Time: 10:00AM – 4:00PM

Location: Second Pond

Curtain Ponds 06/12/2023 Photo Album

Cool damp weather stalled the snow melt temporarily in Colorado during the first full week of June, but the conditions did not improve enough to enable a visit to a freestone river. One of my goals for 2023 run off season was to experiment with more stillwaters during the snow melt time frame, and Monday, June 12, 2023 was one of those days.

My new fishing companion, Nate, told me about the Curtain Ponds, and then I received a book for my birthday titled Easy Access Mountain Lakes of Colorado. One of the lakes featured in this book was the Curtain Ponds. The combination of these two independent references to the Curtain Ponds caused me to make it my destination on Monday. I was fairly certain that the ponds would be ice free, and that was another important consideration, although the weather forecast was rather unsettled with rain and thunderstorms predicted for the late morning and all afternoon. I decided to risk the 1.5 hour drive regardless of the negative prognostications.

I arrived at a dirt parking lot along the bike path by 9:45AM, and the temperature hovered at 48 degrees. This was colder than I expected, so I took the necessary precautions and suited up with my Under Armour long sleeved thermal shirt, my fishing shirt, my fleece hoodie, and my North Face light down parka. I stuffed my raincoat in my backpack and donned my New Zealand billed hat with earflaps. These were winter conditions, and I was prepared. I fitted my four piece Sage R8 rod together, and began my journey along the bike path in an eastward direction. Nate told me that he had the most success at the second pond, so that became my destination, and I stopped at a worn spot, where the shoreline jutted out into the deep blue-green pond. The book that I cited earlier mentioned that the lake was quite deep, and it suggested making longer casts toward the middle to avoid fishing the highly pressured locations closer to the bank. The book also mentioned the existence of quite a few easy to catch rainbows, but the real prizes were wild brown and brook trout that grew to greater length, but they were also harder to dupe.

I knotted a peacock body hippie stomper to my line and then added an olive-brown size 16 deer hair caddis, and I began spraying casts in all directions from the point that I stood on. As I was doing this, I observed a few sporadic rises, so I directed some casts to those locations. On my last lake visit to Pine Valley Ranch Lake, I adopted the practice of casting, counting to 30 seconds, and then twitching and short stripping the flies back. I repeated this cycle on the Curtain Pond, but the trout did not respond. After twenty minutes of fruitless casting and stripping, I directed my attention toward the west, and I was surprised, when a fish raced to the surface to crush the caddis. I set the hook and carefully played a feisty ten inch brook trout to my net. I was on the board, but I was unclear regarding what variables led to my success.

I released the brook trout, and as I paused to dry and refresh my flies, I peered eastward and noticed some rises thirty yards up the shoreline, so I made the short hike to a position adjacent to their activity. I managed one or two soft momentary hookups on the caddis on short strips, but the area was unproductive, and I once again turned my attention to the extreme southeastern corner of the pond. In that area I recognized increased feeding activity, so I once again shifted my position. I found a nice point on a small protruding grassy bank, and I began lobbing forty foot casts to the vicinity of the feeding trout. My flies were summarily ignored, and I paused to consider alternative choices. I stripped in my line and extended the tippet to 18 inches in case the stillwater fish were leader shy, and I replaced the caddis with a black parachute ant. The ant might as well have been inert flotsam. I dug out a small plastic canister that I carry in my wader bib that contains an array of tiny dry flies that mostly fall in the size 20 to size 24 range. Whatever these trout were feeding on, it had to be tiny, because I was unable to see anything on the surface of the pond. I retrieved a size 20 parachute Adams, but the desirability of this offering was equal to the black ant. I sorted through the small canister once more, and I located a size 14 midge emerger with a gray body and a wisp of a gray CDC wing. Nothing doing. Finally I stirred the flies again, and I plucked a size 24 CDC trico spinner.

