Once again this year I went out to the Colorado Cane Conclave in Lyons CO, sponsored by Mike Clark.  Great gathering by the way, an opportunity to meet many of Colorado's bamboo luminaries.

On the way out, i spent the night at Lake McConnaughy, fishing the north platte in the afternoon.  Then, on to Lyons, with it's great local pub and sushi bar. 

Before and after the conclave, I got to fish in RMNP, mostly in Moraine Park.  Water was still ihgh, and the "meadow stream" was still more of a freestone torrent.  Still, fish were to be had, and it was pretty, high up in the mountains.

Here are 2 photos I took that weekend.  Which is the Nebraska fish, and which is the Colorado fish?





Yup, the second fish is the Nebraska fish.  Which state would most people say is the best place to find large rainbows?  So much for perception vs reality. 

On the way back from Lyons, I had 2 hours to fish Olgallala, from noon to 2 pm, in the heat of the day.  I waded out, cast, and immediately had a fish on.  He broke me off in about 5 seconds.  The third cast, another fish, same result.  In the first 12 casts I had 6 fish on, with 3 coming to the net.  One ran me down to my backing in order to get into some weeds that he could use to escape.  I fished 2 hours like that, never changing flies except to replace the same fly that a fish just broke off my line.  I started out with 5X tippet, but moved to 4X and landed more fish, although i think I hooked up on just as many.  That was 2 hours of perfection.  You don't forget a day like that.

Although, maybe we should.  Perfection is corrosive.  We want more of it.  Now, and again and often.  But nature rarely offers perfection, and with a new standard set, we look down on the next, lesser, more mundane experience.  We can't help it. We've touched the heavens, and our fingers remember the feel, even if, day to day, we'd be happier if they didn't.

The ninth annual Colorado Rodmakers Reunion has come and gone.  Once again it was held at Chair Mountain Ranch, outside of Marble CO.  About 80 of us were there, probably 50 or 60 rodmakers.  As always, the rod rack was full and if you're contemplating starting rodbuilding, you can do no better than to attend a rodmakers meet - all these tapers to learn about, and to experience first-hand!


We had a good mix of presentations this year, several hands-on workshops, and some interesting taper comparisons (of course, as I built the program, I'll admit to some bias in this area...)

Dalton J demonstrating techniques for splitting culms into strips (do not try this at home!):


Michael Hackney came out and ran a reel-making workshop.  here, Rick C and Steve R are working down their reel pieces, prior to assembly.  Michael's process uses simple hand tools to build a functional reel similar to the one in the foreground

Of course, for those of us in the flatlands, one of the reasons to attend CRR is to get access to some prime Western Slope fishing - the Gunnison, Frying Pan, Roaring Fork...and the Crystal right across the highway from the ranch.  This year, however, water conditions (lots of it!) had an impact on fishing.  The Frying Pan often  makes for great dry fly fishing at 200 cfs.  Before the meet, it was running at 900!  By the end of the meet 3 days later, it had dropped to 300 cfs.  The freestone rivers, not impeded by a dam, were even higher.  Fishing wasn't impossible, but our theory is that the fish take a while to adjust after abrupt changes in water level, and every day after the meet, fishing got a little better.

Mike C tied into a nice brown under the dam, using his secret "dam fly"


In the slower water downstream, there were still fish to be found:


We tied flies each night, trying to get closer to what we saw on the water, which were midges, PMDs, and a few green drakes (which the fish were yet ignoring...)  The last couple of days, it seemed we got the PMD colors about right, and hook-ups were more common.  One of the great things about summer-time Colorado fishing (at least with the guys I fish with) is that our expectation is that we should be dry fly fishing, and so everyone will put effort into making that happen.

At the end of my time on the Western Slope, I headed east to pick up my wife at the Denver airport, for a few days of camping.  Alan K had recommended that I visit Cheesman Canyon on the South Platte (southwest of Denver), both for it's fishing (albeit nymph fishing) and the beauty of the canyon.  I had a few hours, so I put in my first visit to Cheesman.


Water was higher than normal years, but still fishable.  The nymphing techniques Alan taught me on the Gray Reef work here as well...  as always, it takes a while to get your weight, flies and depth adjusted for the water conditions.  Fishing here is called "technical" and I can see why, but it's worth it - a beautiful place and nice fish.

Driving back to nebraska after mountain camping, Joy and I stopped at Lake Ogallala for a couple-hours break.   Joy hasn't fished with me in at least 10 years, but she took a rod I had rigged up for her, and was casting that Copper  John into the "Tom Osborne pool" like a regular.

