Fly Fishing Instruction

Read The Story Fly Fishing for Pike in Colorado (a crash course) Northern Pike are an exciting quarry. Many spin fishermen and bait casters are aware of how fun pike can be, but fly fishers are mostly oblivious. Less than 15% of fly fishermen in Colorado have ever cast to pike or musky. See More Stories About Pike!

Read The Story Become a Professional Pickpocket The Colorado Front Range has a plethora of small to medium-sized rivers most of which are considered high gradient. What this all translates to is miles upon miles of pocket water. The faster you become proficient on this pocket water the better your fishing experience will become.





 

Read The Story The Art of the Grip & Grin: How to take better fishing photos We fishermen have been attempting to capture the memory of our catch since the beginning of mankind. We are no longer left to paint our prey on cave walls. Since the invention of the camera the perfect “Grip & Grin” photo...

Read The Story How To Rig A Dry & Dropper The concept of using two flies at once is not a new idea, nor is it an obscure tactic reserved for the self-proclaimed“experts”. Most fly fishers use a tandem rig in one or another of its’ many forms. I will say again…most...

Read The Story Night Fishing For Largemouth Bass The biggest hurdles to overcome with any night fishing are the casting and line management. All your casts will have to be done by feel. There is no turning your head to watch how your back cast is doing...Read More About Bass!

Read The Story Best Times To Fish Boulder Creek As a result of many years of fishing Boulder Creek and extensive record keeping, I have come up with what I believe to be three "windows of opportunity". These are the best times to be fishing...Get More Info About Boulder & South Boulder Creeks!

Learn More About Big Thompson River Click Here! The Big Thompson River is one of the more popular small rivers on the northern Colorado Front Range...and it is a very healthy fishery thanks to the catch and release regulations and decent flows for the last...

Read The Story Gear Up For Carp! I talk constantly about the strategies and tactics surrounding carp fishing. I do this because there is so much to talk about, yet so much poor advice and misinformation blowing around...See More Info On Fly Fishing For Carp!

Read The Story Careful Whatcha Wipe With I know you don’t think of yourself as a cheechako. Hell, ya probably think it’s some sorta new Latino gang terminology. It ain’t. You moved out here to Colorado from San Diego or some suburb in the Midwest and now you tell all your old friends back home that you like to “rough it” now that you live “out west” or “in the mountains”...

Read The Story Dead Fish Do Tell Tales Sometimes you have to rely on old age or winter kill before the largest or smartest fish show themselves. Always stop and inspect the rotting carcasses...

Fly Fishing Stories & Essays (2)

Read The Story A Good Old Fashioned Fish Killin' The fishing the day before had been brutal. It was a good day, mind you...just tough on the body--like a good night drinking. But I don't do that to myself anymore. The reward for surviving ones youth is to take care of yourself, I suppose.

Read The Story Yup…That’s The Plan “Well…let me know how it turns out.” Tom said. I had run into a friend of mine at Alfalfa’s grocery store. “So, whatcha got planned?” He asked.

Read The Story Fishing Anyone's St. Vrain There is a term used by fly fishermen from time to time—locals in town, mainly. “Like Boulder Creek...only wider and with larger trout.” It is a standard point of reference. Like a standard, but vague unit of measure.

Read The Story Free Wheelin’ (Last Days of Summer) I slept in on purpose—a rarity anymore. Then I took my coffee and breakfast on top of a topo map spread out on the kitchen table. I had no plans. No obligations. No company. A full day to burn. The only plans I had at all, on this last day of August...

 Read The Story Phantoms of Fish Camp I have been infatuated with the romantic notion surrounding the idea of Fish Camp, for most of my life. Not just fishing camp, but Deer Camp...


Read The Story  Lakes Revisited Places revisited. Lakes revisited. It is not taking a step backwards, an emotional demotion—it is, as Kenny and The First Editions used to say, me just dropping in to see what condition my condition is in. …

Read The Story Lucky Man I have never been a man of means. Unless you consider stubbornness and persistence to be means. (Maybe they are, but you sure as hell can't fold them up and put them in your wallet.) I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth...