As this fly trial and error process evolved, the feeding action in front of me escalated to a full fledged frenzied hatch. There were at least twenty fish feeding aggressively in front of me, and I was unable to interest them in my tiny offerings. It was quite clear that these fish were the wild browns and brook trout mentioned in the book and not the stocker rainbows. I was in a state of frustration, as I tied the small trico on my line. I fluttered a thirty foot cast to a spot occupied by an active feeder, and suddenly there was a bulge near the visible hippie stomper, I set the hook and instantly felt the weight and resistance of a nice trout, and after a brief struggle the fourteen inch brown trout nestled in my net. I was beyond happy with this turn of events, and I rushed to dry the trico spinner to get it back in action.

As I sopped the fly on my sleeve, I heard the sound of distant thunder, and as I was ready to resume casting, a strong breeze kicked up and ruffled the surface of the lake. This either ended the surface activity or made it impossible for me to view it, and within minutes a dark cloud settled above me and delivered light rain. Fortunately my raincoat was in place, but my casting continued to be futile, and I was unable to see my targets. My confidence plunged, and my wet hands began to sting, so I tromped back to the car to warm up and eat my lunch. I waited out the storm, and by 12:45PM the rain subsided enough to consider resuming my exploration of the Curtain Ponds.

I pondered a change of approach during the rain delay, and I removed my Orvis reel with the four weight line and replaced it with a sink tip version. I decided to probe the depths, as suggested by the book, with streamers. I possessed the suggested streamers, and I began with an olive slumpbuster. I began my streamer experiment where the land poked into the lake to the deeper section, and I fanned casts in all directions, but it was to no avail. A black mini leech worked on another lake several weeks ago, so I knotted one to my line, but it was equally unpopular. I knew that the east end of the lake contained a host of fish, so I migrated there and stripped the leech with a jigging action, but futility ensued.

What now? I removed the leech as well as the sink tip line and reel and returned to the floating four weight line. What about a dry/dropper? I had not tried that approach, so I added a tan pool toy hopper and trailed a zebra midge. Were the feeding fish locked into midge larva and adults? If they were, they were not in tune with my zebra midge. I actually saw a visible fish look at the midge larva, but it turned away without eating it. How about a scud? Dense aquatic vegetation grew from the floor of the pond, and surely an ample quantity of scuds were present. An orange scud replaced the zebra midge, but once again the trout showed no interest.

During the early afternoon, heavy clouds dominated the sky, but precipitation held off for a couple of hours, and the surface of the pond returned to mostly a glassy smooth shimmer. Once again the fish in the corner resumed sipping something from the surface, but the frequency was no where near the frenzy before lunch. I returned to a deer hair caddis in the form of a size 18 with a light gray body. I began firing casts in every direction and especially to those spots, where a fish made its presence visible via a rise. I managed a couple very brief connections on the caddis, as I twitched it, but frustration reigned.

I paused and observed that some trout near a protruding point across from my position fed a bit more frequently, and I had not disturbed that water, so I waded across a shallow cove and took a position near an old stump a few feet out from the bank. A small lagoon extended eastward next to the highway, and several fish began to rise in the space between my position and the opposite bank. Once again some clouds rolled above me, and rain was imminent, but I persisted and managed to hook and land two brook trout in the ten to eleven inch range. Both grabbed the caddis, as I twitched and lifted it.

The rain intensified, and my watch announced that it was 3:30PM, and my hands were beginning to chill, so I hooked my fly to the guide and began the walk back to the parking lot. I stopped briefly at the west end of pond number one and made a few casts to places, where a rise was seen, but once again my efforts to land a fish were thwarted.

I landed four wild trout in five hours of fishing. I wore my arm out making longer than normal casts, and the weather was quite adverse, although I was able to complete more fly fishing than I expected. I was never able to lock in a fly that consistently fooled the selective feeders at the east end of the ponds, but I saw enough to seek a return engagement at a future date with more favorable weather.

Fish Landed: 4