Time: 2:30PM 0 5:00PM

Location: Above O’Fallon Park

Fish Count: 4

Bear Creek 04/02/2011 Photo Album

Jane and I spent the morning working at our house listed for sale. We pruned and cleaned up dead plant debris from the winter. It was a nice day, so Jane agreed to accompany me on an afternoon fishing trip. My intention was to drive to the South Platte River at Nighthawk, but Jane suggested going somewhere closer due to our late start. I decided to go to Bear Creek west of Morrison and give that a try.

As it was perhaps the nicest day of the spring so far, everyone was out. Morrison was packed with traffic and every pullout along the canyon was occupied with cars. People were running and biking and walking dogs and sun bathing. The parking lot at O’Fallon Park was completely occupied, so Jane and I did a U turn and continued west a bit and then turned on a side road that leads to Falcon Park and parked across the bridge. I carried Jane’s chair to a nice spot by the stream and began putting on my waders.

By now some clouds moved in and the wind began to gust. Jane moved to a spot against some shrubs, while I waded in at the tail of the nice long pool below the bridge. I tied on a Charlie Boy tan hopper and trailed a beadhead hares ear nymph. I spotted a rise above a rock upstream and carefully approached. In the tail of the pool I received a pair of refusals to the hopper, so I clipped both flies off and tied on an olive body deerhair caddis. This fly worked as I hooked and landed a small 8” brown and another brown too small to count.

I could spot additional fish in the pool, but they weren’t paying any attention to the caddis. Another fisherman had arrived and was fishing the riffles right below the bridge, and he was 20-30 yards above me, so I needed to focus on the nice pool longer before moving on. The Chernobyl Ant was my star attractor fly in 2011, so why not give it a try in 2011? I tied on a Chernobyl Ant and trailed the beadhead hares ear. This worked and I landed a larger (10”) brown that snatched the trailing hares ear. I was across from Jane when I experienced this small success.

Ready for Backcast

The other fisherman worked his way past me moving downstream and showed me the chewed up woolly bugger he allegedly caught 12 inch browns on in the riffles below the bridge. I wanted to try the GO2 caddis with a bright shiny green body that I’d discovered at the fly fishing show, so I returned to the car and added a couple to my fly patch. I returned to the stream above the bridge and replaced the beadhead hares ear with the GO2 caddis. I continued working my way up the small stream over the remaining hour and a half and landed two more 9-10 inch browns on the GO2 caddis. The wind gusted at times making casting difficult. Finally at 5PM I’d reached a point where the stream narrowed and flowed through tighter vegetation, and I wasn’t sure how much longer Jane would fight the wind, so I returned to the car and called it a day.

Time: 5:30PM – 8:00PM

Location: O’Fallon Park Upstream

Fish Landed: 7

Bear Creek 07/01/2010 Photo Album

I needed to take Dan to the airport for his trip to China, so I planned to fish close to Denver when I returned. I wanted to take advantage of the long hours of daylight and perhaps hit some evening hatching activity. I used the time before driving Dan to the airport to gather my gear and tie five size 18 yellow body deer hair caddis. I felt these would more closely imitate the caddis that I captured on Bear Creek on Sunday evening.

I arrived at O’Fallon Park and began fishing at around 5:30. Another fisherman was already working the water just upstream of the parking lot at the end of the park. I hiked above him and entered the water near the picnic tables just as I had on Sunday. I tied on the yellow caddis and almost instantly had a momentary hookup with a small brown in a slot behind a rock.

Next I moved up to the nice deep bend run that goes against the Bear Creek Restaurant. Once again I had an audience. Initially an older gentleman from Texas observed. While he was watching a brown darted up and sucked in the caddis in the soft water on the left side above my position. I worked the deep center run and the seam along the far bank, but couldn’t entice any fish. I moved around the bend to the next nice pool and landed a small brown from the top of the riffle where it enters the pool. I continued working my way  upstream and caught one more trout before approaching the nice long pool where I’d done so well on Sunday afternoon.

Dark clouds threatened a storm on several occasions, but nothing ever materialized. It was a pleasant evening with temperatures in the 70’s. Seeing no fish rising in the long pool, I switched to a Chernobyl ant trailing a beadhead pheasant tail. This didn’t produce either, but when I moved above the long pool I caught two additional browns on the BHPT and photographed one. I went under the bridge and fished my way up quite a distance, but again no success.

I climbed up the short bank and hiked back down the road at around 7:30, then crossed the bridge and checked out the long pool hoping to see some caddis activity as dusk approached. Nothing was showing, so I continued down the path to the restaurant. A woman and two men were standing outside the restaurant posing for photos. They spotted me, and photographed me as I began fishing. On the third or fourth cast at the top of the riffle a nice brown darted up and smashed my yellow caddis. It immediately ripped out line as it dashed upstream then made a run back past me to the bottom of the pool while my spectators looked on. I dipped my net and landed a 12 inch brown. Where was the applause?

Next I moved up to the nice pool around the bend. I’d spotted a trout refusing my fly several times previously at the very tail of the pool. It was a tough lie with a protruding branch a couple feet above where I need to place the fly. My first couple casts went to the right, but on the third attempt I dropped the fly just above the trout and below the branch. Bam. The small brown jumped on the yellow caddis, and I landed my seventh fish of the evening. Next I cast up to the very top of the riffle. On perhaps the fifth drift a trout tipped up and took the caddis. I set the hook, and felt weight a bit heavier than normal for Bear Creek, but it quickly turned and slipped off the hook. I went downstream a bit and made some casts to no avail, but it was now getting dark, and I was getting hungry, so I called it a day and returned home.

