Perfect Conditions

When it seems every river in the state is blown out or about to be, it's nice to see that the North Fork of the South Platte is still in great shape. And fishing at Rowdy Trout Ranch has been Lights Out!

Thursday I fished with a couple serious outdoors-men from Wisconsin. Both were serious fishermen, but this was their first fly fishing adventure in Colorado, and I'd have to say it was a resounding success.



Don't let John's big Bear paws fool you, that fish stretched the tape at over 26" long!

Not to let his boss outdo him, as soon as John landed the monster above, Joe hooked one of his own.



If you're looking for some fishing during runoff there's a chance the North Fork will be in shape and Rowdy Trout Ranch will be fishing well. So give me a call and lets spend a day at Rowdy that you won't forget!

Weather Beat Down

Sick as a dog, but desperate to get out of the house, I decided to make a quick run down to Deckers Wednesday afternoon to fish the South Platte below Cheesman Canyon. As I got about 10 minutes outside Denver the drizzle turned into an outright deluge and then came the hail. The hail stones pounding my tin can of a pickup made an absolutely deafening ruckus. The highway was covered with about 2 inches of white by the time it stopped. As I weaved my way into the mountains I passed through a few more storm cells and a lot more rain before finally reaching the river.

When I got there I was surprised to see that Horse creek was not puking mud into the Platte. So I suited up, ate a sandwich and walked down to the water. Standing on a high bank I could see several fish spread out on the shallow flats darting back and forth. I watched them for a few minutes and spotted a few fish sporadically rising to the surface. As I slowly made my way to the water I could see a handful of clumsy BWO mayflies fluttering off the surface of the water. So I rummaged through my boxes and picked out a nice looking dry fly, rebuilt my tattered leader and set about to catch a fish.

And catch a fish I did. A nice brown. Then another. And within an hour had caught a handful of nice browns - all on the dry. As I finally got to the top of the pool I was fishing, I spotted a few larger rainbows sitting on the shelf where the riffle above dropped into the pool. They were sitting in about 18" of water and despite the choppy water over the top of them you could clearly see them darting around to pick up food from the drift. I spent several minutes trying to coax them up to my dry before finally conceding that these fish would probably be easier to catch if I tied on a dropper. So I dropped an egg off my BWO dry and after just a minute or two was hitched up to a really good rainbow.

As I worked my way up river I watched a procession of cars leave. "Strange" I though, as I spotted fish in every corner of the river I peered into, some of which I even managed to catch. But then it hit me. At first I figured it was the deeper water I was fishing that made spotting the fish harder, or maybe my glasses had fogged up. But when I took the glasses off it was suddenly apparent. In front of my eyes, the river was starting to blow out. Over the next 10 minutes the clarity continued to drop until it looked like Guiness pouring from a tap. It was about then I decided a beer sounded really good and it was time to call it a day.

Low and Clear

Thursday was one of the nicest days I have seen in South Park in a long time. Not a cloud in the sky, mid 60 degree temps and even the wind was pretty light. The fishing wasn't too bad either. I guided a gentleman from Denver who certainly knew his way around a fly rod and we had as much fun as a beautiful day like that deserves. We spent the morning on the "Dream Stream;" the water was very low and clear which made fishing tough, but we still managed to find one really nice fish.


In the afternoon we made our way over to the Tomahawk lease on the middle fork of the South Platte. At 25 cfs runoff has definitely not hit this stretch yet, and it was also very low and clear. But that didn't seem to bother the fish much. After eating a quick lunch we hit the river just in time to catch a descent BWO hatch and hooked several fish on dry flies. As the surface activity slowed down a dropper added to the bend of the dry accounted for much of the action. Eventually we finished off the day nymphing the deep runs and pools with a Pheasant Tail and a Nuclear Egg and the fish started slamming the egg. We had a ton of fun and hooked a bunch of fish, all while enjoying a beautiful Colorado spring day.

If you're on the fence about taking a guide trip, now is the time before runoff blows the rivers out.

Fly Fishing School

The weather report called for some serious nastiness on Saturday for the first Anglers All "On-Stream" school of the season. So we ended up with a few cancelations, but the three brave souls who stuck it out and attended the class were treated to an awesome day when the weather turned out to be much better than predicted. The day was a mix of formal instruction to learn about the fundamentals of fly fishing and puting those skills to work on the pond and the river.

Everyone had a great time - myself included - and several very nice fish were caught. Two of our students enjoyed getting their waders wet for the first time and catching their very first trout on a fly rod. All in all, everyone learned a lot about fly fishing and had a very memorable day.

