Winter Fishing Photo

Photo my brother shot and touched up: recently taken at one of my favorite mountain gem creeks.

Click photo for maximum resolution.

My Status

The Bad:

My Macbook Pro has gradually been acting funny and giving me the spinning wheel of death. I backed up all my files and tried to reformat the hard drive, but the OS would not install. Turns out that the hard drive is shot. I've been bumming the internet from my brother and, needless to say, I have not had time to blog.

The Good:

I've been snowboarding and fly fishing tailwaters pretty much every weekend. I've got good photos and stories ready to go once I get my computer back from the Doctor. I'll be writing a feature for ColoradoFlyFisherman.com soon which I'm excited about. Good things coming, stay tuned!

Ice Fishing... with Fly Gear?!?!

It's officially Winter. The flowing, bubbling mountain streams look to have been frozen in time and then coated in a sugary snow. The once plunging waterfalls now stick to the hillsides paralyzed in airy, crystallized ice, patiently waiting for Spring so they can get back to their business of rushing.

The trout reside deep within this ice cage, grouped together in the deepest pools where the water won't freeze solid in their motionless, seemingly hypnotized state.

This state of deep freeze is not the case, however, in every stream across Colorado. There are special exceptions in tailwaters. Tailwaters are streams in which their water is derived from the outflow of dams. While there may be a completely frozen lid on the water within the dam, the water being released below is pulled from the bottom of the reservoir allowing the streams to remain free from ice through even the coldest of weather. In some premier tailwaters the water is silt free, stable in temperature year round, and is full of nutritious food for the fish resulting in exceptional fisheries. The DOW is aware of this and has made many tailwaters C&R only for stretches directly below the dams boosting the quality of fishing that much more by allowing fish to grow large.

At the beginning of the Winter season when most freestone streams (streams in which a majority of its water is derived from rainfall and glacial runoff) are frozen, yet Colorado sun is still providing 60 degree days, the tailwaters get absolutely slammed with anglers. People will literally wait in line to fish holes (so I hear).

I refuse to fish in such crowded conditions. This limbo of changing seasons has contributed to my lack of posting on this here blog as a result of my lack of actual fishing. I will start hitting the tailwaters once it gets cold enough to turn away the teeming masses of anglers, but until then...

Ice on the Fly

This brings us to ice fishing. Last year I dismissed the activity because, after all, it's sitting on a bucket with spin gear... and I'm a fly fisherman dammit! However, I dismissed it not without an air of curiosity due to the pictures of mammoth fish people pull through the ice.

This year as the hard water season approached my fly fishing associate,Vaughn, kept inserting little tidbits in my ear such as,

"You've fished in a belly boat right?"

"Yes."

"It's the same thing, except you're on ice instead of in a raft."

"Well, when you put it like that..."

Any protest I made was quickly quelled with impenetrable logic that my fish deprived mind eagerly justified, and secretly relished in. He knew what I needed to hear.

He even had all the necessary gear I lacked - extra short rods (or are they poles? ...don't ask don't tell) and an extra ice hut. He had years and years of experience of where to go, what to use, and the big fish, oh the big fish.

ALRIGHT! I CAVE! GIVE IT TO ME!

In addition, Matt, my close friend and roommate of 3 years from college was flying out from VA to visit and I wanted to take him on some sort of Colorado expedition. Ice fishing fit the bill. It all fell neatly into place.

The Trip

2:30 A.M. departure, it was snowing. Hard. Matt, my brother and I met up with Vaughn and Swizz and started trekking. During the drive out the snow whited out the vast views of mountains in the distance and any potential of a sunrise. Instead, it gave us a fuzzy, glowing calmness and offered closer range, peaceful landscapes.



We got to the lake, drug our gear out to the ice and set up shop.

Drill Baby Drill!



View from inside the hut.


The hut blocks out all outside light and the result is a lime green glowing hole to fish through. You can see the bottom of the lake, your fly, and trout swimming up to inspect your offering. We would yell to each other if we saw one swim by in someone else's direction.

After just a few minutes of sitting in there with our flies in the water Matt calmly says,

"Something... just... happened."

I look over and he's hand lining with a confused look on his face.

