There is Hope!

Finally!

The extra day off during the Presidents Day weekend allowed me to finally head out back on the water again. Yesterday, I teamed-up with my buddy Graham to harass some trout on the South Platte, on the only not frozen solid piece of water within a reasonable drive.

We initially wanted to hike into Cheesman Canyon since we heard that even the Deckers area had ice and slush. Driving up the river we saw a lot of ice and slush, even entire sections of the river completely covered by ice and snow. We even joked that we should have brought an auger to do some ice fishing, still hoping we would fine some water that's not "on the rocks".

When we got to Denver around 9.30am, the river was slush free and we decided that we probably should spend time fishing instead of hiking into the canyon.

We pulled all the way up to just below the cable, separating the public section from the private property of the Wigwam fishing club.

It was a beautiful but cold day, even my net froze to my waders. But it was a spectacular and beautiful day, there was just a bit of a snow blanket from the night before that covered the ground, rocks, hills, tress with a white sparkly blanket.

The water was extremely low and clear. I consider 150cfs a healthy flow but since the end of January, it was barely 40cfs. The fish of course were wary. We could see pods of a dozen and more fish not even a rod lengths from us. They could see us, too. The only chance to catch them was to present a fly from behind a obstacle where they could not see you prior to your presentation.

While walking upstream I was able to find some cover behind some brush and cast just forward of two feeding fish. The first fish ignored my offerings but the next fish up took the first drift of my Killer Bug1 I managed to finally hook and land one of the elusive winter trout, a chubby rainbow trout measuring 17". The moment I hooked the fish I also realized that my camera was still in the car. Too bad as this fish was a beauty.

I managed to hook 2 more fish, a 13" rainbow I was able to land and a bigger one that actually chased my fly, took it, and continued running downstream and broke off.

next time I need to remembe tohave the camera on me when I catch the big one!

Looks like I finally shook the winter skunk off...

Bear Creek April 8 2012

Easter Sunday morning I had a few hours to myself and took the opportunity to head back up to Bear Creek. I considered going to the South Platte up in Deckers but the area was on fire, literally (a small wild fire North of Deckers near Ox Yoke that I believe was extinguished fairly quickly).

Fishing was at first slower than usual, I wasn't quite sure why since the conditions haven't changed much since my last few visits. I started out with a Killer Bug and got some follows and bumps including a very aggressive strike of a rainbow trout but none of them were hooked enough to be landed. I switched to some sakasa kebaris with no interest, so I finally switched to my confidence flies, the CDC & Elk and RS2 dropper but fishing remained still fairly slow.

The first fish to hand was a little brown trout that fell of course for the RS2. Getting hungry, I started wrapping-up things just before 1pm and headed downstream towards the parking lot. Of course I got tempted to make a few casts in some of my favorite spots and was promptly rewarded with 5 more trout of which I landed 4, all within less than half an hour! 4 of them took the RS2 and one eager brown took the CDC & Elk.

 Who says the "one more cast" can't produce?

All said, it was nice to get out and spend some quality time on the river.

River Statistics:
Weather: nice & sunny, little wind
Air Temp: 46 @9am, 64F @1.30pm
Water Temp: n/a
Flow: 20cfs, clear water
Day on the water in 2012: 7
Fish: 13 hooked, landed 5
Equipment: TenkaraUSA Iwana 11ft, Tenkarabum 11ft hand-tied hi-vis fc line of