trout Archives - Fly Fishing T-Shirts and Cool Fly Fishing Apparel from The Fly Trout

Posted on July 3, 2013July 5, 2013 by The Fly Trout — Leave a comment

Camping on the Conejos

Over the weekend the family and I went down south to meet my dad and his girlfriend for some camping and some fly fishing. Last year we had a great time camping right off the Conejos River so we decided to repeat. This year, like last, we had some rain showers which were nice for keeping the temperature down, but did limit the time on the water. In the morning before the rains came there were some pretty nice Green Drake hatches. Funny thing is that I didn’t catch a thing during those hatches! I couldn’t set a hook to save my life. I had a ton of strikes over the weekend but I was only able to bring one into my net, and that was at dusk right when the rain stopped with very few bugs on the water. Here are some pictures from the trip. Stay fly.

Checking out the river with my Trout Names shirt and blue hat.

View of the river from above.

Tying up some bugs at the campsite.

My dad’s sweet camo popup tent. He did that himself!

Having a brew on the river.

The only fish landed all weekend.

Posted on May 29, 2013May 29, 2013 by The Fly Trout — Leave a comment

Two Weekends Two Canyons

The last two weekends I have fished the same river but in two different canyons. The first was Eleven Mile Canyon. I had never fished that section of the South Platte before, but wanted to give it a whirl because I had heard the fishing is usually pretty decent there. And what I had heard was correct. The flows were low and the river was crystal clear. I was able to land four nymphing with a size 20 top secret midge in the morning and one with a comparadun dry in the afternoon. The only frustration came when a nice BWO hatch went off and the damn fish were refusing my flies! I saw several fish swim up to my flies and turn away in disgust. I’m not quite sure if it was my line or my fly or what, but it sure was hard to be rejected so many times.

This last weekend we headed to Cheesman Canyon. I have fished here several times and every time I am captivated by the beauty of this fishery. Don’t get me wrong Eleven Mile is also pretty, but there is something about Cheesman. Maybe it’s because there is not a road along the river. Or maybe it’s because you have to hike in and work a little to get to fishing. In any case, it’s a great place to be. As always there were a ton fish to be caught. And as always, they were tough to catch. After hiking around and getting rigged up and fishing a bit with no action I decided to climb up on some boulders and see if I could locate some fish. I happened upon a nice pool with probably ten nicely sized trout. I was able to land one out of that pool and hooked up with four more. Two shook free and two broke off. Not a very good batting average, but it was still a fun time.

For some sweet fishing and amazing scenery I’d definitely recommend checking out one of the canyons of The South Platte. Stay Fly.

Pretty sweet spot next to a canyon wall – Eleven Mile

Esteban with a Colorado shirt and a Colorado brew – Eleven Mile

Slap me some fin – Eleven Mile

Stayin’ fly with a brown trout – Eleven Mile

Sweet view – Cheesman

A great morning in Colorado with one of my brown buddies – Cheesman

Posted on September 30, 2012September 30, 2012 by The Fly Trout — 2 Comments

Fly Fish Art

For months and months I have been following Shawn Bichsel on Twitter, Instagram, and his blog Lines in the Dirt. And for months and months I have admired Shawn’s work. Shawn is a fly fisherman and he is an artist. He creates some of the coolest and most interesting pieces of fly fishing art that I have seen. He will use a pencil or a sharpie or an iPad app to craft some amazing flies and fish. He has even made an awesome dry fly out of wood!

Ever since I started following Shawn and watch him do his thing I thought, “he needs to put this stuff up for sale.” Finally, in August he started an Etsy shop to start selling his work. And just few weeks ago he finished up “Trout, Line and Fly.” Being the trout-lover that I am, I just had to have it.

To see more of Shawn’s artistic masterpieces check out Lines in the Dirt. And if you love the art as much as I do, you can purchase some at his Etsy shop.

Stay Fly.

Posted on July 24, 2012 by The Fly Trout — Leave a comment

Long Time No Post Part 1

It’s been a while since I have made a blog post. I have been fly fishing and camping four times since my last post. Four times!! What is my deal? Well anyway, I need to catch up. So here it goes, part 1 of the last month’s adventures.

Around the 4th of July every year my family heads up to the South Park area for some Colorado mountain fun. My favorite part of this trip, besides hanging with my extended family, is the fly fishing. There are numerous places to fly fish in this area, including Elevenmile and Spinney Reserviors and the South Platte river that flows between them, a.k.a. the “Dream Stream.” But the fisheries that I usually frequent are Tarryall Reservoir and Tarryall Creek, mainly because of their proximity to our cabin.

