Location: Bridge before the North Fork Campground

Time: 12:00PM – 2:00PM

I dropped Dan and Jane off at the west trailhead, since they planned to hike to the summit of Medicine Bow Peak. They left their bikes chained to a bike stand at the parking lot, as they expected to bike the “mostly” downhill 10 miles back to the campground after their hike.

I continued east on route 130 to the turnoff for North Fork Campground, and then I went north 1.5 miles to the pullout by the first bridge. Somehow I did not have the elastic band attached to my sunglasses around my neck, and I dropped them in the stream. Being nearly blind at this point, I stumbled back to the car to get my regular glasses and then returned and searched the stream bottom methodically. Eventually I saw them wrapped around a rock, but it was quite a scare.

I worked my way upstream fishing a yellow body Madam X with a beadhead pheasant tail. The stream was loaded with brook trout, and I picked up brookies in nearly every good spot that contained depth and was sheltered from heavy current. 75% of the brook trout took the nymph and 25% rose to the Madam X. After two hours I caught around twenty trout and reached the campground road, so I headed back down the road to the car.

On the way back, I stopped at the Medicine Bow Peak trailhead, and both mountain bikes were still chained up, so Jane and Dan had not yet returned from their hike. I waited twenty minutes, at which point they arrived. They desired to bike back to the campground, so I played hopscotch with them on the return drive.

Fish Landed: 20