Back in the saddle

Since taking on the project of finally building myself a website I have decided to once again dust off this old blog I allowed to quietly slip off into the darkness of internet obscurity.

I suspect it will be a slow process at first, but eventually I would like to keep this page updated on a relatively frequent basis.

Thursday morning I rolled into the fly shop in Smithers and got my fishing licence and a few flies then headed west toward Terrace, BC and the Copper River. I drove up the river a couple km and took a walk down to the water to check things out. As I was scanning the river I noticed a fish tucked into a log jam. As I looked a little closer at it I noticed it was a steelhead, and a pretty nice one at that. So I went back to the car and rigged up my Clearwater rod with an egg sucking leach and threw my waders on. I slowly worked my way into position and started casting at the fish. It took a few casts with all the debris to get a good drift at the fish, but finally I did and he was on! Hooked into a steelhead within 10 minutes of fishing in BC! The fish faught pretty good in the shallow pool and eventually I got him close enough to try to grab his tail. I took a swipe at him and he bolted out like a maniac, pulling 60 feet of line off in a heartbeat. Now he was out in the fast current and running for the narrow rapids below. A few seconds later, the backing started rolling off the reel and a moment after that, the line went loose and the fish was gone.

The Copper River

After that I tied on another egg sucking leach and started covering the rest of the run. I hooked and landed several whitefish and bull trout. I worked the run the down to the bottom, then hooked into something big! I couldn't see what it was at first, but after about 20 minutes I had a monster King Salmon laying at my feet. Not bad for a 7 weight bamboo rod!




The King went nearly to the ferrule on my 8' rod. I didn't put a tape on it, but I'd guess it was about 44-46" long and probably around 40lbs.

I found a few nice looking runs and swung them through with the spey fly before the sun started to set behind the mountains. I fished for a while after dark, then called it and set up camp.

Friday I spent the day covering a handful of runs and getting pretty frustrated by the people with no fishing etiquette either floating over the run I'm fishing in their boats, or jumping into the run I'm fishing downstream of me. But finally I found a nice quiet little run all to myself. It was a small side chanell where the river had split around an island and I was able to cover it easily. After getting about halfway through the run, I decided to switch from the sink tip to a floating tip and skate a few dry flies over the tail out of the run. I fished the tail out with the dry and walked back up to where I switched over and tied on a small wet fly, still on the flaoting line. After about 2 or 3 casts a boat appeared and startled me as it floated right through the water I was fishing. But just as soon as the boat had gotten 100 yards down the river I noticed out of the corner of my eye a steelhead rising and eating a gray drake mayfly off the surface. The fish was less than 30 feet from me and way closer than where I had been casting to. So I stripped in a bunch of line and flopped a cast out and swung the fly right in front of the fish. As the fly reached the spot where I spotted the fish I felt a suble bump and I lowered the rod and let a few feet of line slip out. I waited just another second then turned the rod toward the bank and started stripping line in. At first the fish just came in towards me, then all hell broke loose. The fish took a few blistering runs and made half a dozen jumps out of the water, some nearly as high as my head! A few times I got the fish in close enough to grab its tail only to have it slip away again. Eventually I was able to glide it into some shallow water and get a firm grasp around its tail. Finally, after endless anticipation, I had landed my first British Columbia steelhead!

A beautiful slab of wild BC chrome!

Another shot of the beautiful Copper River with some glacier covered peaks in the background.

I camped as close to the run as I could that night and in the morning I got up early and got on the water just as the sun started making its way above the mountains. I worked the run from top to bottom with a dry fly, then with a small wet before moving on to explore. I might have thought the river was busy on Friday, but Saturday was practially a zoo. I managed to find a few runs to myself, but only after a lot of hiking.

I didn't manage to find any other steelhead on Saturday, but I did find some nice Bull Trout.



After calling it quits on the Copper, I headed back east toward the famed Kispiox river. I made it to Hazelton just after dark and found a quiet little spot to camp for the night. In the morning, I headed up the valley a little ways and dropped in to meet Bob Clay. Bob has guided the Kispiox for over 25 years, and makes bamboo spey rods. I got to spend a little over an hour talking with Bob about his spey rods, and steelhead fishing and evenutally he sent me off to a few spots to check out. The Kispiox River doesn't start seeing good numbers of fish until about the middle of September, but Bob told me they usually start seeing a few by late August. So I spent the day working a couple runs and about halfway through a nice looking run, about had the rod ripped out of my hand. I dropped the loop of line and when I started to pull it in there was nothing on the other end. I don't know if it was a Steelhead or a Coho, but it was definately a fish. I passed a few more casts over the same spot, and even tried throwing a few other flies at it, but I wasn't able to elicit another strike. It would have been awesome to land a monster Kispiox steelhead, but it was pretty cool just to get a big pull like that. After fishing out the rest of the day, I stopped into the a campground on the river and set up for the night. I made dinner, tied a few flies then spent the rest of the evening swapping fishing stories with a couple of the guys I met at the campground.