Tarryall Reservoir is a nice little reservoir that is mostly full of Rainbow Trout and Northern Pike. There is camping and boating at this lake, though I normally fish from the shore. My only gripe with Tarryall is that it is always windy. Day, night, summer, spring and fall. No matter the the time there always seems to be wind.

Tarryall Creek feeds right into the reservoir before it makes it’s way to the South Platte. This small creek winds back and forth for miles in a small valley. It’s a very nice setting with smaller mountains all around and no trees or brush to impede casting. There are mostly smaller brown trout with an occasional 12-14 incher hanging in deep undercut banks.

Here’s some pictures from that weekend:

Rainbows from the reservoir.

Nice looking sunset.

Little brown from Tarryall Creek.

Posted on June 24, 2012 by The Fly Trout — Leave a comment

Native Lake Trip

My buddy Esteban and I decided we wanted to do a backpack trip and since I love fly fishing, I found us a place that we could hike to and also get some fly fishing in. I chose Native Lake which is near Leadville, Colorado. It has an elevation of 11,293 feet and is home to brook trout and greenback cutthroat trout. This lake was very beautiful, but too shallow along the edges to be able to catch any fish. We saw a couple jumping in the middle, but without a canoe or belly boat there was no way to cast to them. I only caught two fish, one in the creek entering the lake and one in the creek leaving the lake. Here are some pictures from the trip.

Trailhead.

Little stream flowing down the mountain.

Esteban with Mount Massive in the background.

Me with Mount Massive in the background.

Native Lake from above. The most difficult part of the hike was from the trailhead to this point. From here to the lake was all downhill and much easier.

Here’s the part where I show you a bunch of different pictures of the lake. Make sure to check out the lake at sunset. Very pretty.

The Lake

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Our beer cooler.

Wait, where are the fish?

Here is the brook trout I caught in the creek that leads into the lake. The little guy squirted out of my hands as Esteban took the shot.

There is another lake, Rainbow Lake, we decided to hike up to and see if we could catch something.

Looking back away from Rainbow Lake.

Esteban found some snow. Thankfully we didn’t run into any polar bears.

I’m not sure why I am smiling because it was quite windy up there and I wasn’t able to cast out far enough to reach any fish.

I had a great time roughing it high up in the mountains. I would have loved to hook up with more fish but it was still a nice little adventure.

Catch ya later, Native Lake.

Oh, you might be wondering about the other fish I caught. He was a nice little greenback cutthroat trout. I didn’t get any pictures of him, but Esteban got it on video and I haven’t had a chance to upload yet. I’ll post the video once I get it ready. Stay fly.

Posted on April 26, 2012 by The Fly Trout — 1 Comment

Premium Stickers are Available

For those of you who weren’t able to sign up to get one of our free stickers because of the fact that we ran out, we should be getting some more back in stock in a week or two! We will keep you posted. We do have our premium stickers available for $4 (with free shipping).

Posted on April 21, 2012 by The Fly Trout — 1 Comment

An action packed day

Yesterday was action packed. First my free stickers went a little viral. I had been offering them for about a month and I have been sending out a couple a day. But yesterday a couple web sites posted that I had free stickers and my site was slammed. I had to turn off the order form because I didn’t have enough stickers to send out.

Then I went fly fishing after work for a little bit and had a few hookups, but was only able to land one little brown. Seeing my shadow on the creek means that winter is over right?

When I got home from my short fishing trip there were two packages waiting for me. The new family tent and my sweet new Allen Fly Fishing reel.

Next, I had some shirts I needed to print and get packaged to ship out.

I had some delicious deep dish pizza from Jimano’s Pizzeria. This was especially good because it was half off!

And to finish the day I decided to tie up a couple flies for Sunday (because Saturday is yard work day).

Posted on March 26, 2012March 26, 2012 by The Fly Trout — Leave a comment

Magical Mustache or Lucky T-Shirt

I have been out on the water just a handful of times thus far in 2012, and up until yesterday I hadn’t caught a fish. Each time I would say the cliche lines like “A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work.” or “It’s nice to just be in the outdoors.” We all know that those are mostly true statements, but the point of fishing is to catch freaking fish! And yesterday was the day to break my skunky streak. I took the family to the Chatfield Gravel Pond, which is a medium-sized pond right next to Chatfield Reservoir.

