The South Platte River trip on July 30, 1997
With my car being serviced at a Denver area Subaru dealer I was able to borrow another vehicle and spend half a day on the famous South Platte River in the Deckers area. This truly is a fly fisherman's nirvana. Just above Deckers is the Wigwam Club - a private retreat for very wealthy fisherpersons. Obviously I'm not counted in that category but it was interesting looking at the layout of the ranch from the highway above the property.
The stream bed has been completely reconstructed throughout the club and offers astonishingly varied holding water for trout. There also appeared to be at least two hatchery ponds on the ranch, so I suspect there must also be a few highly placed state and national politicians involved as members. Would just love to be able to fish this club once in my life but I suspect that won't happen either.
The entire Deckers public area was packed with carloads of fishermen either hiking up the canyon towards the Cheesman Dam or just milling around Deckers and the local campgrounds. That despite it being a Wednesday. Cannot conceive of how packed this stream must be on weekends since that it's within an hour's drive or so of Denver.
Started fishing with absolutely no real hope of success having never fished here before, nor knowing anything about how to approach the river. And for the first hour or so of beating up the water it looked like I'd be shut out for the day.
Then an unlikely combination of events occurred that turned the process around. I'd been casting to a small eddy around a bush upstream of me when I heard what sounded like a beaver splash. Of course I knew it was a trout - just had never heard a splash quite that loud before. So I sneaked around the bush and while at first I didn't seen anything, finally made out a nice rainbow feeding on emergers within six inches of the bank in probably six inches of water. There was a nice baetis hatch in progress, so I tied on a #18 baetis colored OS-1 and trailed it with what I hoped was a #18 baetis loop wing and lo & behold hooked and landed this wonderful 18" fish within three casts.
Boy was I in business. Spent the next two hours hiking up along the bank casting no more than 20 feet in front of me and proceeded to land the nicest set of rainbows and browns I've ever had on in one day of fishing. Brought nine other fish to the bank and they were all whoppers. Smallest was 16" and the largest rainbow was an astounding 22 inches and weighed at least four pounds. That's the largest rainbow I've ever taken that was not a sea run.
Only two of the fish were browns but both were in the 18" range. Stopped for lunch and tried to re-fish the same area but basically came up lame in that regard. Had only two more fish hooked and they both broke me off.
But what a wonderfully successful trip overall. Wish I could attribute the success rate simply to skill but it is far more probable that it came from fishing a method that was not used by other experienced people in the area, and by the happenstance of simply having the right type of fly patterns available for the hatch that day - plus the fact that the water was up six inches and the fish had moved to the bank. Fishing the emerger part of the rig sunk but without weight of any sort also made sense along the bank.
The tough part of fishing here for me was the prevailing and gusty west wind. Nothing makes it more difficult to present a dry fly properly than a strong downstream wind, and I know I spooked at least as many fish as I landed simply because of the difficult casting conditions. What a great day though - I'll remember it for a lifetime.