for the day took all the pressure off. Ben and I have always tried to keep this tournament fun but we are the type of guys who can't help but get a little competitive and we knew we had posted a respectable day of fishing. Everything from that point on was icing on the cake!

Now it was time to dredge for the big boys. The sun was getting lower and the hatch had died off. The feeders moved into deeper water and out of sight. It was time for the fatties to wake up to steak and eggs. Say what you will but when I have 4x, a BB covered in Mojo, and my favorite leech and egg pattern on I feel like every cast is going to be a big fish.

Steak was eaten right away. I've been tying leeches with hobby lobby necklace leather and red GSP and they have been getting destroyed just about everywhere I've taken them. No love on the egg though so I started going smaller until I got a bite on the egg. Had a killer rig at this point, the sun was getting low, and the action exploded. For a little while it was almost every other cast. No better feeling than getting dialed into a run. You can taste the expectation of a take. They all had their noses on the drop off and you could almost call exactly when the take was going to happen. Serenity. Another huge thanks to our afternoon controller, Bill Straight. I swear the fish knew exactly when he had made it back to the bank and sat down. That usually was good for a fish :-)

We finished with four nice fish on the board for our afternoon session. My Old Man totaled up our trout from the morning and the afternoon and we thought that we might have a chance of grabbing third. We knew the caliber of sticks on the other teams and we knew it would be hard to place at all. I knew Jim and Kevin were in the running for sure if they had a good afternoon. We also knew the Blue Collar Fish Bums, Pat Thurman and Manual Losoya had absolutely killed in the AM session like they always do and would be extremely hard to catch in the afternoon. Then you had the Scott-Costa Fish Daddies, Frank Smethurst and Nate Bronson who are more like fish magnets who had a rough morning but could always come back big on a good beat. Team No Name (common Chris! You can come up with a better name than that with that Liberty HS diploma!), with Ramos  and Kevin Egloff would be in the thick of it for sure if he got a good beat in the PM. These were just the teams I knew about. Who knew what the Trout Ninjas, Big Uglies, or Catch-N-Repeat were up to..... Yep, just having a shot a placing was a great feeling.

Back at the dance floor we had a nice dinner and unwound talking to our friends about how the PM session went. Sounded like the fishing, for the most part, had been good in the PM. Lot's of smiling faces. I met Kyle Beasley on the High Plains Drifter Team who mentioned that he read the journal and that he actually caught a fish that day on a purple egg sucking leech!! Very cool!!

It was incredible to have my Family there to enjoy the day with me. My better half Alicia was there the whole day taking pictures and my Mom and Dad were there cheering us on. For some reason the kiddos didn't want to come down to Pueblo and watch us fish all day though....The time had finally come to see where the pieces had fell for the day.

I was thrilled when third place was announced and it was Team Trailing Edge with Jim and Kevin Browning. Awesome! This was the first time these guys had fished this tournament and they placed third! Again guys, Congrats!! Couldn't happen to better Dudes..... Then it dawned on me that we were going to come in second! No friggin way. When the total was announced for second place, I turned and looked at my Dad in disbelief who was staring right back at me with the same expression. I couldn't believe it. What???!!! no way did we do better than Pat and Manual. I was thinking there must have been a mistake or something but somehow Team Chuck and Duck edged it out for first place by four and a quarter inches! Unbelievable! The day went from great to epic. Ben and I were in shock. Ben Wurster and Lou McCullough gave Team C&D an intro I'll never forget. So glad Alicia caught it all on video. I hope I get the chance to look at this when I'm old and gray and remember what a day it was in Pueblo that day.

We had no idea what we were about to be handed. Brand new Scott Radians paired with Able Super Series! What!!!! In return for a day of fishing??? Oh and to top it off a coupon for any pair of Costa Sunglasses?  We're not worthy! We're not worthy!!!! We suck!!! LOL Just unbelievable.

Frank Smethurst came over and congratulated us and we thanked him a few times for the unbelievable prizes. I've since used the rod/reel/sunglasses a few times and am hooked.

What an unforgettable experience. A once in a lifetime sort of day. This tournament has blown our minds for three years in a row now. Each year something exciting and unexpected happens. Each year we meet new people and learn new things. This has become an annual tradition for Ben and I and we're already looking forward to next year.

I'll wrap it up by sharing Jim Browning's thoughts on the day which I thought provided a perfect summary.

"Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in the 2015 Frostbite Tournament as Team Tailing Edge ... For six hours, Kevin and I drifted our very best bugs, and when the day was over, we stood proudly next to these amazing anglers. So honored to compete, and share life with each of these great men. Thank you for taking the time to speak into my life, with kindness, and grace as we share a passion for the river"!

Cold Start Hot Finish on the Dream Stream

Not quite the coldest we've ever fished the Dream Stream but at two degrees above zero, it was cold enough. Not as cold as last March though when we showed up and it was eighteen below! Either way fishing was pretty much impossible until it warmed up a bit.