Today turned out to be a pretty interesting day. I got up later than I planned and headed on down toward the Bulkley. I found a pretty nice spot to fish and starte working the water. A little ways down the run, the guy who owned the land near the river came down and started chatting with me. He told me about a few good fishing spots to check out, then gave me a ride most of the way down one so I wouldn't have to hike as far. I spent the rest of the afternoon fishing the bulkly and when I got out of the water I noticed my waders were full of water up nearly to my hips. And of course, this was the only time so far this trip I forgot to leave my cell phone in the car. When I reached into my pocket to check my phone, my entire pocket was full of water. I pulled the phone out and it was soaked through.

A bit of a frustrating day today, but I still have two days left. I'm hoping I can find another steelhead or two, but who knows what's in store.

Changing Gears

Well, a lot has happened since the last time I updated the page, so this is gonna be a long one. I left Dillon last Thursday after sleeping in nice and late, and headed for Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. The drive was going great until I got to the top of the pass coming into Idaho. Luckily I was only a mile from a town when I got a flat on I-90. I pulled off, filled the tire with a can of "Fix a Flat" and rolled into the town. When I got to the gas station the tire was flat again and I tried to fill it up at the air compressor and it just blew out on me. So I put on the spare and limped it into Coeur D'Alene.




I met up with my buddy Jay in CDA at the Castaway Fly Shop. That night we grilled out, drank a few beers and hung out for a while before crashing. Friday we headed into Washington and met up with a couple of his buddies on the upper Columbia. It was pretty late in the afternoon when we put in, and the plan was to float until about an hour after dark as that's when the Hex and Drakes would start showing up.

About an hour into the float I hooked into this guy. It's a bizzare experience trying to fish a river that massive, but Jay knew exactly where he'd be and coached me right into him.


After a hell of a fight we got him into the net. I wish I could say I was the first person this guy ever met, but he had a floy tag in his back from BC.

Sunset on the Columbia.

Jay, rowing my ass around

Unfortunately, the hatch never really materialized that night, but it was an awesome experience never the less.

Saturday was pretty much wasted dealing with my tire. After only a year, and 16,000 miles I had completely worn out an entire set of tires! With the pro-rated warranty it ended up costing me $200 for the new set, but on the plus side at least I should be set for another year. I spent the rest of the day tying flies and BSing in the fly shop.

Changing Gears: Steelhead

Sunday, Jay, his fried and coworker Adam and I were supposed to head down and fish the Clearwater for some steelhead. But Saturday, Jay found out he had to work, so Adam and I rolled down by ourselves. Since I missed 3 days of fishing so far, there were a few things I still wanted to do that I haven't had time to get to yet. So I was on the fence about going to the Clearwater. But I decided to go anyway and I'm glad I did.

With Adam's help I got my spey rod dialed in and got some much needed instruction and casting practice. I hooked into one fish prety shortly after getting my cast working, but lost it after just a moment. I got a few more bumps on my fly and just as the sun was setting over the town of Lewiston, I hooked into another fish. This time I remembered to give the fish the loop of line I was holding and it was on.




Once she realized she was hooked, the little girl put up a fantastic fight, taking several good runs. But I eventually got her into the gravel and Adam snatched her tail.





It may just have been a small hatchery Steelhead, but it was awesome! What that fish did for my confidence for BC was tremendous.


Adam and I called it a night at that and rolled into town for dinner. We got some food, set up camp and got a few hours of sleep. We were back up at 4 in the morning to put in for a first light float back to the prime water. We both had a few bumps just as the sun was rising, but couldn't turn any of them into hook ups. We ended up pulling off the river around 8 in the morning and then we went our separate ways. Adam headed back to Coeur D'Alene and I headed up east. Adam sent me up to the North Fork of the Clearwater and I broke my new "Clearwater" rod in on some nice West Slope Cutthroats. I didn't find any of the big Bulls I was looking for, but it was gorgeous and I had a great time.


Yesterday I made it from St. Regis Montana up to McBride, BC, by way of Kootenai, Banff, and Jasper parks. It was an amazing drive, but I was bushed by the end of it!

Today I finished the last leg of the drive up to Smithers. And tomorrow I begin a week of Steelhead fishing in one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.