A Little Work For A Little Fishing

[spilunkr]

Yesterday I got the opportunity to fish the Phantom Canyon stretch of the North Fork of the Cache La Poudre River. The six miles of water flows through property owned by the Nature Conservancy. Fishing access is very restricted unless one makes substantial donations to TNC. My local TU Chapter works with TNC and members who assist in TNC programs and maintenance activities and participants get to fish on the day of the activity. Yesterday was the day we performed annual trail maintenance – clearing trails, repairing and replacing rock cairns marking the trails, etc.

The canyon itself is beautiful. Other than pronghorn antelope, none of us saw any of the other large mammal life in the canyon which includes deer, elk, black bears and mountain lions. But, then again a gas powered weed eater is not the best way to attract wildlife. I did however get a couple of opportunities to see golden eagles.


Pronghorns along the drive in.


The Canyon from the top of the trail.

Apparently the name Phantom Canyon originates from the fact that coming across the prairie there is no indication of it’s presence until you literally almost fall into it. It was beautiful weather for a work day and the hike in featured several varieties of wildflowers just starting to bloom which included;


Star Lilly


Pasqueflower

The river itself was in really good shape with a flow of about 95 cfs. The clarity was a bit off at a little better than 2’. Later in the summer flows drop to below 10 cfs associated with irrigation needs.



The volunteers were paired up and assigned beats to perform the trail maintenance required. Each of the six beats is roughly a mile long. My partner and I wound up doing an extra beat, the furthest downstream) because the team assigned that stretch was unfamiliar with where the markers identifying the beats were located and thought they had reached the property boundary when in fact they never even made it to their assigned beat.


Part of the work crew heading down into the canyon.

But, my partner and I managed to make it all the way to the end of beat 6 and finish by noon and it was then time to fish. I had carried my pack all the way to the end (about 3 miles) but Mike had left his backpack with lunch and fishing gear at the half way point. So he headed back up the trail to eat lunch and fish while I decided to start fishing where I was.

There was a midge hatch coming off and about 1:15 some blue wing olives started to hatch but there was not enough consistency of rising fish to tempt me into fishing dries. There was pretty good depth and velocity to the water with most of the better looking runs being 2’ to 3’ deep. So I decided to practice my Czech/Polish nymphing technique. The big salmonfly and golden stone nymphs were becoming active so for my bottom fly I tied on an old Lefty Kreh smallmouth pattern (a black woolybugger with a peacock herl body to which I added dumbbell eyes), a foot above that I had a bead head #8 golden stone nymph and a foot above that a #16 pheasant tail. I fished that combo for the next three hours.

On my first cast I got a 12” brown on the golden stone. A few casts later an 11” rainbow on the bugger. And so it went for the next three hours. All told I wound up with around 20 fish landed; around 8 rainbows the nicest was 15” and 12 browns up to 16”. With he bugger accounting for about 8 fish, the golden stone about 11 and the pheasant tail a single brown. I also had a really good fish on that put quite a bend in my rod. It was on for about 2 minutes but it dogged it out on the bottom and I never got to see it before it got off.


Me


Releasing a 15” Brown


Last fish of the day a fat 15” Rainbow

I got to fish from noon until 3:15. I had to quit that early in order to make sure I had time for the 3 mile hike out, change out of my waders, etc. and all of us be off the property by 5:00. TNC manages the fishery. It is catch and release and barbless hooks only.

In general I found several of the browns over 13” that I caught were pretty thin bodied, but the rainbows of the same size were all pretty fat. I’m already looking forward to next year.

In partnership with my local TU chapter, TNC will be hosting 4 “River Adventure Days” between May and September. Attendance is limited to 12 people each day first come first served. Each day involves a morning aquatic ecological seminar with an afternoon of fishing guided by a TU chapter member. I’ve signed up with the chapter as a guide so hopefully it won’t be an entire year before I can get back to Phantom Canyon.

Guy

[JMadert]

Great post, Guy ... must be nice. Are all the "bows" that fat ? Your last two bow pics have shown fish that should be named "Porky".

