Checking out the river with my Trout Names shirt and blue hat.
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View of the river from above.
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Tying up some bugs at the campsite.
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My dad’s sweet camo popup tent. He did that himself!
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Having a brew on the river.
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The only fish landed all weekend.
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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
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Esteban with a Colorado shirt and a Colorado brew – Eleven Mile
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Slap me some fin – Eleven Mile
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Stayin’ fly with a brown trout – Eleven Mile
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Sweet view – Cheesman
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A great morning in Colorado with one of my brown buddies – Cheesman
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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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).

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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.

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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!”

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