You can contact Dennis at: DSmith7136@msn.com

   

    August is probably my favorite month to fly fish the high country. Stream flows are usually settled by now and the bug hatches - which are often a month or two behind similar hatches in the valleys - are peaking. The fishing seems to peak right along with them. Not that hatches are terribly important up here; high country trout are rarely selective and will jump on just about anything you show them - provided you don’t scare the bejeezes out of them before you show it to them.

     That’s become more of a consideration in recent years, at least in many of the streams I used to fish up in Rocky Mountain National Park. Time was, “nobody” fished the Park except for a handful of tourists, some local cranks and a few, hardcore small-stream brookie nuts. With the boom in the commercial guiding business though, fly fishing in the Park has accelerated to the point where you’re lucky to find a turnout you can park your rig in, never mind a piece of water that somebody hasn’t tromped through in the last hour. The trout are still in the streams, but they’ve become incredibly skittish. If they were spooky beforehand, they’re hyper paranoiac now. I’ve pretty much given up on fishing there until after the tourist season.

     Now, come late summer, my boys and I still head for the high country, but we fish little, out of the way drainages in the Rawah Wilderness, the Laramie Mountains and The Colorado State Forest. These places are still relatively close to home and the fishing is much the same as it used to be in the Park before guided parties overran the place.

     We’ll pack the tent, a cast iron skillet, some coffee, butter, “taters” and onions and plan of keeping some brook trout for the pan. We load the fly boxes with bushy attractor dry flies and soft-hackled wets, and then set out to find the one thing that’s become increasingly rare in fly-fishing these days - solitude.

 

   Dennis Smith is an Outdoor Writer and Photographer. His articles and photos have appeared in numerous outdoor publications, catalogs and newspapers. Dennis can be reached at (970) 669-6074. Want to know more about Dennis?

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