The Caddis Box - Preparing for Next Summer

I am a fan of caddisflies.  They remind me of summer afternoons and evenings, green leaves, blue skies, hot days and cool water slowly leaking into my waders.  I have spent many fly fishing summer nights racing against the setting sun and increasing darkness, trying to find one more pattern to fool one more hungry trout before it's too dark to see to tie on another fly.



In preparation for this coming summer, a new arsenal of caddisflies has begun to emerge from my fly tying table.

Even as it looks like this outside.

I am a fan of xcaddis patterns, so the first flies to come off the bench were a few different xcaddis combinations.

Then, I added some more more general emerging caddis patterns, while keeping with the shuck / hatching caddis concept.  I really think the trout target these shuck pattern as caddisflies usually explode through the surface film.  These "stuck" flies provide the trout a chance of catching up with these hearty, but fast snacks. 

 

I even added a few Gary LaFontaine Sparkle Emergers.

So, for now, it's still winter here in Denver, Colorado and the trout are not rising to the surface of my favorite streams targeting tasty caddis treats.  But, soon they will be and I hope to be there and ready.  I will continue to fill my fly box with new patterns as well as old favorites.  If you are a tier, you are probably doing the same thing, along with dreaming of your favorite stretch of stream and some of your favorite fishing memories.

Summer on Clear Creek

It's the middle of winter, but I'm still thinking of warm summer days spent fly fishing for brown trout on Clear Creek just outside of Denver on Colorado's front range.

This footage comes from a few days on Clear Creek last year just above the canyon reach.  Elk hair caddis and assorted nymphs, including medallion midges, fooled these small brown trout holding in the slower edges of the creek.

Although it's cold out now, it's the thoughts of these lively fish that keep me dreaming of summer fly fishing which isn't really that far away.  Is it?

Favorite Stream Beers

There is just something right about enjoying a nice cold beer on the side of a beautiful creek.  Here are some of my favorites (beers and creeks).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, I'm on a budget.

 

 

 

And our dog is a cheap date, too, that loves six pack boxes.

 

 

 

Yampa River, Colorado

The intensity of the early October snow increased as I exited I-70 at Silverthorne and headed north on Highway 9, leaving the traffic lights and storefronts behind.  The next 30 miles was a bleary-eyed drive through near blinding flurries with both fox and deer dancing across the road.

I was headed to a conference.  For work.  In Steamboat.  And the following morning, I discovered that the conference venue was within throwing distance of the Yampa River.  Hello distraction, I'm a fishing addict.  

The brisk fall day did not burn off the low morning clouds until just past the conference's lunch break of pulled pork and potato salad.  The after lunch session left me only an hour to fish in the late afternoon sun before heading back down to the front range.  With no observed rises, nymphing the deeper runs seemed to be the best approach.

The first few fish were small.  I began to wonder just how pressured this easily accessible downtown stretch is and to formulate a plausible "it's always nice to get out fishing story".

Then, the line went tight halfway through a drift in a deeper slot below some boulders.  The weight at the end of the line had some heft and some life.  After a brief fight and netting, this nicer rainbow was brought to hand.

No streamside beer today.  With a 3 hour drive ahead, a celebratory coffee was in order.  

The drive home was much less eventful, with clear weather, beautiful views and plenty of time to wonder what could have been with more time on the water.  

The 3 inches of snow on the sides of the road at the top of Rabbit Ears Pass and the color of the aspens show how close winter is at the higher elevations.  The fishing is still great and the lower elevation waters should be in full fall swing and will be for at least a month still.  Get out if you can and enjoy a few last bright warm days on the water before the cold weather really starts to sink in.

 

Summer High Country Cutty's

The mother-in-law is in town, so the fishing day started with a hearty breakfast.  Sometimes mother-in-laws are alright.  Especially when they cook a great morning meal and don't give you a guilt trip for leaving to fish while they are in town.  

Thankful for the food and graceful escape, I raced to one of my favorite stretches of water for a summer day of fly fishing for cutthroat trout in a small Colorado front range mountain stream.  This is one of those streams that has a very small window to really catch the confluence of weather, stream flow, insect activity and, most importantly, fish activity.  I appreciated the opportunity to go see if the time was right.

The time was almost right.  Not perfectly right, but right enough for a great day on the water.  Due to the snowpack this past winter and some summer storms, flows are still a little high, but insect and fish activity made up for it and the weather was just about perfect for a fly fishing trip.  Fish were mainly interested in dries (humpy's and adams), but a few picky trout required an emerger pattern (barr emerger) to fool them.

Stretches of this stream further down basin have received their fair share of rainbow stockings, so these trout are all some degree of cutbow mix, some appearing more cutthroat than rainbow, and some more rainbow than cutthroat.  That impurity might bother some, but for me cutthroats are so pretty that even a mix of the two specifies is still hard to regard as anything less than beautiful.

The morning and afternoon past much too quickly and soon it was time to head back to the car for the drive home.  It was again a beautiful day out on the water catching plenty of moderately sized cutthroats.  I really needed an escape to the foothills and this Colorado creek provided just what I needed.  If you need something similar, this would be a great time to pursue it.  Enjoy your summer days of fly fishing if you can can get out.  Cheers!

Change in Scenery

I had been hitting the same stream fairly regularly, but when the summer rainstorms started to blow out the little creek I was frequenting, I needed to branch out.  My next fishing day started with a hot cup of coffee from the thermos on the banks of a creek I hadn't fished as much this season.  There is a bit more flow here, so the rains had less effect, or so I thought.

Flows were manageable on this day and hungry trout were found along the edges, in eddies and around rocks in the clear water.  The majority of fish took dry flies (caddis, x-caddis and humpies) with a few strikes subsurface on midge patterns.  The higher flows in this creek made the moderately sized brown trout seem to fight with an extra effort as they used the river to their advantage.

Celebration beers were had.

Attempting a repeat performance, conditions were not quite as favorable and I was forced to make another change.  Rainstorms on this day had turned the creek an opaque, chocolaty brown.  The only option was to head stubbornly higher into the upper portions of the drainage.

The cloudy skies and rain did not bode well, but I was the only one in the parking lot, so that had to count for something, right.  It was one of those moments when you think, either I know something everyone else doesn't, or everyone else just knows better.  I think it was a bit of both.

Stream flow was most certainly high, but the water was clear, unlike downstream.  It seemed that  the thunderstorms hadn't had the same impact here as they had elsewhere.  And I got into the first cutty's of the year.

The first was a younger, smaller fish, as I was still figuring out the right fly, but  I was able to bring a few nicer cutthroats / cutbows to hand on a variety of dries.   They again put up some great fights in the fast water as their downstream brown trout neighbors had.

On this evening, I had a celebratory homemade pork, mole and bean burrito instead of a beer that was just about the tastiest stream snack I have ever had.  I may have just been hungry, but it was definitely better than a doughnut.

The summer season is in full swing.  Enjoy your days on the water, watch out for those thunderstorms and for chances to branch out.  You never know what you might find.  Maybe your first cutty's of the year.  I can't wait for my next trip to get out and chase some trout.