Tag Archives: westslope cutthroat

Showing up

Posted on by

“Eighty percent of success is showing up” — Woody Allen

I’ve been fishing east and west of the Divide with a friend, Roman. Mostly west. The good weather has been hanging in: clear skies; warm Autumn afternoon light…the best light. Some rivers have been spectacular. Some bugless and lifeless. I’m fortunate to live in a region where a 30-45 minute drive can deliver you to a variety of rivers if the one you are on is unproductive. The key, as always, is to show up, look, explore.

Large Bull trout are on redds in the mountains streams. The Brown trout in the lower rivers are not paired-up yet. There are fewer anglers around. It’s a great time of year to squeeze whatever juice is left out of the dry fly year. Hopefully BWO’s are still to come on some of the tailwater rivers. And maybe even some Mahoganies. I’ll wait for a low front, overcast skies and light wind and then show up. That’s the recipe to find a late season large colorful Brown trout sipping on the surface.

Some images from a week ago.

life ignites

Posted on by

AT MY LATITUDE DAYS are noticeably getting shorter. Mornings cooler. The sun archs lower. Shadows are longer late afternoon. Some trees are coloring and shedding their leaves. September has arrived in the Rocky Mountains.

It was 46f (water temperature) at 11:30 am on a nearby mountain stream the other day. It always runs cold. It’s cold in July. It’s cold in August. Same in September. By mid afternoon the creek probably was a few degrees warmer. Maybe it hit the 50f mark, probably not. Some hatches especially the larger Drakes are only suppose to emerge when the water temperature climbs above 50f and into the mid fifties. In the stream I was on Drakes can pop below 50f, some of the large ones and definitely the smaller, Flavs (Flavilinea Drunella). In my experience it just takes sunlight to flood the river bottom. That seems to be the trigger. That’s the spark that gets a really good hatch going in a frigid flow. With the mid-day sunlight the submerged rock clinging nymphs then let go and make their way to the surface. And trout wake-up and begin chasing their ascent, and start feeding on those riding on the surface. The river comes alive. Witnessing it is always special as is searching for the best that the stream has to offer when life ignites…

creeks, drakes & trout

Posted on by

CLEAR MOUNTAIN CREEKS. I’ve been out on them the past few weeks treasure hunting. A fair amount of stream miles/kms covered while walking the cold flows over uneven stones. The smaller version of the Green Drake (Flavs) family (Mayfly) were around on some of the streams. A few of the bigger Drakes too. Cutthroat trout are always willing to take them on the surface. The hatch never gets ignored. Survival in mountain streams requires that trout feed when opportunity knocks. And this relatively large mayfly means calories and thick healthy fish. Some streams have Drakes. Mysteriously others just a valley or a few miles away do not. The fish in those rivers are not as robust; not as wide.

Some gems found while treasure hunting…

comparaduns/haystacks, a simple pattern