Tie Me A River

I have a strange obsession with the woolly bugger and its a magical powers over trout. This is a variation on my previously posted purple bead head pattern. This one features the standard palmered hackle, a chartreuse wire wrap, some flash in the tail, and rubber legs.


With all this talk on my blog about czech nymphs, I figured I'd finally throw up a photo of one. There is nothing very exciting about these flies. It's wrapped with lead underneath, dubbed, covered with scud skin over the back, and then wraped with some 5x mono for segmentation.


My brother has gotten really into photography and I asked him to take some photos of me tying over some cold beers and music - to inspire creativity of course.

Kokanee Salmon and Spawning Browns

I haven't put up a post in a while and the guilt has been weighing on me heavily. In the back of my mind all I can think of is that loyal reader checking my page only to find the same photo of me with my arm around Worm. I thought up a few solid excuses, but in truth, I have just been lazy. Sorry.

One of my fishing buddies, Vaughn, and I became obsessed with catching a mess of salmon to take home for many dinners to come.

The idea, of course, was to find a hot spot of podded salmon that will hit on every cast. A fantasy of raining salmon: every angler dancing up and down the banks on tippy toes playing hard-fighting fish, big grins, belly laughs, high fives, back slapping and such.

In reality, this involved us waking up around three o'clock in the morning, driving for hours, and then just being teased with something like one undersized salmon every hour or so.

Ugh.

Most days we even had our secondary plans all ready to go such as, "Well, I figure we can head over to the ******* river for trout after we limit out on salmon sometime around noon."

Nope. That whole "sometime around noon" graceful exit kept turning into me squatted on a desolate shoreline with bloodshot eyes and a five o'clock shadow around six o'clock with Vaughn murmuring something about his wife expecting him home tonight.

Keep in mind that there are easier ways to catch Salmon in the state of Colorado. It's called snagging.



I have this preference to not line up elbow to elbow with the likes of Mr. Deuce McAllister, fish kicking mullet man, guy sitting on cooler and family. This video is not shot in Colorado, but the scene is always the same when it comes to snagging.

No thanks. I'd rather have a slow day in pursuit of catching them in the mouth.

Moving on.

I decided to cut my losses on the salmon hunt and do what an angler is supposed to do during Colorado autumn - chase spawning browns and the rogue rainbows that are gorging on the brown roe.

I met up with the man, the legend known as Swizz and headed to a prime destination.

Sunrise while driving.



The action was slow which was disappointing considering the 3.5 hour drive each direction, but I learned a ton from Swizz and some of his friends that we ran into out there. Even though I got the skunk, I was able to take some photos of trout that those guys caught.

A prime example of a spawning brown all colored up.


A superior specimen of said rogue 'bow that is hanging out around the spawners gulping up the eggs.



I also spotted a sun dog at the end of the day and captured some photos of it. This is the second sun dog I've seen in Colorado. I find them extraordinary and enchanting and it put a smile on my face for the drive home.



****
On a side note, I was rudely awakened at four o'clock Tuesday morning with immobilizing pain in my neck. Long story short, my brother drove me to the ER with my chin glued to my chest and they said I just had to wait it out. Some strong meds and four blurry days later my neck feels much better. However, for this weekend, as they say in the NFL, I will be on the PUP list, so no fishing for me.

Rocky Mountain Rhapsody

When I saw the pictures of Tangler’s trophy cutthroat trout on this blog, my juices began to flow like a Rocky Mountain river.

“I simply have to make a fly fishing trip out there,” I concluded, as I began to purchase a flight with child-like abandon.

A month later I found myself hiking up a gray and foreboding mountain, so colossal in stature, it makes my hometown Virginia Blue Ridge look like a rolling hill. It took about five minutes of light upward hiking before I realized that I was completely out of shape. My vision was a bit blurred from the exhaustion, but I could make out the two figures ambling in the distance.

“Hey Tangler” I yelled, “I need to get my ass on a treadmill more often, my lungs feel like they are about to explode!”