Read The Story Pegged Beads (And My Turmoil About Them) This is a sensitive subject—the fly-fishing version of bringing up politics at a mixed family barbecue, or religion at the pub. The pegged egg. If you have no idea what I am talking about (congratulations!) you need not read any farther. Go about your day…

Read The Story Friends Flies (& Shitty Handshakes) He didn’t start off on the right foot—parking sideways in the fly shop parking lot. It was a slow Sunday in the shop, so the sloppy parking wasn’t really an inconvenience to anyone, but there was something about it that stunk of a deep seated entitlement that those born rich will sometimes have. Then the handshake...

Read The Story Chasing Childhood Fears "Turn the page....fast!" my five-year-old-self said to my mother, clapping my hands over my eyes as pudgy shields against the creepiest centerfold known to man...

Read The Story Windblown Wanderings on the Big Thompson It is Spring. Although the two inch fresh blanket whose thickness is still being added to as I write, would moonlight you no hint...

Read The Story A comparative analysis: IF FISH WERE DRUGS Bass: Medical Marijuana. This a chill experience, spent mid summer casting a popper along some peaceful pond, lined with cattails. You might be in a small, manageable jon boat...

 Read The Story Hard Work Pays Off (and other lies your parents told you) It has been a few weeks ago now that I got my ass kicked out on Clear Creek. Had the entire day to figure things out and turn my fortunes around. It was a week day, too…so I had the canyon all to myself. No excuses. There was nothing hatching, but so what? I didn’t want to fish dries anyhow. I dredged the whole damned canyon with nymphs and streamers...

Read The Story The Reservoir The reservoir is near perfect. It’s close to home, well hidden and few people know exactly where it is. It’s not tiny, but easily small enough to fish entirely in an afternoon by two driven individuals with fly rods...

Read The Story Tying Flies I feel like I am on a movie set. On a scape I have dreamt. Painted into a picture I have seen before --- like when Bert draws Mary Poppins a jolly holiday and they jump into the sidewalk, careful not to smudge what has been created, what is so beautiful...

Fly Fishing Stories and Essays

Read The Story April Fools on South Boulder Creek We were not the first ones to the gravel pull off, Erin and I. A late start, a stop for coffee and one wrong turn up a dirt road. Oh well. The two guys ahead of us looked decent enough—two fellow fly fishers—not a couple of turds who would likely camp out on fish or high hole us. I’ll get back to this. They were already wadered up and about to hit the trail down to the South Boulder Creek tailwater. I was going to give a good luck wave and see ya down there, but before any of those niceties could be exchanged a big pickup truck lurched into the pull-out next to us. As the dust was settling a big man in a tight “I Once Went to Sturgis” T-shirt rolled out of the cab...

Read The Story Farm Ponds, Horse Shit & Other Memories of the Midwest "Kind of reminds ya of home, doesn't it..." he said, casting me a smile over his shoulder as he turned back to his line. It tightened with the tell of a bite. His smile grew bigger. Smell that...and he held out the taddle-tale line's catch. I took a drag of the farm pond water infused bass. Turns out, that humid color of green algae is my hallucinogen for home...

Read The Story Trial by Fire (Just ain’t fair…this love, war and fly fishing) Wisdom is the only constructive result of a lifetime of dumb decisions. Or something like that. My memory is paraphrasing some motivational poster I once saw. But I get the gist. Yeah…I get the gist. I have learned some hard lessons in life the long way. I had to figure them out for myself. Had to touch the flame. Mother said it was hot and it would burn my finger. And it did. Every time. But listening to advise and taking it are not the same. Even as a toddler I guess I was striving to be a wise man, not an obedient one. Besides, now I knew about fire. Then, as an eighteen-year-old Army recruit, my father—a Vietnam War vet—advised I not volunteer for anything. Lay low, aim low...

Read The Story Rods Lost To Ladies A guide friend and I were catching up on each others’ lives, to include fishing, beer and women. While discussing the finer points of each I was reminded of a favorite graphite rod that is now sitting in an ex-girlfriends closet and likely has not seen the light of day since I last put it in its’ tube...

Read The Story Junk Food

Yup. Sorry to say. These are the two main reasons why I am a fisherman. Good ol’ pretzel rods and orange soda. No, really. I mean it. It is rumored that I owe my life to Jim Beam (good on ya, Dad!) but I am certain that I owe my passion for fishing to junk food. Yeah, yeah…I’ll explain. My childhood diet consisted of bran cereal and yogurt for breakfast, not Fruit Loops.

Read The Story Pot Roasts & Dog Hair Flies

Sitting in a pot-roasting house, can make people do crazy things. If I am to be home for the day, or even just the afternoon, I avoid turning that little gray knob to "warm" on the crock -- as if it contains a plague of locusts...

