A 'Not So Secret' Place On the South Platte River

How to Avoid the Crowds on the South Platte at Deckers?

Question: So, how do you avoid the crowds at Deckers? 
Answer: Go during a spring snowstorm.
Next question: How was the fishing? Answer: Good.  
What were they biting on?  San Juan worm and a gray RS2 (same old flies).
How do you keep warm? Answer:  We didn't.The snow came down harder and harder.
Was it fun? Answer: Not sure.
Was it worth it? Answer: Yes, because I went with my friend Gary Karbo and he is one of the best men around.
How do you get home alive? Leave while you can.
So, we did. 

Dream Stream Fly Fishing: Being Willing to Just Keep Walking (Mind set for a big fish)

Sometimes a man has to just keep walking. Such was the case when I found myself on the "Dream Stream" section of the South Platte River in South Park. I had to keep walking along the meanders on down toward 11 mile reservoir looking for a hole or run to fish in between the crowds. I carried 2 rods rigged and ready,  in case I found an opening; in case I spotted a big fish. However,  I never saw a big fish. I never found a good run. With the Platte flowing at a trickle of 50 cfs. I simply could not find good holding water that was not already occupied. Fly fishers were holding tight to whatever water they could find and were not budging.

At the mouth to 11 mile reservoir, I turned around, and started walking back up the river. I did see some small fish in marginal thin water, but I kept walking. I did not make a single cast.  I was not interested in casting to small fish. This is the dream stream, home to big trout and I had big fish on the brain. It was I who was being as selective as big fish can sometimes act.  

When stalking big fish it helps to have this mind set of refusing to cast to smaller fish. It helps if you can be willing to catch nothing in hope of waiting for that one big fish. Why fool around with little fish and waste time? Better to just keep walking. Better to just keep searching.

However, it takes a certain kind of nerve to report back to your friends that you caught nothing. It takes a certain kind of nerve to be ok within one's self with not catching a fish. How much easier it is on the ego to at least be able to say, "I got a few small ones."  Yet, this is what the big fish hunter must be willing to do. You have to be willing to "get skunked".

This is why it is better to go alone when fishing for big game. When you go with others we often get wrapped up in the need to catch something as we forever try to measure up to one another.  We can become desperate and focus on catching something; anything, so we do not look bad. Have we not all felt this way while fishing in a group?  We start thinking, "I can't be the only one who did not catch a thing." Or, maybe the people we are fishing with have not caught anything and now we have to help them. Better to stalk big fish alone unconcerned.

This is why it is even better to not tell anyone you are going. When your friends and family know you are fishing you then have to "give a report," of how the fishing went.  In some sense that fishing report you know you have to give makes you not alone. While you are fishing you are already writing the fishing report in your head and that report will influence how you fish. On the other hand, to tell no one you have gone, is to truly fish alone and be free from their influence and the pressures we place upon ourselves and our egos.

This is why I was free to just keep walking the Dream Stream.  I was alone and I had told no one. I was able to keep walking and willing to hold out for what I was truly seeking. If need be, I was willing to get skunked for that cause. I was willing to keep walking with knowing I might be getting skunked. I was willing to not even make a single cast until I found a run that might hold a big fish.

It was then, when I was just about all the way back to the parking lot, that 3 gentlemen left the gauging station hole just below the county road bridge. I stepped in the tail out of the hole after  taking a two hour walk. I guess that was all I had done for the past two hours. I had gone for a nice walk along the Dream Stream looking for fish that live in my dreams. No one was with me. No one knew I had even gone. I was free to not catch a fish and I did not have to report to anyone.I did not even have to make a single cast.

It was in that freedom that I made my first cast of the morning. It was in that deep, dark, and mysterious hole that the big Brown took the small red midge.

I was alone. I had told no one. There was no need to catch anything at all. I just wanted to go for a walk and day dream of big fish and sometimes, even in dream we feel the pull of a great fish.

I found what I was looking for by just walking. 

Eleven Mile Canyon: Snow Falls As Fish Rise on the South Platte River

It still feels like winter in Eleven Mile Canyon. Deep snow still covers the north facing wall of the Canyon. Parts of the road are covered in ice. Cold wind whips down the canyon from South Park carrying snow.  Huge slabs of ice and snow cover large sections of the river. But, up closer to the dam, in the open waters, life stirs.

Midges: Some fly fishers call them "snow flies."  I don't care much for proper entomology. All I know is that while I guiding three gentlemen, as the snow was falling, the fish were rising to these tiny creatures as vigorous as a trico hatch on a July morning. With cold, feeble hands, we cast and caught fish after fish.

The midges were tiny. Perhaps a size 30. We did not have to fish flies that small as they were willing to take our 24's and 26's. Midges, midges, midges.  Red ones, black, tan or gray. With beads and with out. It did not matter. Dry flies, nymphs, emergers. A variation of a Rojo red midge size 24 and our old standby gray sparkle wing RS2 worked as well as anything.

We stood as out of place as a snow storm in the middle of summer. This winter snow fly hatch continued most of the afternoon. The snow fell and blew all around. Or were they bugs? It did not matter. The fish rose, even as something also rose up inside of us. Awakened from our winter slumber

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Fly Fishing In March on The South Platte River

March is one of my favorite months to fly-fish and be in the mountains. It is a month in transition and of "considerable frustration" as Winter and Spring spar for a hold on the land. It can be sunny and warm, "With the breath of April stirring"  and yet a storm seemingly always looms, not too far away, threatening to unload blankets of snow.

Rainbows are feeling the urge to move upstream and reproduce and then to feed in the warming waters. Early spring insects such as B.W.O's and midges are stirring. March is the time when the river almost calls me to fish.

"With Spring in the air, a mild March afternoon, . . . I am alone in the quiet, looking for some old untried illusion- some memory asleep."  Antonio Machado

And within myself, something still sleeping, stirs.