He looked back and flashed me a knowing grin, but I certainly didn’t share his amusement.

We arrived at the first mountain-top lake around mid-day. Coinciding our arrival to the lake, the clouds darkened abruptly and a light snow began to sting our ruddy faces.


“What happened? It was sunny five minutes ago,” I thought, as we passed the lake by and kept climbing higher.

We arrived at the upper lake and continued to a nearby boulder to have lunch. I hungrily pawed my backpack for my lunch sack, but was horrified to discover that I forgot my sandwich. I didn’t even have to tell Tangler what I forgot, he could see it my somber eyes when I looked at him.

“It’s okay fatty, you can have some of mine,” he assured, as he held out his mangled Turkey Sub.


After lunch we spent time walking along the lake, looking for all the trout we were to slay. I wasn’t sure what shapes we were supposed to be looking for in the water, but Tangler peered in with a hawk-like veracity, as focused in as a camera lens. He saw nothing, and it took about a half-hour of lake walking for him to admit it.


“They just aren’t out today,” he said, with an accompanied sigh.

“But where do they go,” I asked, “they exist in this pond don’t they?”

This question, with its penetrating logic, seemed to catch him off guard: “Yeah, I guess they do still exist somewhere in the pond…”

That was the end of our conversation.

("Where are the fish???")

We caught no fish, but we had one hell of a hike. Even five minutes of ambling through the Rocky Mountains is worth the trip out there.

On the way down, I noticed my head beginning to ache. I told Tangler about my ailments (headache, blurry vision, lack of balance, shortness of breath, numbness of the arms, etc), and he shot me that enigmatic smile again. What was he up to?

His brother finally confessed, “I think you have High Altitude Sickness (HAS), we probably should have warned you.”

Thanks asshole, I thought, but honestly I couldn’t be too upset; it’s a small price to pay for the hike of a lifetime. I’ll just have to remember to bring Advil with me when I go back next year to get revenge on those phantom mountain-top trout...

-Worm
Guest Blogger

Some more photos from the day:

The Ptarmigans:

How many do you count?

Sun set. You shoulda seen it in real life...

Recent Activity

My friend Armin came and visited Colorado last weekend as I had mentioned in a previous entry. The plan was to Hit North Park, but that kind of fell through. My brother and Armin got all wide eyed when I mentioned that the drive would be over 3 hours each way. My plans were swiftly vetoed and replaced with a local stroll out to the Gross Reservoir inlet (let the record show that I warned them we would catch nothing there). The truth is that there is no such thing as a bad fishing trip, and I'm just glad I got to spend time with an old buddy.

While we didn't go after the browns, we did make a journey up to a high lake in Indian Peaks Wilderness despite the cold front setting in on Saturday. That's all that I am saying about that trip because Armin is guest authoring a blog post about it.

Jumping topics...

My analytic report shows that Colorado Fly Fisherman Anon. has been getting hits from Baghdad. Since I'm fairly confident that Iraqis aren't fly fishing in their spare time, I presume that the views are coming from an American troop.

Whoever you are, it really gives me a sense of purpose with this blog to know that I am connecting with you over there. Thanks for fighting for this beautiful country, and thanks for reading. Hopefully some of my writings allowed you to fly fish and hike in the rocky mountains this season vicariously. Come home safe.

2008 shots of wildlife

Here are some choice wildlife photos from throughout 2008 that, for whatever reason, didn't make the blog. Please make sure to view them in full screen for best experience.

Categorized by photographer:

Nick:

Lady Bugs
Eleven Mile wild donkey

Henderson:

Tough Guy
Spinney Pelican

Eleven Mile wild, aggressive donkey w/ onlooker
TANGLER:

Tanager:

Chipmunk profile
Mule Deer on Flagstaff looking down on Boulder

Bull Elk in RMNP

Female Bluebird

Eleven Mile Bluebirds in flight



Spinney bows 20''+



My frying pan of a personal best 'Bow