Shifting Gears

Russell Miller and I somehow convinced each other that taking a morning to drive up to Gross Reservoir in search of a big tiger musky was not just a wanton effort in futility. We traded semi-motivational pep talks the night before just to ensure that we would both be willing to wake up early. But it turned into a bright, cloudless morning and we were left standing on the large rock outcropping casting 12 inch flies into seemingly lifeless, but gin clear water. We gave it a hard two hours…maintaining the faith. But we had to call it quits sooner or later.

“We ought to fish the creek…seeing as we’re already so close,” Russ said.

And he was right. We were already there and it had been a while since either one of us had fished the tail water section of South Boulder Creek below Gross.

The flow into South Boulder was very low and clear. At first it appeared as though only the largest pools had enough flow to hold fish, but we quickly learned that there were still trout everywhere. The fishing was almost easy…and we lost track of the numbers of fat, health rainbows we were catching. I took almost all of my fish on a #18 black “Two-Bit Hooker” nymph. But it may not have mattered what flies we were using. It did, however matter that we had packed multiple fly rods. Even for a quick, half-day fishing trip. We brought along a super stiff pike/musky rod, a 6 weight bass/carp rod as well as a 3 weight creek rod. We did not know what kind of trouble we would get ourselves into, but we wanted to be ready to shift gears if we had to…