[spilunkr]

J,

Although I really have not yet caught enough fish to give a definitive answer my obervation to this point is that once they get to be between 12" and 13" the rainbows I have caught are fatter fish than most of the similarly sized browns. I'm pretty sure that had I been able to weight the 15" rainbow and the 16" brown caught yesterday the rainbow would easily have been a quarter pound heavier despite being an inch shorter. This has been pretty consistent on the different streams I've fished.

An added bonus with that last rainbow is that it went nuts when hooked. He came out of the water and back flipped four times.

Guy

[David M]

Thanks for the report and cool pics Guy. Make sure you hold onto that connection. That looks like an awesome stretch of water.

David

[Tailing Loop]

Beautiful stuff Guy. Just beautiful!!

[Marcel_Karssies]

Great report, I guess there are not many people fishing that spot.
Looks like quite an intensive walk to get there.

[djones]

Like TL said, just beautiful. Thanks, Guy.

[spilunkr]

It is indeed a beautiful place. I only got to see the lower three miles, beats four through six. The upper three miles are more of the same.

It is a fairly strenuous hike from the visitor's center down into the canyon. The trail is .8 mile (1.2 km?) in with a drop in elevation of a bit over 500'. Not bad going down but I did get a bit winded on the hike back up since the starting elevation is about 6,800' at least I think that is what someone said. The trail down to the river comes in near the end of beat three. So if that is the beat one has to fish the hike is over. If one has beat 1 or 6 there is an additional hike of 2 1/2 to 3 miles up or down river.

TNC has a number of programs at Phantom Canyon which are open to the general public. But, the fishing is tightly regulated. When it is open to fishing no more than two people get to fish a particular beat so a maximum of 12 people fish on any given day. TU Chapter members get to fish twice a year in association with an activity like trail maintenance, other than that the river gets fished four other times associated with the River Adventure Days program - provided there is adequate flows and water temperatures So the fish do not get to see a lot of fising pressure over the course of a year. Other than that there is the occasional privately guided trip for big donors.

Guy

[Jeffrey Rasband]

Awsome report as usuall Guy. What TFO rod is that? and how do you like it?

[spilunkr]

Jeff,

It is a TFO5904P; their Lefty Kreh, Professional Series 9', 5wt, 4 pc. rod. I really like it as it suits my casting style. I would describe it as a moderately fast action. It is also difficult to beat the price.

In general I have found that the high modulus fast action rods I've owned and used are more difficult for me to cast with accuracy than a somewhat softer rod on the medium sized and small streams I spend most of my time fishing. Especially when I am nymphing with a couple of BB sized split shot or casting a dry fly with only a few feet of line out.

I do lose a few feet of casting distance on big water like the Green River in Utah vs. a fast action rod but in recent years I have made a concious effort to fish in closer where I have better line control. I have found that for me, putting 50' to 60' of line plus another 10' to 12' of leader on the water is in most cases just asking for drag problems with dries and with nymphs the same is true with more than about 20' of line out. So it is just not worth it for me to spend the extra money for a high end trout rod - i.e. 5 wt rods and lighter.

Most of my heavier rods, 6 wt. and up are higher end, fast action rods. But they were primarily bought for saltwater or freshwater bass.

When I get on small streams where I use rods in the 7' to 8' length, I prefer a fairly soft action rod. I have a TFO Finesse 7' 9", 4 wt given to me by my former TU Chapter when I retired and left MD last year. It is one sweet small stream rod. It will cast a fly with only 5' of line out as easily and accurately as with 30' which many rods do not do very well. I alternate between it and a 7' cane rod I like when I fish smaller head water streams.

I was hoping to break out my small stream gear and get up into Rocky Mtn. Nat. Park this week to fish for the native greenback cutthroat. But the rain that is currently falling here in Ft. Collins is 12" to 18" of snow up in the mountains above 6,000'. The snow that falls should be gone by the weekend so maybe next week!

Guy