Colorado

Sometimes I do things backward, like fish for Rainbows in West Virginia when they are native to Colorado and fish for Brookies in Colorado when they are native to West Virginia. Both were planted where I fished for them.

In Colorado, Zeus, James and I fished the stream that runs through the valley in this photograph. James caught several Brown Trout. We caught naught.

The next day we walked several miles up another valley to fish in a creek that was overflowing with spring runoff waters. James and Zeus fished a mile upstream from where I fished. I waded and whipping the fly for hours without experiencing a single hit.

When I arrived at a series of beaver dam pools, I peered over the first and saw several Brookies. I quickly made myself visibly scarce. I assume the first fly landed in the center of the lower pool, because I extracted a fish that was probably a pound and a half. I knocked it out and placed it in a very small pool on the down side of the dam. I think I caught every fish in that pool and some from the next pool too, but didn’t realize I was supposed to keep the smaller ones for dinner.

When James and Zeus returned with lots of fish, I went to the small pool to retrieve what would have been the winner, but it was gone. We did eat fish for dinner, but only I know, “I caught fish.”