At least that's what I call it, and for good reason. It's actually the South Fork of the Cache La Poudre, and it's known to have many cougars and bears. It's a place where if you want fast fishing action for wild fish, this is it. The fish aren't really big by any means, average size around 10 inches. But there are a few that are larger than that, and some smaller. The plus side to it is, these fish fight like they are twice their size. The bad part is, they are so feisty, getting them to hold still for a photo was impossible. That still voice in the back of my head told me to bring my net. But did I listen? No.
The morning started off great. A few miles up the canyon I almost hit a few of these guys standing on the side of the road.
They were young ones, and the more mature big horn sheep were hanging up a little higher. It's always good to see these animals doing so well.
As I reached my destination, my friend showed up and we discussed the plan of attack. I told him I wanted to go into the tributary of the Poudre, but if he felt a little nervous about it, we wouldn't go. He asked why be nervous? So I explained to him about the possibility of the animal life we may encounter. He smiled and said, " let's go."
Welcome to the Lion's Den!
As soon as we entered in, we came across a lot of bear scat. We were hoping that it was only one bear with a tummy ache instead of many bears. We hiked and bush wacked our way in for 30 minutes to the place where I normally stop fishing and head back out because of the feeling of being watched by something I can't see. But this is where I wanted to start. The rocky surroundings are perfect places for lion's to watch you from and not be seen because they blend in very well.
As I started to fish, my friend Tim went on ahead because we decided to play leap frog during the day, so he went upstream about a quarter mile.
I was fishing a duo set up. An Adams with a lightly weighted pheasant tail trailing behind. I was consistently catching fish on either fly. It got to a point where I later told my friend the fun was taken out of it because every time I wanted to work on my presentation, the darn fish would take my flies interrupting my perfect drifts. I know, you wish you had my problems, don't you?
As the adventure continued I found a small pool where I took out fifteen fish. I even got myself a double up, and that just made my day. Not only that, but I ended up with a grand slam consisting of browns, rainbows, cutthroat, and a brookie. Yes, I caught each specie of fish in this creek. I thought nothing could top this, but something does later on.
I passed my friend up and found a nice long stretch of water. It was just a beautiful area with all the trees and the ground foliage starting to turn into their Autumn colors. ( or in your case, colours )
You know, the way words are spelled in Great Britain makes more sense than the way we spell them here.
Anyway, here's the stretch I found and fished for a good couple of hours.
As the time passed, the weather started to get a little nasty with wind and lightning, so we decided to head on back. I caught about 35 fish, and the deeper we went in, the better quality they got it seemed. These fish were not monsters, but they fought like they were and we respected them more for it.
As we made it back to the Poudre, Tim say's to me, "there's one ", as he pointed up the side of the mountain. I looked and saw possibly our friend with the tummy ache.
We watched him for a few minutes and figured him to be about 3 feet high at the shoulder, maybe a little bigger. Now seeing that topped it all off
Next time, I'll have my net with me so I can get a few photo's of the fish.