Mike, Mary, and I started off below the bridge but we were only able to land one before we decided there was just too much ice on the water. We headed up to the top parking lot and took our time crawling out of the truck.

It took a while to warm up but the water was clear up by the dam and Mike was able to hook up pretty quickly. We worked our way up to the dam and picked up a few but it we decided to head back down below the bridge to see if the water had cleared.

Water looked great and we started hooking up pretty regularly as the temperature rose. I wouldn't say
we were on fire but we didn't have to go too long between fish. We found a few really fat cuttys.... NOT very subtle takes. They hit hard and fought hard and kept us fully entertained. By the time Mike and I had worked our way back up to Marty at the bridge we had each landed seven or eight.

We had to make the traditional stop at the weir run and Mike and I got in a little numbers
competition. We were each hooking up pretty much every other cast. Lots of dinks but you know your having fun when your buddy is willing your fish to spit the hook! We went fish for fish for about an hour and wound up with twenty fish! Well Mike did anyway. I came in a close second at seventeen. We landed some nice ones too in between the dinks and even got to see a monster brown laugh at us for a few seconds.....

Super fun day that started off kinda crappy but turned out great. Of course you know what they say about a bad day of fishing and this day was far from that.

First 201520 Courtesy of Deckers

Behind multiple trips on the blog! Have a few really good trips to write up so I figured I better get at it. This trip was the first trip of 2015.

Ben had his son Andrew in town for the Holidays and we decided to drive up to Deckers. We got up there and rigged up and as soon as we were rigged up we remembered that Andrew didn't have a license...... So we decided that Ben and I would fish for a half hour or so and we'd go hit Rainbow Falls since you don't need a license there.

There is a run I've seen many times up at Deckers and it normally has one or two bubbas in it. Not the case this day. I'm sure it has a name but it's just on the other side of the big hill you drive over if you pass the first parking pull off. Its a nice slow bend up against a rock face. The head of the bend has a perfect riffle into a drop off. There are two currents that meet up at the drop off and it is absolutely gorgeous.When we first parked there were a few guys fishing the run but by the time we were rigged up and realized Andrew didn't have a license they were gone. I think that had a big part in the, "fish for half hour since we're here" plan.

I actually started towards the tail end of the bend and worked my way up. It took me twenty minutes to get to the head of the run and really notice how nice the drop off was. I took two casts and WHAM! Something big hit and took off like a bat out of hell! It wasn't on very long. Maybe five seconds. I never saw the fish. I knew it was a good fish though and since it broke me off and since I'm writing this from memory that has sat for a month and a half I'll call it a good thirty inches.... easy.

Fast forward a week and we were back at Deckers looking for redemption. Same run, same rig, same flies, same cast. It only took a few casts and I was hooked up again. Nothing huge but a really nice eighteen inch rainbow. I knew there were bigger fish on that drop off...

After a quick pic I made the same cast and WHAM! This time I was ready. Line was on the real before I made the cast. Good thing too since this fish did the exact same thing it did a week ago. I really think it could be the same fish. This time I knew its game plan though and was ready for the long run against the far rock face. After about a five minute fight Ben made the net scoop and I had my redemption. A really nice twenty inch rainbow to bring in 2015. Going to be a good year!

FFO Practice Round 3

Made it down to Pueblo with Marty to check out another beat or two for the upcoming tourney. We decided to park at Osprey and walk down to the carp hole and then work our way back. We got just below Valco Bridge a few bends and saw several people already fishing that run.

Plan B - fish the first bend below Valco.... Plan B turned out to be a pretty good alternative. I think I hooked up four times in the first six casts. Found a really nice seam and a pod of aggressive little trout.

Seems like there are always hungry dinks  hanging around Valco. Didn't take Marty long to hook up either. I have no idea how many fish we pulled out of the run but we whipped it to death. Before we left Marty was able to get a rig below the layer of little guys and stuck a nice bow. Biggest fish of the day and really put up a good fight. 

Nothing really surprising on this trip. One new leach pattern worked out really well but the larger fish in the group were definitely eating midges. I tossed some baetis  in the afternoon but didn't get a lot of action. Everything hit the black midge trailer. 

The main pattern I've seen over the past three trips is that black midges get bit hard early and then taper off around 11. Haven't found a consistent afternoon fly. Still have some time though.... I'm sure that once I get close to figuring it out it will all change :)

FFO Practice Round 2

Put another day of tough work in on the Ark in Pueblo. It's a grueling practice schedule but we've been down to Pueblo twice now in order to give ourselves a chance at not finishing last in this years Frostbite Fish-Off. This river has always been a challenge for me and that didn't change on this trip!

The challenge of this river though is what makes it so rewarding when you do hook a trout. I know everyone has their own idea of what a "smart" trout is but for me, some of the smartest live below Pueblo Res.