"Grab your rod!" Nick and I exclaim.

He picks of the stick and lands his first ever trout like a natural!


The action slowed toward the afternoon, but all five of us managed to land fish during the morning. I didn't even know it at the time, but Matt was taking awesome videos with his point and shoot camera.

Cookie Cutter Bow




Nick Botches One at the Hole


Toward the end of the day the sky broke for a little while and we got some nice views during the drive home.


Then more snow.


Just to show the potential for ice fishing, Vaughn caught this spawned up 25 in. cutbow 2 weeks after our trip!


Our friend Kevin, who is a talented taxidermist, will be mounting it and entering it in the world taxidermy championships in a few months. Some of his previous work can be seen here at www.FreestoneFineArt.com.

The Knot

The last thread reminded me to link the proper way to tie a knot to the fly. As Jason will attest, the difference between the clinch knot and the improved clinch knot is a broken off fish or a landed fish. What makes it the "improved" clinch knot is step 8 in the animation.

I used to get frustrated with tying knots and skip the improved step. When you're standing in the water watching feeding fish it's easy to get excited and to brush over taking your time tying in the proper knots. The normal clinch knot will work as long as you don't hook into a big fish (relative to your line thickness)...

In other local fishing news, ice chunks are starting to show up in the rivers, and lakes are getting their lids. It looks like my first season of ice fishing is coming up. There may be a lull in fishing activity for me as the ice firms up and I hit the back country snowshoeing and snowboarding.

Big Trout, Short Story

I went out to my favorite local tail water this past weekend. It was my first trip out since the neck injury. My buddy Jason and I headed out there and the weather was glorious. About 50 degrees and sunny all day, with not another soul on the water.

I had tied up about 9 czech nymphs and planned to show Jason the way to slay it out there with them. As fortune would have it, czech nymphing just wasn't the ticket that day. We both had a hit or two without hookups.

We come up to a slow stretch of the river and Jason spots a rainbow about 60 feet below us in the canyon that is actively feeding in a lane. It's hard to read the size, but it looks every bit of 20 inches.

Let me preface this by saying that this river is known for its wiley trout. Any fish of size has been around the block and doesn't stand for the slightest hint of foul play. The approach, the cast and the drift all have to be purrrrrfect. Jason just picked up fly fishing this year and has really excelled, but catching one of these trout would be a challenge even for an experienced angler.

Jason climbs down the boulders of the canyon wall to the water and ties on an egg/nymph rig while I stay up on the rocks to spot for him. I told him how far away the trout was and damn if he didn't lay an undetected cast above it with a top notch drift right for its face.

The 'bow took a nonchalant glance at the egg before lazily wavering away.

"He's lookin... he's lookin," I stammer. "Nope he didn't go."

I see Jason's shoulders sink in a gesture of dissapointment as he gets ready to pick up the line for another cast.

"Wait, wait! Hes turned back at it... and hes following!" I yell out in amazement.

All I know from that point is Jason sets the hook and a flopping splash errupts the placid surface.

"Holy shit! YOU'VE GOT HIM! Holy shit!" I cry as I fumble for my net and begin to scramble down the canyon wall. Jason is tripping backwards, stripping line, letting it out, laughing, cursing -- doing the big fish shuffle.

I get down to the water, net in hand, and raise my eyes ready to do this only to see the tension in his rod abruptly release and the line skip across the water... fish off.

We crack a smile and give a high five just for the excitement of the ordeal. It's not every day you get to hook into a fish like that in a place such as this.

"The adrenaline is wearing off and it's being replaced with saddness." Jason laments.

I chuckle because I sure know that shitty feeling.

It turned out to be a bad knot on the fly and he knew it before we even took a look at the end of the line. It would have been his personal best trout.

I once read a story in which a young boy hooks into the biggest trout of his life and it breaks him off. The boy is sitting on the shore with his head between his knees crying when an old man walks up with a long gray beard scattered with odd looking, rusty flies. The old-timer tells the boy that maybe it was necessary for him to break that fish off in order for him to have the tools to catch a big one later on down the road. He plucks a few flies out of his crusty beard, hands them to the boy, and fades into the woods...

...and so is fly fishing.