On Friday, August 7, 2015 at 3:05:46 PM UTC-6, TurbineBlade wrote:
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On Friday, August 7, 2015 at 3:03:22 PM UTC-6, TurbineBlade wrote:Hello! I'm still fairly excited as I type this report. We are returning from an 8-day trip out to the park and have to say that we had a really great time "out west". As I understand from speaking with locals, the conditions were fairly ideal in terms of water levels post ice-off and also the decrease in afternoon storms (though we still hit a couple of those). Most every day began early for us (5-6 am) with temps in the upper 40s or 50s, and little to no humidity and rising up in the 70s (i.e. it was extremely pleasant).We first made our way into Wild Basin to fish the N.F. St. Vrain. This is a really beautiful stream, similar in my eyes to the larger SNP streams in terms of habitat/structure. And it fished nearly identically to boot -- we caught dozens and dozens of brook trout and also a few little greenback (?) cutthroat. It was terrific. If anything, the fish were easier to fool than some of the SNP stream brookies. Most were caught on dries, or dry dropper rigs. And by "dries" I mostly mean foam terrestrials. We didn't get into any browns, but understand that they inhabit the lower portion of stream there.Presentation >> pattern. Just how I like it. Note that this is an easy-moderate hike up to a modest elevation, though we were puffing heavier than we normally would back home due to the altitude.Next, we were dropped off on the entirely opposite end of RMNP at the Corral Creek trailhead super-early to hike in and fish Corral Creek, Poudre (pronounced "pooter") Pass, and the main Poudre. This was what I wanted to do most on the trip -- get to hike and fish a meadow stream since they differ so much in appearance from the typical SNP streams. Here we again tore up the brook trout on Corral (with a Moose coming rather close to us!) and had decent action on Poudre Pass. Poudre Pass flows out of Long draw reservoir, but we didn't quite have the time to make it upstream to the reservoir like I planned. No big deal -- brook trout are still fun, even if cutthroat are what I really hoped to target.Corral is a beautiful hike and was FAR less busy than Wild Basin -- far fewer tourists and hikers at that TH.After that, we went with our family (including 2 kiddos) to get some stocker rainbows on a lake off 14 (Bellaire). Though I thought it would be a "strip a woolly bugger" kind of thing, it actually ended up being a stillwater dry fly deal! That was a first for me -- trout in a lake, cruising around every 5-6 minutes looking for surface bugs. It's kind of fun honestly -- we got over a dozen a piece fishing in the same darn spot next to each other and had some spinning folks watching. These fish were on elk hair caddis and the same with an emerger down in the film behind the EHC. There were a ton of ground squirrels there too for entertainment.I think I caught a garter snake and skinned up my arm scaling a mountain for exercise somewhere in there -- can't remember when though.Then we decided to hike up a gets-steep-quickly creek off 14 that people seldom fish -- Roaring Creek. This place was wild! Tight branches grabbed your fly about as often as not, but finding daylight to wrist your leader forward and back yielded some stunning little wild cutthroats. A big mule deer with velvet antlers passed by us without a care in the world. This was an awesome stream to do after we had started getting used to 8,000+ feet.....we made it 5 miles up to 9,8000 feet and really enjoyed it.Finally, I read "grayling" on a forest service thingy and wanted to catch one. We went over there a bit later in the day than I preferred (hey, we were with family) but Beth managed the best cutthroat of the trip which I already posted separately. While she stalked that riser I was observing some rising fish further down the inlet and made my way through the mud over there to get in a good casting place. Well, not "good" but at least manageable from at least one angle (usually almost directly overhead). I managed to get 2 grayling to take a dry...and those are fun fish honestly. They're fairly scrappy and difficult to handle once you land them (they're squirmy). They have a really beautiful dorsal fin, but I regret that I wasn't able to capture that very well. Sorry --We literally did not run into a single other fisherman the entire time aside from the stocker lake. Of course, the Poudre had a modest number at the turnouts along 14, but big river fishing for brown trout (or anything honestly) really isn't our thing. We liked to look at the Poudre, but left it to others to fish.Anyway -- that was about all we had time to do! I want to go back already, but real life gets in the way. The only real thing with the park that we just didn't have time for is the alpine lakes up around 10,000+ feet for greenbacks. I think we would have really enjoyed that, but we were with family and frankly didn't want to pack and hassle with camping gear.RMNP is certainly not an arrogant "destination" fishery for trout people, but it is absolutely a beautiful part of the country with almost no one fishing the small streams. I also feel like my clothes are fitting loose, so it's a great place to keep healthy too.If I go back, I know exactly where I'm going!Gene
http://www.tpfr.org
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