We convinced my Dad to come along for this trip. Always nice to fish with the Old Man. Pueblo has always been tough for him too and on this trip it was especially tough. Some days just don't work out the way you plan but as he reminded me this day, fishing is called fishing and not catching for a reason.  On thing he did catch was a stunning view of a group of deer crossing the river just downstream from him. How can anyone be really bothered about not catching a lot of fish in this sort of environment? I think it would have bothered us a bit in the 90's but we've both mellowed out a little since our days of hiking into Cheesman Canyon in rubber waders.

Early fishing was pretty productive. I had a few in the net within the first half hour on some test midge patterns I've been playing around with. Nothing special or different really than whats been out there but just different tweaks and different materials. I tied a size 18 black beadheaded wooly bugger sort of fly (black ostrich herl body)and that seemed to really work well as an attractor for a small black midge on point. No split shot needed on the rig which I think can make a difference sometimes.

We headed downstream and really got pinned down where we were fishing. BIG crowd moved in and just about every piece of water was taken. We had some good takes at first in the run we were fishing but things slowed down quite a bit. It was a long deep bend run and I think the trout know how to get out of the way of flies in these type of runs. I did manage to get one really good hook up at the tail end of the run in about 8 feet of water. Super deep dredge rig with small flies so the hookup was probably super late. Only had him on for about 5 seconds but it was heavy. Probably a thirty incher.

Things really died down after that. I decided to see if Ben wanted to try another test pattern. This one was basically a size 18 black RS2 only tied with a marabou tail and with gator hair for the wing. I figured it would look great once it was in the water. Not the best looking fly though when it's dry and when I handed it to Ben I don't think he was too thrilled to tie it on. But being the good fishing buddy that he is he did and it paid off with this nice bow. REALLY colorful fish in person.

Another good day on the river. A few clues as to what the fish were doing that day. They for sure switched off of midges onto something else in the late morning. I couldn't figure it out though. Tossed a lot of tricos and BWOs without much luck. I think we moved the fish out of their normal feeding lanes since there was three of us dragging two or three nymph rigs through the bend. I did get a descent grab on a white slump buster just before we left but I really wasn't ready for it and missed the set. Always worth tossing a streamer before you leave a run.

FFO Practice Round 1

Hard to believe but the 2015 Frostbite Fish Off is right around the corner! Ben and I are going to be back this year as Team Chuck and Duck. This will be our third year fishing this tournament. It's always a great time and last year we actually placed 3rd!

It seems like we have an exciting tournament every year. Last year we needed one more fish to win the tournament. I hooked something heavy during the last minute of fishing and pulled in a sucker. The year before that a big rainbow broke my rod during the last minute of fishing! I'm almost a little gun shy for the last minute of fishing this year.

We didn't fish the river much this summer. Flows were very high for most of the summer which I think was great for the fish. I would imagine that pressure wasn't as much as it has been in resent summers. I did make one trip down at the end of August. Water was way up but a few hours of dredging produced this nice bow. This fish was healthy and strong! Very good sign. Hopefully those kinds of summer flows will continue. I think that a few years in a row like this past summer will grow some true pigs.

Ben and I decided that we better get our act together and get a few trips in before the tournament. We are going to try and fish as many beats as possible before the tournament. This trip we fished around the hatchery outlet and anticline bend. The hatchery outlet was tough first thing in the morning. I caught a few dinks but nothing sizable.

We worked our way upstream and saw that the anticline bend was open so we hit that. There have been some improvements made on this bend and this was the first trip Ben and I had fished them. VERY nice bend run. We hooked up right away on black midges and continued to have action for a while. This would be a sweet beat to get during the tournament.

After fishing this run for a while we made our way to the Nature Center and fished for another hour or so. We hooked and landed a few more nice trout to wrap up the afternoon.

Not a bad first trip. Good to get a few fish in the net and find out a few midge patterns that were hot. Hopefully we can get down to Pueblo at least half a dozen times before the tournament. As in our past FFO appearances our goal is to not finish last!

Fall Trip to the East Portal

Had to squeeze in one more trip to the East Portal in before winter hit and we just made it. I've been to the East Portal a few times in the past couple of years and it's really a fun place to go. I've never seen it crowded and there are a few runs that just produce nice, brick red bows.

Mike was able to make it on this trip after having to canx a trip the previous weekend because of work (get your priorities straight Mike)! We headed up Friday evening and hit Colorado Boy Pizza which is delish. Almost worth the trip itself. We rigged up, watched Low and Clear and were up around 5.

We got down in the canyon just before daylight. I walked over to look at the water and noticed the spillway looked totally different.  The far side of the spillway was really calm and a new central outflow had formed. It looks like the dam was damaged this spring in the high flows. So fishing was a little different from what we are used to but we still caught some nice fish.

White streamers cast right up against the spillway worked best in the morning. Dad was on fire for about 15 minutes. One right after another. Things calmed down though after about an hour and we moved upstream. No one pattern killed it the rest of the day but we picked up a few on egg patterns.

Not the best trip up to the East Portal but it was a fun time as always.