You can contact Dennis at: DSmith7136@msn.com
Someone once wrote that home to a trout can be as simple as a football-shaped depression on the bottom of a creek. And nowhere does that seem more evident than when fly fishing tiny mountain streams where it’s possible to find trout lurking in riffles barely deep enough to get the top of your wading shoes wet.
Boulders, undercut banks and those foam-speckled plunge pools that form beneath miniature waterfalls provide even more sanctuary for small stream trout, and the deep, dark flows trapped behind beaver dams must be as alluring to them as a fully stocked soup kitchen is to a pack of homeless street bums, because, given the opportunity, that is where you will find them most often.
Deep water, of course, is always the first choice of refuge where trout are concerned, but wild brookies and cutts are nothing if not positive masters of camouflage and evasion, and in shallow water they will literally burrow into the silt, waterlogged leaves and bottom detritus at the first sign of danger. I know; I’ve watched them do it.
Last week my son and I pitched our tent in a grassy meadow at 9800 feet hard against the banks of Deadman Creek in the Laramie Mountains. Lined on both sides by sprawling tangles of dwarf willow, wild flowers and fields of lush green grasses, Deadman Creek is only one of thousands of heartstoppingly beautiful mountain creeks that ramble through the Colorado high country.
Most of them are populated with Eastern brook trout, and the exceptional ones harbor native cutthroats of one species or another. We caught both brookies and greenback cutts. We also got to watch them pull their little disappearing act when we weren’t careful sneaking up on them.
These small streams represent, to my thinking anyway, if not the essence of what fly fishing is all about, then at least its genesis. This, up here in the high country, in the frigid little rivulets of glacial water and ice melt is where it all begins. There are bigger trout in the valley rivers far below, much bigger, but none are as stunningly colored as these wild, backcountry natives - nor are they caught in such pristine environs.
Oddly, it seems most anglers today would rather compete with flotillas of commercial drift boaters, pay exorbitant guide fees or bang heads with crowds of other anglers for a place to cast on some big “name” river than fish these little creeks in solitude. Of course, that delights those of us who do like to fish the little creeks. In fact, it gives us a kind of perverse joy. We fished for two days straight, never saw another angler, and kept looking around wondering - Where the hell is everybody?
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?