She brought more fish to net than I did - I was glad to see her being successful.  Here's one of hers:

You can't beat summertime in Colorado for dry fly fishing, but I have to say first that the high and late run-off this year kind of suppressed that, and I also have to say that Joy and I caught more and bigger fish in Nebraska than I did in Colorado.  Go figure!

After we got back home, I wrote an article on Rocky Mountain tailwater fishing for our local paper after this trip.  Given the high run-off waters this year, a focus on tailwater fishing seemed appropriate!

 Here's the link
http://journalstar.com/sports/recreation/water-activities/fishing/article_6d733290-b178-5326-9fd1-19ed6f6eb62b.html

Lee

I've been busy getting some rods ready for the Colorado Rodmakers Reunion, July 16 and 17.  It's a comparison of Paul Young Driggs done different ways.  These rods basically double my annual output, so there have been lots of late nights in the shop.  Alan K prepared strips and milled a couple of the rods, so it hasn't all been me (thank goodness!) but it'll be good to be finished.  Getting close, but still need to attach hardware and finish the rods.



All 4 are based on the same original 1955 Young Driggs.  We've just built them in different ways.   This gets kind of rodmaker-wonky, but 2 were milled based on 1-inch stations, which should make a very close replication of the original rod; the other 2 were made as most guys now make rods, based on measurements taken once every 5-inchs  up and down the rod.  So there are 2 questions: Does a rodmaker lose information when he only uses the 5-inch stations to replicate a classic milled rod?  AND, does in really make any difference in the finished rod? (in other words, in casting the 2 rods, can you tell any difference?)  This last question is the one that really interests me.

This will be a blind experiment where guys will cast the rods without knowing which is which, to see if any rod casts significantly differently from the others.  There will be a questionnaire and I'll tabulate results.

 I wanted the wraps to be colorful and different, so casters could easily differentiate them on the rack.

Once we get some results, I'll talk about this on my website on the "Taper Talk" page.

Last week I got invited to return to Ogallala to fish the North Platte under Lake Ogallala.  Given the good time Neil and I had a month ago, it was easy to say Yes, although I wondered what fishing conditions would be like, as run-off from the Rockies continues to grow, and dam managers are forced to release more and more water downstream, to protect the integrity of the dams.  What a turn-around from 2 years ago, when Lake McConnaughy was at 30% of capacity, and there were miles of exposed lakebed.  They are running 6,000 cfs out of Lake Ogallala now, 3 times what was running a month ago, and 6 times what I saw a year ago.

To accomplish this, the south spillway is now open, and that has completely changed the flow of the water below the dam.  The "little river" that Neil found and fished so successfully a month ago has now reversed direction completely, and slowed down considerably.  In the course of 3 or 4 visits there through the day, using all the flies that worked then, plus more, I managed to eke out 2 fish, one of which got to the net


The spot in the main flow, where last time I was able to take about as many fish as I wanted one morning, using Alan's Gray Reef techniques, was this time apparently barren.  Had the changed hydrology moved the fish elsewhere, or maybe I just was not able to get enough weight on my leader to get the flies down in the increased flow?  Either way, there was not a fish to be had there.

The new south flow, also reversed in direction compared to last month, created a strong current and foam/bubble line running along the south embankment
A spin fisherman was doing well casting across that flow, then reeling/jigging his spoon back across the flow as it swung downstream.  For us, even with a sinking line, the flow moved too fast for a streamer to sink into a strike zone, and fish avoided us.

But down at the point, the flow created a back-eddy that Brian fished with success.  He was casting bead-head nymphs into the top of the eddy, then slowly stripping them back.  Fish liked that:


I fished that section too, but differently.  With a longer and weighted leader I cast up into the fast flow, then followed it down, just beside the eddy.  There were some nice fish there as well.  This one, fighting me, actually ran down the rock weir below us before giving up


The hot spot, though, turned out to be what is commonly called "the Tom Osborne Pool." A huge back eddy, maybe 150 feet long, curled from the main flow, then ran upstream to turn back into the main flow again.

Brian found this spot, as it "turned on" in the afternoon, and it turned into one of those times where you don't count fish, as one follows another.  That foam was actually curling upstream, towards Brian, and once in a while you'd see a trout snout poke up through the foam.


Forgot the standard tail-water tiny flies, this day.  They wanted nice-sized dark beadhead nymphs, particularly on the rise.  Here's the fly that worked best for me: beadhead black squirrel tail size 16.  Maybe it's coincidence, but on this day, as the afternoon progressed, there were some good-size relatively dark caddis flying around - were the fish taking our rising nymphs for hatching caddis?


