The salmon run has officially arrived in northern Indiana. Some friends and I headed back to Indiana yesterday with hopes of hooking up with some more summer steelhead, but were surprised to see wave after wave of coho and chinook salmon moving upstream. To some this may sound exciting, to me it was nothing more than a bunch of tight-lipped fish getting between me and the steelhead. For those of you who don’t know, salmon are only in the river to reproduce. They don’t have any intention of feeding. Your best chance at getting one to take a fly is to fish lower sections of rivers as the salmon have just arrived from the ocean or lake and are not distracted by their urge to spawn. The steelhead are still around, but it seemed they moved aside as hoards of salmon pushed through each pool. We managed a few hook-ups with steelhead but none were landed. It’s time for me to get one last hurrah on some spring creeks before Wisconsin’s inland trout season comes to an end. After that my focus will be primarily on lake-run trout.
Boulder Lovin’
I used to live in the center of Boulder where Middle Boulder Creek flows strong. There were always fishing opportunities with 10 minutes of my front door. Now, I live in South Boulder (ten minutes further), and last night I was shown a spot by an old friend. We fished South Boulder Creek 3 blocks away from my house, and it was a blast. We walked up the creek and fished big hoppers for rising Browns while the sun went down. Here are some shots from last night:
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New Steelhead Flies
Categories: fly tying, steelhead
Tags: fly tying, Steelhead, steelhead flies
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Indiana Skamania Mania
My brother and I heard that the summer skamania steelhead had finally started showing up in good numbers in Indiana’s creeks so we made the trip this morning to check it out ourselves; the fish are in! With the creeks running low and clear the fishing is very visual. Just about every pool in the river had a fish in it, and some of the bigger pools had many fish. These fish were not eager to take a fly. I tried leech patterns in pools stacked with steelhead and not a tug. We did however hook and land two beautiful chromers on hex nymphs, and one more that took an egg/juan worm pattern called the eggi-won kenobi, but spit the fly after a few impressive cartwheels across the pool. Notice the logjams in the photos, these obstacles make landing these 10-20lb rainbows quite a challenge. If you go, expect to loose a lot of fish.
The Search for Kokanee; Blue River
Over here in Colorado, we have our own Salmon. They don’t get as big as the King Salmon many of you see in the Midwest, but our Kokanee Salmon have quite the run in our great state. I wanted to see if I could get a couple premature runners, so I headed to three different sections of the Blue River by myself on Sunday (hoping my friend Nate would get sick of football). The first place I stopped was a personally familiar section of the Blue just above Green Mountain Reservoir. I didn’t see any Kokes (I think I’m a couple weeks early) but I did manage two Rainbows. They both ate a red Blood Midge and were quite the acrobats.
After that, I went below the Dillon Dam to stare at big tail-water trout and maybe fool one. I did well there, on a mystery fly from our late summer fishing trip in Montana, landing two Cuttbows over 15”. The Cuttbows put up “zero” fight and felt as good as a limp dishrag on the end of my line. The Blue River below Dillon Dam has some true hogs, but they are all overfished and overcaught due to easy access. Late in the day, I realized some fish may be running above Lake Dillon on the Upper Blue River near Breckenridge. I went to check it out and ran into a couple anglers. They told me there were no Kokanee, and after checking for myself, realized they spoke the truth. I kept moving up the river and met a friend at an old dredge pond. Torturously, there were big fish that only nibbled twice (but that’s a different story). Overall, it was a relaxing and contemplative day on the river. There may not have been any Salmon, but the views were gorgeous.
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Spey Baby
Asher, my nine month old son locked his eyes on my switch rod this afternoon and got really excited, so I let him have a swing. 
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