Time: 3:00PM – 5:00PM

Location: O’Fallon Park Upstream

Fish Landed: 12

Bear Creek 06/27/2010 Photo Album

Jane suggested we get away from Stapleton and thinking about houses (buying a house and selling our house) on a beautiful Sunday in late June. I tried to think of a spot not too far away yet close to the mountains. I remembered O’Fallon Park on Bear Creek where I’d fished without success in early April. Originally I thought we’d just drive there and read and snack, but then I checked the flows on my iPad and noticed the flows were only 62, so I threw my fishing gear in the minivan, and we took off.

All the open space areas along Bear Creek were quite crowded on this warm afternoon on the weekend before the Fourth of July. We got to O’Fallon Park and entered the dirt road, then turned right and crossed the bridge and proceeded as far as it is possible to drive where we parked. I took out Jane’s folding chair and we hiked up the path that followed the stream upstream. There were a bunch of tubers in the stream directly across from where the car was parked, but they seemed to be confined to a small stretch. We encountered a large family picnicking along the trail after a short walk. We returned to the car, and I prepared to fish. Jane walked up the path with me to a nice shady area where she opened her chair to pause and read.

I continued further upstream beyond the picnic tables and then entered the stream. I tied on a size 12 yellow Letort hopper and trailed a beadhead hares ear nymph. I worked some nice areas to no avail. The stream was crystal clear, but the flows were up, thus limiting to some extent the areas where fish could hold. But it was definitely in good fishing shape. After a bit I came to a nice area below a small island where the stream curved and went tight against a restaurant. The sky by now had clouded over and a man was standing outside the restaurant taking a smoke break. He told me the best fishing was near the island.

The water next to the restaurant below the point of the island was very attractive…maybe 3-4 feet deep run and riffles. I spotted a couple rises and then some flashes to my hopper, but they didn’t take. There was a bunch of small caddis buzzing about along the trail and over the water, so I clipped off the hopper/dropper and tied on a dark olive body deer hair caddis. This got no looks whatsoever. The fish looked at my yellow hopper and wouldn’t take, but didn’t even show interest in the caddis. Perhaps a small yellow sally was the ticket. I tied this on and worked the attractive riffles while diners in the restaurant watched the action from the restaurant windows. One man opened the window to snap a photo of me fishing. I moved up a bit closer to the point of the island and cast so the yellow sally drifted in the seam where the currents merged and wham, a decent rainbow smashed the stonefly. The customer got his photo and a couple of kids in another window watched intently as I played and landed the 10 inch rainbow.

Next I worked up the channel on the left side of the island and encountered a nice bend run with some soft water on the island side. I cast my yellow sally in the seam and landed four small browns in this area. I looked back and the two kids that watched me through the window had somehow crossed the small channel on the other side of the island and were now watching me catch and release fish from the island. While I was watching, an adult emerged and called them back over to the bank above the restaurant.

Dark clouds continued to pass overhead with the occasional sound of thunder, but it never looked like it would rain significantly, so I pressed on. I picked up a few more small browns, until I came to a beautiful long run/riffle stretch of maybe 20 yards in length just below a bridge in the town of Kittredge. I spotted quite a few splashy rises in this water, but the fish were showing no interest in my yellow sally. I decided to clip it off and tie on a deer hair caddis. The caddis worked better than the yellow sally and I picked up a couple browns at the tail of the riffle area. As I was fishing a caddis landed on my hand and I picked it up and looked at the underside. It was mostly gray/olive, but had a light yellow abdomen. I had some caddis pupa like this, but no dries. I decided to try the deer hair caddis with the light gray poly body that I made for the Colorado River, and this turned out to be a good choice. I worked up the sweet 20 yard stretch and picked off another four browns that sucked in the light gray caddis.

At around 5PM the rising activity slowed measurably, so I reeled up my line and returned to the parking lot where Jane was waiting in the car as it was cloudy and had chilled a bit.

Time: 12:00PM – 2:00PM

Location: O’Fallon Park

Fish Landed: 0

Bear Creek 03/30/2010 Photo Album

I read in the local Orvis newsletter that Bear Creek was a good early season place to fish in the Denver metro area. Temperatures were forecast to be in the upper 70’s on Tuesday, but I had a dentist appointment at 8AM, so I decided to try Bear Creek due to its close proximity. I’d fished Bear Creek once before on Labor Day several years ago and caught some small trout, but this was much closer to Morrison.

By the time I returned from the dentist and packed a lunch and reorganized the flies in my fly pouch and drove to the stream it was 11:30. As I drove west on route 74 from Morrison, I noticed that the amount of snow along the highway was increasing rapidly with each 100 feet of elevation gain. I found O’Fallon Park easily and turned in the dirt road which led to a small cul de sac. The turnaround was so muddy that I decided to park along the right side of the road and not risk getting stuck in the deep mud.

I ate my lunch and climbed into my waders and then hiked down the mud lane that branched off from the turnaround. The lane was a big oxbow that followed the stream around a hill and then came back to route 74. I stopped where the stream paralleled the road again and entered the water at a wide open area. I tied on a Chernobyl ant and trailed a San Juan worm and beadhead hares ear. The water was flowing somewhat high and mostly clear but had discoloration from the rapidly melting snow.

I worked my way through all kinds of water…riffles, runs, pockets and pools but experienced no success. I didn’t even spook any fish. When I got to a stretch where the stream narrowed and formed several nice deep pools with deep runs entering the pools, I switched to a deep nymphing setup. This didn’t make any difference.

By 2PM I approached the top of the oxbow, and I’d lost all confidence. There was a man playing with four dogs in the snow and stream just ahead, so I decided to call it a day.