Brian was fishing one of my rods, the 8ft 5wt Mystery Rod, and it looked great in his hands.  Here he is with one of the last fish of the day on the line.  these fish fought hard, runs and jumps, and generally a lot of fun to catch (or try to catch...)


We were checked by a Conservation officer in the afternoon, and I was happy to see him there, although I wish he had been there an hour earlier.  Then, I'm pretty sure,  he would have discovered some illegal stringers among some of the fishermen who were fishing from the spillway.  Regs call for a 5 fish limit, only one over 16 inches, and there were more big fish than that leaving.  People will tell you that the reason you can catch 20-inch fish on the Gray Reef (compared to so many more 14-inch fish on the Miracle Mile) is the tight regulations on the Gray Reef.  If there is anything that will stop Nebraska's North Platte tailwater from becoming a world-class fishery, it will be this issue in my opinion.  With the water quality and the growth rate the biologists are talking about, this tailwater could rival any in the US - if we leave enough fish in there long enough to grow to their potential.

The past couple of years I've had the good fortune to be invited to fish the Gray Reef in Wyoming with Colorado friends, sometime in the month of May.  This year, in early April, it became clear that wade-fishing up there wasn't going to happen - the spillway gates were already open, flows were edging up towards 4,000 cfs (it's good wade fishing between 1,500 and 2,000) and snowpack in the drainage was still 130% of average.

But.  Lake McConnaughy in Nebraska, the last big lake on the North platte,  has been suffering from a drought and last year was tens of feet down from full pool, so all that run-off has been caught, replenishing the lake.  Water coming out of McConnaughy is up, but not so much that you can't wade under the outlet.  So, off we went.

Here's the spillway at the diversion dam, under Lake Ogallala (which is a small lake under the big McConnaughy dam)...  In fact, I've called it fishing Lake Ogallala, but in truth, this wasn't stillwater  lake fishing, it was classic tailwater fishing, on the North Platte.

The water flows out of the concrete spillway, then most of it splits left and right of the flow, making a loop in the pool, before re-joining the main flow and dropping over the rock weir to the right of the photo.  The grass that you see to the right of the photo is a small island (submerged at these flow levels); the water flows around the island, creating in essence a small river between the near embankment and the island.  It's hard to tell in a photo, but that water was moving at a pretty good clip.  A classic recommendation for fishing big water is to divide it into manageable sections, and fish each of them separately.  Treating this little section like a little river was one of the ways we located fish.  Neil naturally gravitated to this section and once he figured out the flies, fish were there and waiting.

And nice fish they were!



Fishing wasn't always hot, in fact the first day and a half, the fish weren't cooperating, either for us, or for others.  It wasn't until evening that we managed to catch some other than the stray curious fish.

No surface activity at all, at best we saw a few midges in the air.  We nymphed under indicators, the smallest flies in the box, pretty much, and sometimes the fish would take them on the rise at the end of a drift, and sometimes they needed them to be dead-drifted on the bottom, which is a different sort of game, very much like the Gray Reef.

There (wade fishing), it's all about managing drift, mending as needed, in the swirling waters flowing out of the spillway.  As Alan showed me, if you have the right fly, and can get the mends down (which is as much a mental game as a physical one), then there can be fish after fish.    On the line anyway.  Maybe not in the net! 

These were hard-fighting fat fish. 

Once they realized they were hooked, they would often shoot out of the water, head for fast currents, loop around the rocks, jump again...  In fast water like that, it's easy to lose a lot of fish.  And I did.

Twice I had a situation where I'd have a fish on for a minute, then he'd be off.  Again.  And again.  Reel in and look at the fly. yep, broken off at the hook.  The fish that broke those hooks, I never saw.

End of the day, sunset on the lake, time to head to the campground for food and libations.

One night we had potato-wrapped fish-kebobs; another, Paella.   Here are the potato-wrapped fish-kebabs - we kept a couple small fish, filleted them, wrapped each piece of meat in julienned potato slices, then grilled with red papper and onion, served on a pilaf.  The potatos brown over the fire, it's like fish and chips all in one.


 The Lake Ogallala campground, by the way, is really nice.  Right by the water, electrified spots or not, clean bathhouse with warm showers.

Lake Ogallala was killed off a little more than a year ago, for some dredging work to improve flow and thus oxygen levels in the lake, but also to remove the coarse fish that inevitably come through the big spillway.  Since, over 100,000 rainbows have been stocked, and the biologists say they are growing at almost an inch a month.  2011 regulations allow the taking of only one fish over 16 inches in this water.  Those 2 things together are going to be a recipe for some great catch-and-release fishing in the months and years to come.