Read The Story Allure of Virginal Creeks I have had many, memorable love affairs with small creeks. Larger rivers are intoxicating creatures, I’ll grant you and they live much louder, vivacious existences…but we have all seen their tasteless centerfolds in Fly Fisherman magazine—laid out in the buff...

Read The Story Solitary Life of a Commercial Fly Designer There was a time (I am told) when a guy in his early 20’s could help put himself through college by tying flies for his local shops. Those days are long gone. The mind boggles trying to calculate the number of flies it would take to pay the average tuition these days.

Read The Story Enjoy The Perks The last thing I want to get into is a long-winded speculation about why we fly fish. Good, god…that has been done to death.

Read The Story Asylum on the Williams Fork I already had the overwhelming desire to be off grid for awhile…to get on the road and out of cell reception. So, I leapt at the suggestion to join my friends Jeff and Cody on a slightly misguided jaunt down to the Colorado River...

Read The Story Lost Flies Sometime toward the end of my first year living here in Colorado I met and fell in love with a woman. I remember it being sometime in the fall when we met. She was tall and beautiful…

Read The Story Sometimes Ya Just Gotta Swim How many times can you remember standing along the bank of a river or shore of a lake looking longingly to a run, eddy or far shore wishing you could get a cast that far, or be standing there instead of where you happened to be...

Read The Story Keeping the Ice Off ‘Tis the season. Holidays are comin’. Heehaw. You are about to fall off the diet wagon and gain back that 12 pounds, get into an argument with an in-law that will haunt you for the next decade...

Read The Story Being Thankful I have not always been thankful on Thanksgiving. It is not necessarily my default state-of-mind. Although being thankful is an act of introspection and humility...

Read The Story Being a Good Host I learned what it was to be a good host by watching my sister. This was years ago…back before I lived in Colorado. I was living and working in fairly random places. Canada… Alaska…

Read The Story Bunch of Old Crap Mementoes. Keepsakes. Call them what you want. Call them all just a bunch of old crap. But they are artifacts from past lives. We don’t think about them until we stumble onto them …unexpectedly. Then the old stories swarm out of the subconscious like ground hornets from under a lawn mower...

Read The Story The Male Ego... A young woman in her mid-twenties told me I was the most incredible man she had ever met. And…for a few hours I actually believed. I stood in a strange shower the next morning squeezing oddly scented shampoo onto my head, basking in hot water and my own awesomeness…

Everybody and their brothers...

Weather was just too nice the other day not to get on the water. Drove up to the Big Thompson River and met a couple friends below the dam. Was sunny, but the wind was blowing like a SOB! Lot of cars in the parking area...think I counted two dozen at one time. On a Monday????

Fishing was slow. Best fly was a #22 Jujubee fished deep...trout laying low and not being very aggressive. Had to stay low...long winter shadows! Only a small bit of ice along the edges.

Man Bling!

If any of you are considering a gift of jewelry for the male fly fisher in your life...please take my advice. Don't do it! Get him a new ceramic bobbin for fly tying, a fancy fly box or just a bunch of hooks! Tiers always need more hooks.
Cuff links, tie clips and watchbands are masculine...but still pretty lame. Live crayfish, on the other hand, are always classy.

Last chance for local bass

String up your bass rods now before it is too late! In another month or so the local bass ponds will be too cold for good warm water fly fishing. But October afternoons are still a great time to get out and whack some bass!
You may not have the same great top water action you had this Summer...so think about heavy streamers on longer 2x and 3x leaders. Dark, reddish brown (crayfishy) streamers are in order. A couple of my favorite flies are "Geezus Lizard", "Belly Ache Minnow" and the "Mini-Sculpin".

City Slicker

You can take the trout bum out of Junction, but you can't take the Junction out of the trout bum. Yuk, yuk, yuk. Anyway. Patrick Knackendoffel moved out to the Front Range a couple years ago from Grand Junction to go to school and guide for us. Patrick and I drove into downtown Denver the other day to scout for carp in the South Platte river...but got side tracked by big trout! You may be surprised at the quality of the fish in the middle of the city! If you live in or near Denver you ought to be involved, or at least aware of the efforts of the Denver chapter of Trout Unlimited. They are investing a lot of time and energy into that stretch of river.

