San Juan Worm 02/15/2016 Photo Album
Fishing with worms is woven into the fabric of my fishing existence. I have fond memories of my brother and I trailing my dad with a coffee can and picking worms from the rich black soil as he turned over sod and dirt with his garden spade. We accumulated enough garden worms to fulfill our fishing needs during the early season in Pennsylvania, and they were always very effective in April and early May.
As the season advanced my father and brother and I would visit my grandfather at his house near Boyertown after a heavy rain storm. My heartbeat literally pounded against my chest from the adrenaline rush that resulted when we gathered coffee cans and flashlights and charged into Pop Pop’s back yard. Here we discovered fat juicy nightcrawlers sprawled along all the flower beds and in my grandfather’s large vegetable garden. I am sure the worms were also present in the grass, but it was much easier to spot them in bare soil. Brother Jim and I took turns executing the messy task of picking the nightcrawlers. It took some practice, but fairly quickly we learned to recognize which end was the head, and once this extremity was identified, a very quick gooey snap was necessary to pinch and slowly extract the retreating worm. Collecting nightcrawlers was an exciting nighttime adventure.
When I began fly fishing in Pennsylvania in my early thirties, it took some time before I became proficient enough to catch fish on a regular basis. I trusted my worm drifting skills and knew that the tried and true methodology produced success. Fishing with flies however was largely an unproven technique. With this view of the efficacy of flies compared to worms, I formulated a compromise strategy. I knotted a bait hook to the end of my tapered leader and then impaled a worm to my hook. I added a split shot and lobbed this fly fishing/bait hybrid configuration to all the likely holding spots, and this method landed a decent amount of fish. I liked the feel of playing a fish on the long rod, and being able to pick up line and toss to the next hole was more efficient than reeling up line using a spinning reel.
Wapsi Flesh Ultra Chenille
The next step in my fly fishing evolution was our move to Colorado. Shortly after I arrived in 1990 I began to investigate the rivers and streams along the Front Range as well as more distant destinations. It did not take long for me to discover that the closest river to my home near Castle Rock was the South Platte, and fortunately the area downstream from Deckers was a premier trout fishery. I began to make frequent forays to this beautiful stretch of river, and in an effort to accelerate success, I also read as much as I could about the gold medal tailwater fishery. The books and magazine articles that I studied repeatedly mentioned San Juan worms, pheasant tail nymphs and RS2’s. Naturally I accepted this advice willingly and began to add these flies to my fly boxes.
24 Finished San Juan Worms
These were the halcyon days of the South Platte River in the Deckers area, and I can remember numerous visits when large brown trout and rainbow trout chomped on tan, flesh and chocolate brown San Juan worms. The most fortuitous aspect of this discovery was the ease with which I could generate a dozen San Juan worms. All that was required to produce a San Juan worm was a hook, a spool of thread and a section of ultra chenille. Meanwhile the South Platte River trout seemed to relish San Juan worms in April and May more than any other time of the year. These months coincided with elevated releases from Cheesman Dam in response to snow melt descending from the Rocky Mountains. The elevated flows scoured the river banks and flushed natural worms into the South Platte, so the hungry trout gorged on the delectable morsels, and my simple ultra chenille imitations represented a close approximation.
Blend of Old and New Flesh Chenille
Unfortunately the South Platte River was greatly impacted by the Hayman Fire in 2002 and remains a shadow of its status in the 1990’s. For this reason I fish there infrequently, but I discovered that San Juan worms continue to tempt trout in many other western waterways. The worm pattern is particularly effective during high murky water conditions, and for this reason I decided to replenish my dwindling supply. I possessed a small remnant strand of flesh colored ultra chenille, and my efforts to locate replacement material were thwarted last winter. Undeterred I once again embarked on a search, and on a trip to Charlie’s Fly Box I was elated to discover a skein of Wapsi flesh ultra chenille. This was a close match to my remaining sample so I purchased a spool. I produced ten flesh worms, five tan, five red, and four bright pink; and I am now prepared to tempt trout during spring conditions with an array of tasty worms.