I wasn’t quite sure what fly I was going to use so I started of with a wooly bugger. After a few casts, I started to see a few occasional risers. I immediately switched to a comparadun because nothing beats watching a fish take your dry fly sitting on top! The fish were definitely not going crazy on the top of the lake, but I knew if I was patient I would get one. And sure enough, BAM! He took my fly and I set the hook. He wasn’t much of a fighter but it was still nice to get my first trout of the year. The wife and kids weren’t having any luck with their bait and lure fishing and were ready to leave even though everyone knows “you never walk away from the table when you’re on a heater.”

I’m not sure if it was fishing with the family or the too cool for school shirt I was wearing or my sweet stache, but something helped me break my no fish streak. I’ll give credit to the shirt. I only caught one and he was definitely too cool for school.

Comparadun

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Posted on February 26, 2012March 4, 2012 by The Fly Trout — Leave a comment

Today was a good day

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Yesterday a buddy and I headed to the famed South Platte river in Cheesman Canyon. This section of the South Platte is a very popular fishery because of the beautiful scenery, large trout and the proximity to Denver (just an hour drive). The downside to being so popular is the pickiness of the trout. I have read on many fishing websites and blogs that say “if you can catch a trout in Cheesman, you can catch one anywhere.” By using this logic, I cannot state with confidence that I can catch a trout anywhere.

Yesterday I was skunked. No hits, no fish on, no trout breaking off. This was my first trip to the canyon and I learned firsthand how particular these fish are. Before I went I read all the blogs, all the shop tips, everything I could on how to catch one of these finicky fishies. For the first hour or so I didn’t see any fish, but once the sun peaked over the canyon walls we finally saw a nice looking trout just chillin in a somewhat shallow run. I casted my stonefly with a top secret midge trailing to him several times and he was not interested. I then tried to get a little closer to get some video but that scared him off.

We continued up stream searching for some more fish. We found this deep pool that had two pretty good size trout just hanging out. I was excited to get another crack. Maybe that previous fish already had breakfast. So I cast my rig right over the top a bunch of times. Nothing. Not even a flinch. I began switching flies to find something they might want. I tried the stonefly, top secret midge, zebra midge, red brassie, rs2, griffith’s gnat. And my buddy, who is not a fly fisherman and just came to hang out, had is spinning rod with him and tried a couple lures just to see if they would even look at it. Nothing. We offered everything but a steak dinner to these trout and they were completely disinterested. It was a little frustrating to watch fish completely ignore the flies that are put right in front of their faces!

At this point we were getting hungry and decided to call it a day. We hiked back to the car packed up our gear and headed back to town. On the way home we talked about how crazy and frustrating it was to be ignored by those picky little fish! While driving I saw a sign that read “Today is a good day.” And I thought to myself “even though we didn’t catch those fish, today WAS a good day!”

Posted on January 29, 2012 by The Fly Trout — Leave a comment

Barren Winter Day

I haven’t done any fishing in a couple months and have never done any winter fly fishing. So I thought what better day to go than one when the temperature is in the 50s? There are only a few places you can fly fish in the winter here in Colorado because much of the water is frozen. The South Platte has a few sections of nice tailwater that isn’t frozen, Cheeseman Canyon and The Dream Stream below Spinney. I probably should have chosen one of those places to go to but instead I opted to stay in town and fish the South Platte below Chatfield. The spot that I started was pretty low and I didn’t even see a fish. As I went towards the dam it was all ice. I am not going to complain too much because I got to wear one of my Fly Shirts for the first time while fishing, but I would have been satisfied with just seeing one of my aquatic friends.

Posted on January 20, 2012January 20, 2012 by The Fly Trout — 4 Comments

Buttons up for Grabs

We thought it would be fun to pass out some buttons. The very same ones you get when you buy a shirt! We will give away one of each so you have three chances to win.

Twitter – Follow @theflytrout and tweet the following: I just entered to win a fly button from @theflytrout http://theflytrout.com/2012/01/buttons-up-for-grabs #TheFlyTrout This will be a drawing. Every tweet counts as an entry.
Facebook – Like us on Facebook and post on our wall where you will stick your button if you win. The best post wins (we’ll be the judge)
This blog post – Comment on this blog post you’re favorite fish you like to catch. This will also be a drawing and just one entry per person.

Official Rules
Giveaway starts January 20th, 2012
Giveaway ends January 27th, 2012
Winners announced January 28th, 2012

Posted on January 14, 2012 by The Fly Trout — Leave a comment

Coming to a t-shirt near you

Check out this picture leaked to us… by us. It’s the screen that will be used to print our newest t-shirt and it’s a good one! Rainbow’s aren’t gay will be available in The Fly T-Shirt Shop very soon. Stay posted because we might even have a giveaway on this one.