Time: 3:00PM – 6:00PM
Location: Beyond meadow/willow stretch perhaps 5 miles from Taylor River
Fish Landed: 14 trout

Spring Creek 08/06/2010 Photo Album

The fly shop had informed me that the river was dead from 3-6PM, and it didn’t look like any significant cloud cover was going to materialize on Friday afternoon. I was aching for some larger fish, but more importantly I was anxious for more consistent action. I drove slowly along the dirt road that borders Spring Creek after turning away from the Taylor River at Hamel Resort. The fly shop salesman had mentioned a meadow stretch where the stream meanders and contains numerous undercut banks.

Approximately five miles up the dirt road I encountered the area the salesman described. There were several fishermen and cars parked at the southern border to this area so I drove on to the northern edge. I found a small pullout and parked and scrambled down the bank to the stream where I ate my lunch. The stream was shallow here, but I could see a nice deep hole along a high bank below me. After finishing my lunch, I waded across a shallow stretch and circled down below the deep hole. I still had the Chernobyl and BHHE attached to my line, and on one of my casts tight to a log that ran parallel to the high bank, experienced a momentary hook up on the BHHE.

Spring Creek

Because there were fishermen downstream I moved upstream and as I progressed the stream grew narrower and more resembled a Colorado headwater stream. Also the sky clouded up somewhat as the sun popped in and out of cloud cover. I was getting refusals to the Chernobyl, so I switched to a yellow Letort hopper but kept the BHHE. This combination worked well, and I got in a nice groove over the next three hours, dead time on the Taylor, and landed 14 browns. I’d guess the flies yielded equally resulting in a 50/50 mix of hopper vs. BHHE.

Productive on Spring Creek and Upper Taylor

Typical Spring Creek Brown

The fish were mostly in the 7-9 inch range, but it felt good to have some success and catch fish from spots where one expected to find fish. Much of the fishing was casting a short line directly upstream with only of couple feet of fly line beyond the tip of the rod, and then holding the rod high as the flies drifted back through small pockets and slots behind boulders.