Curtain Ponds – 06/13/2025

Time: 1:30PM – 3:30PM

Location: Near Copper Mountain

Curtain Ponds 06/13/2025 Photo Album

On 06/17/2024 I endured a similar experience on Clear Lake, and on that occasion I salvaged a decent day of fly fishing by moving on to the Curtain Ponds. On 06/13/2025 I repeated that same cycle of events. Clear Lake was dead, so I cut my losses and migrated west along Interstate 70 to the Curtain Ponds near Copper Mountain. I drove in my waders, so upon my arrival at the ponds, I was essentially ready to fish.

Small Waves Greeted Me

My Sage four weight was already rigged with the mini chubby, a prince nymph and a hares ear; so I decided to give the three fly configuration a test at the outset. The sun was out most of the time, but intermittent clouds created wind and riffles. I fired casts toward depressions fifty feet from shore, and in the early going I managed to land two small brook trout that grabbed each of the trailing nymphs, as I began to strip the flies back toward me. This success, however, failed to reoccur, and the nymphs continually picked up vegetation from the weed beds, so I modified my approach.

Brilliant

I replaced the mini chubby with a peacock body hippie stomper, and then added a size 16 olive-brown deer hair caddis on an eighteen inch dropper. The double dry performed quite well, and I carried on with the combination for the rest of the afternoon. I snapped off the two flies on a bush at one point, but I replaced them with another set of stomper and caddis.

Getting Closer to the Bank

During my two hours on the pond, I landed twenty-two small brook trout. They were all within the six to eight inch range, but they were perfect gems with iridescent vermiculation along their backs and bodies along with orange bellies and white tipped fins.

A few of the catches molested one of the flies, as they sat motionless, but more frequently they attacked the caddis, as I began to strip. I allowed the flies to sit for ten to twenty seconds, and then I gave them a quick pop to create a wake from the stomper. This was followed by a second pop, and then, if no take resulted, I stripped faster back toward my position. I estimate that seventy percent of the hookups were produced by the caddis, and the remainder resulted from the hippie stomper. Refusals were part of the game, but takes far outnumbered the indecisive snubs.

Scintilating

For the third time this spring, I enjoyed a double. That is, I caught two trout on the same cast. In this case the larger brook trout engulfed the hippie stomper, and while I was playing it to my net, a smaller fish grabbed the trailing caddis. This was the first double on dries for this season.

Third Double of 2025

By switching locations I managed to salvage a decent day. Of course the fish were small, but I still had a blast fooling the small battlers. Not every cast was successful, and the sudden slashing of a hungry brook trout was always a surprise. I suspect that Clear Lake is off my list for 2025.

Fish Landed: 22

 

3 thoughts on “Curtain Ponds – 06/13/2025”

  1. George Banker

    Dave,

    I’ve noticed through the years of following your blog that you often use a dry dropper combination. I was wondering, since you have such extensive experience with that rig, how you adjust for various depths of your dropper. If you could share your technique, I would appreciate it. Thanks and good luck out there.

    1. wellerfish Post author

      Hi George, For the most part I do not adjust the dropper. When I arrive at the stream, I gauge the water level and choose a leader length from the top fly based on my assessment, but I rarely go longer than four feet from the surface fly to the last nymph. I might, however, go shorter if the stream conditions are relatively low. Sometimes I extend the leader, if I feel that the trout are hugging bottom and I am not getting down enough. I actually adjust for the leader length by choosing where to cast and fish. If I am fairly shallow, I generally skip large deep pools and focus my casts in areas of moderate depth. If there is something hatching that activates the fish, I might try my dry/dropper in a deeper pool, but if I am in prospecting mode, I cast to the spots where I think my rig can be most effective. It’s kind of a pain to be changing the tippet length frequently, but I do it sometimes. When I do, I nip off the bottom two flies and add a section of tippet via a surgeon’s knot to the leader that extends from the surface fly, and then I knot the top nymph back on the extended leader. In this way, I do not mess with the trailing fly. It remains attached to the top nymph. Of course this presumes a three fly setup…surface fly and two trailing nymphs.

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