Time: 9:30AM – 12:30PM

Location: Cottonwood area above second road crossing in Eagle Ranch

Fish Landed: 1

Brush Creek 08/12/2011 Photo Album

Our friends Dave and Beth Gaboury invited us to join them at their second home in Eagle Ranch. I was in a good position at work, so I called and informed Dave that I would leave Thursday and stay Thursday night so we could fish on Friday. The Eagle River flows had dropped to high 400’s so I feared fishing on the Eagle would be tough. In addition the weather forecast was for hot weather and no precipitation.

When I talked to Dave, he had set up a schedule to fish the upper section of Brush Creek on Friday morning as it was at least covered by a canopy of cottonwood trees. Since this stretch was at the southern end of Eagle Ranch, we had Beth drop us off and then scheduled for her to pick us up at 12:30. Brush Creek was at August levels unlike many other small streams in northern Colorado. I began fishing with a parahopper but wasn’t getting any looks. Dave G meanwhile hooked and landed two decent browns on a beige body stimulator. I added a beadhead hares ear and sometime during the first hour picked up a small brown.

The stream was too small to fish in parallel so we took turns leapfrogging around each other. When one of us entered the stream above the other, we built a small cairn (pile of rocks) so the trailing fisherman would know the water had already been covered. Unfortunately the water was low, and it was difficult to walk up and around without being in the vision of the upstream fish, and I believe this may have affected our success.

Dave Marks Where He Entered Upstream

Dave G. landed a couple more small browns and then we both suffered through a long dry spell until just before we quit for the morning. Near the end of our upstream migration Dave G. tied on a renegade and landed five trout, two decent sized browns. Unfortunately we couldn’t experiment more with the renegade as we needed to meet Beth at the appointed time of 12:30.