Moraine Park in RMNP

Played hooky yesterday and headed up to Moraine park in Rocky Mountain National Park with my brother, Nelson (visiting from VA), and Henderson. Moraine is the most peaceful place on Earth as far as I'm concerned. I absolutely love this place.

All photos taken by Nelson. Nice job man!


It's a magazine quality stream that meanders through a grassy meadow at roughly 8,000 ft. of elevation and is just chock-full of browns, brookies and 'bows. Oh, did I mention that if you know where to look this stream harbors absolute PIGS?

This photo was taken on a fork of the stream where the flow was super low. It was actually a little better than this.

Elk being elk.

Ground Squirrel

This was a casual fishing outing - we didn't spend very much time at the stream. Nick and Nelson weren't even fishing and it's not exactly a spectator sport.

One of the great things about this place is no waders are necessary (at this time of year). My waterproof boots and a little bit of long-jumping did the job. Unfortunately, the flow was very low. These trout were spotting me from 25 yards away, I kid you not.

The fishing was sparse at first. Every lie I approached a trout would spot me from way out and set off a chain-reaction spook. It was very frustrating. I'd have to be as sneaky as an Indian to fish those deep pools, so I exclusively started fishing riffles and blind cut-banks. None of my dry-drop-drop combinations were working.

I tie on the CZN rig right as my brother calls me on the two way radio to head over to a riffle that he has spotted a 10in. bow under. On the first drift I just draw it right into his mouth and he crushes the point fly. He gave us quite the aerial show.


Apparently Nelson caught the whole thing on video with his camera, and then accidentally deleted it.

I caught a brown after that on the CZN and then it was time to leave to go get our ink.

On the walk out we went past all the untouched water ahead of us because Nick and Nelson were picking us up at the other end (Nick and Nelson had gone and driven around the park for a while).

Henderson saw a trout that made him abruptly start rambling in mumbles with wide eyes about how big it was. It tucked into an undercut before I could catch a glimpse.