After our Monday outing, the three of us were determined to get in some extra innings; so Wednesday evening we hit the road again as soon as the conference ended. We managed to reach Mike at the fly shop just before he walked out the door and locked up the shop; this time, he advised that we hit the Elevenmile Canyon section. Apparently, the water had gone up by 50cfs overnight at Spinney, but the water was perfectly fishable at Elevenmile (apparently, it had been very high the last time Greg and Jonathan had fished it a few weeks prior), and there was an excellent evening caddis hatch coming off. It’s hard to believe the Elevenmile section is part of the same watershed as the “Dream Stream”.

This section, which looks like a deep gash cut through Colorado granite, feels much more like a freestone stream than its upstream sibling. It fished more like a western freestoner as well – we walked through clouds of caddis flies happily buzzing around the bushes, but you could tell these guys wouldn’t begin their bouncy little dance on the water’s surface until just before dusk. The four of us (for this outing, we picked up Greg’s father-in-law) hiked down a ravine from the road staked out our spots. The section in front of us was fast moving, technical pocket water, and I brambled my way downstream to find some water that was slightly more conducive to spotting rises and fishing dry flies.

Sure enough, as the sun descended below the canyon wall, I began to notice telltale rises – for the most part in the swift water of the main current, but also alongside big pieces of structure (for the most part, big boulders). At one point, I worked a small run where I could spot numerous fish rising happily to take emerging caddis flies. I caught several fish, the first on a dropper, but the rest on the dries. Jonathan came down to fish near me, and I moved downstream to let him fish the “honey hole”, but still managed to catch a number of fish standing on a boulder in the middle of the main current.

We fished until we couldn’t see anymore, sated and hungry. We reunited with Greg and his father-in-law around 9PM, and debriefed over beers. Apparently, they had driven upstream to find better dry fly water, and had fished a slower flow, where they had been able to target a number of risers, all of whom had proven to be warier than the happy fish Jonathan and I had fished.

Of course, by the time we returned to Woodland Park, the fly shop was long closed, so we pulled up to Mike’s house, where we found him playing darts and drinking beers with his roommate, Kyle (an ex-banker-turned-PHP-programmer-qua-trout-bum). We hung out with Mike and Kyle until the wee hours, comparing fishing notes and shooting darts. What a great night. Sometimes, it’s nice to remember what it’s like to live the life we took for granted back in the day!

Thanks Greg, Mike, and Kyle for an incredible experience.

The unsavory threesome that put a serious hurting on some unsuspecting Colorado salmonids.

Please be advised that these fishermen are armed and dangerous. Any fish that comes in contact with one of these bad-ass long-rodders should grow legs and run for the hills….

As we arrived at the stream, a fair number of tricos did mistake our windshield for the water; in fact, there were few of these bugs as we made our way to the stream itself. Though we were itching to get on the water, and I was personally feeling a bit like a slacker for due to our 8AM arrival, there was little activity for the first half-an-hour. As I worked likely holding water with an elk hair caddis and a fluorescent green pupa dropper, I gradually started to notice infrequent, subtle rises. I fooled my first fish on the dropper – a small brown that took my fly as it dangled suspended at the head of a downstream riffle. I took my next fish directly upstream on the dry. This one was working the inside edge of a bend between a rock and the main current. After hooking a couple more fish at this spot, I moved around the corner and fished a long, broad pool. Almost immediately, I spotted a bigger fish porpoising in the middle of the pool. Five or six casts later, and I was fastened to an 18” ‘bow that eventually came unbuttoned as he played tug-of-war with me from the main current. That got the adrenaline going! Soon afterwards, Jonathan, who had been fishing a narrow run across the creek from me, yelled for me to come over, and I found him locked in a similar tug-of-war. This time, Jonathan won the battle, and hauled a beautiful 18” ‘bow out of the water. We had several more wonderful hours of this sort of fishing – battling big, strong, smart fish that preferred dries to nymphs and tested our 5X tippets and blood knots. Jonathan lost a big 20+” brown after fighting it downstream for several hundred feet. Greg lost a big brown that took off downstream as well, darting between boulders and under deadfall. We left the stream around 3, oblivious to the hummingbird-sized Rocky Mountain mosquitoes, grueling sun, and dry heat. What an incredible outing!

I didn’t fish the first pool, as a measure of respect for the injured deer. And I wasn’t able to raise any fish on the rabbit fly, but I did fool a couple on a #20 beadhead nymph dropper and a #16 black ant. I fished up to the outflow pipe, finding a number of fish upstream of the second pool (and catching a nice brown in the pocket water below the outflow). I also had a big fish lunge at my indicator in the left-hand eddy below the outflow.

WSW winds swinging around to northerly winds – beautiful weather, despite hot haze, fog, and high temps…. Thorne and I headed out to the rips, despite the new flats that were created as a result of the new cut through the outer beach. We spotted several fish working the rips, despite the neap tide.

I boated a huge 36” bass on a squid fly. Thorne caught another big fish of similar size. We croaked my fish, and headed out the next day for some similar action. Thorne boated another big fish on day two, after several hours of intense frustration. On Saturday night, I hooked a nice fish right in front of the Sparkman compound on a big popper, casting to popping sounds off their beach.

Fathers Day weekend was hot and humid, with the stream running low and clear.  Virtually no signs of life in the first pool, but some subtle risers in the second pool and in the tail of the flat upstream of the pool.  Again, it was the rabbit foot emerger that elicited a vicious left to right take by a 12” brown that was dimpling the slow current under an overhang on the left side of the pool.  Yet again, the cast was off line, but the fish did not want to let the offering get by.

What a fly!