How To Salvage a Fishing Trip

The best laid fishing plans can go awry in a hurry...weather and stream flow are the usual offending suspects. The best way to deal with these is the be prepared with contingency plans. Be sure to take proper flies and rods for fish species other than what you had intended to target. But, more importantly, be EMOTIONALLY prepared to bail on the primary body of water, or fish species, if things have not worked out! I recently had to heed my own advice...

The plans began when TK Connor found some great online reports about wiper fishing just across the border in Nebraska. So, late Sunday night the two of us geared up for an extended "wild wiper chase"...which is usually slightly more futile than a wild goose chase. TK and I swung by a 24-hour Wal-Mart in McCook late at night to get our out-of-state fishing licences...the process took well over an hour and was painful to watch. I got the feeling computer technology was a fairly recent integration into the culture of McCook, Nebraska. So, it was quite late that night before we pulled up to the boat ramp at Red Willow Reservoir. TK slept in the bed of his truck and I claimed some flat real estate under the boat trailer. First light came surprisingly early...and we got the boat in the water before the sun was up. Our sole task was to learn the lake as fast as we could and figure out the wiper. And hope the cold front the night before hadn't put the fish in a funk. Ten hours of hard fishing later, we came to the forced realization that the hot wiper reports were definitely pre cold front...all we had to show for our efforts: two white bass, two largemouth bass and two small wiper (and I do mean small...like 4 or 5 inches!).

We spent another night on the ground and got back at it in the morning. A couple hours into the second day the conditions had not improved... So, now it was well past time to reconsider our options. We could throw in the towel and head back to Colorado with our rods and tails tucked bashfully between our legs...or diversify! Our heavy sink-tip wiper rigs got reeled in and stowed and out came our 6 weight carp rods! TK motored us over to some good looking flats exposed by the low water and we anchored the boat and jumped out into the knee deep water. For the next several hours we stalked and sight cast to 15 to 30 pound carp aggressively tailing in shallow water. They were wise, but not wise enough to resist a well-placed Backstabber carp fly! Every fish took us deep into our backing and we quickly forgot all the futile hours chasing the phantom wipers!

But then it all came together...in a back cove we stumbled into some large pods of shad. These shad were not swimming around content and relaxed like the ones we had been seeing for the last day and a half...they were spastic and scurrying for their lives! WIPER! TK and I raced back to the boat, pulled anchor, switched out fly rods and entered the fray! At long last we were into some wiper! Nothing huge, but the trip was a success...

Ultra selective back country cutthroat (Fly fishing for greenbacks in RMNP)

Yes...the caption is a joke. Some of the many joys of back country fly fishing are untouched streams, no other people and plentiful, naive trout. Maybe the most fun, but overlooked perk of a long hike into the bush is your wide open fly selection. I tied a few dozen of the most bazaar and/or ugly dry flies I have ever seen in preparation for our overnight trip into the Rocky Mountain National Park the other day. I caught so many cutthroat I lost count!

She Loves Fly Fishing for Carp!

Sabrina Stratford goes out with Jay Zimmerman and top gun carp guide Patrick Knackendoffel in search of her first ever carp on a fly rod! She hooks a real hog on a 5wt using a Backstabber Carp Fly! Colorado carpin' at its best!
Read the full story on Sabrina's fly fishing blog!
(http://www.shelovesflyfishing.com/carp-fishing.html)

Also watch the entire event in the latest instalment in the "Fly Fishing for Carp" series...be forewarned, there is some graphic Carp Porn in this one!

Flyfishing with the Bellyache Minnow Streamer

I have been raving about this fly for years now. They are one of the best and most diverse bait-fish streamers I have ever fished. They have proven their worth on big trout, bass, salmon...and just about every other species we can find to throw them to! Rob Kolanda just got back from the East Coast chasing blues and stripers (disguised as a family vacation) and fished these Bellyache Minnows almost exclusively.

Watch the fly tying video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7bJOA7uvIQ

Fly Fishing the Rocky Mountain National Park

September is the month I always find time to fish the Rocky Mountain National Park...all the headwater creeks are low and clear, the resident trout are hungry and eager to get fat before the looming winter. The Park is such a great place to spend a day or afternoon, but I always take a few days in the late summer/early fall to get a back country permit and hike into somewhere really cool and remote! I got some great footage for your entertainment! ENJOY!

Watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foTItkmk6wo