Spawning Browns on the North Platte

What I was after.

For a few years now I've been wanting to get up to fish for the big brown trout that run up into the North Platte from the series of reservoirs west of Casper.  The run of spawning browns is a mid-November to mid-December event that happens to fall during prime pheasant and sharptail hunting season so I never seem to make it.  This year, with the drought, reports from pheasant country are not promising so the decision to fish instead of hunt was not difficult. Jeff and I drove up to the North Platte leaving at 7:30 Sunday morning from the West Laramie Fly Store.

Tom McGuane (via Steve Bodio) wrote "Shoptalk is lyrical."  Here's the technical details for them that likes them. I was casting a 5wt 11 foot Z-axis switch rod loaded with a Scientific Anglers 280 gr Extreme Skagit head with a 10' Airflow Salmon/Steelhead fast sinking polyleader with a bit more than a foot of 15 lb. tippet attached to a streamer.   My running line is the yellow Airflow Ridge.  This is all spooled on an old Lamson LP4 which really needs to be replaced; if the reel gets wet the drag slips or even goes free spool and the spool occasionally spontaneously falls off.  The orange Skagit head is 18' long. I feel like I'd cast it a bit better when I'm not in deep if was a couple of feet longer - but I do pretty well with it. Although I am no expert, I can Spey cast a lightly weighted streamer far further with this rig than I can with a 9 foot 8 wt. rod.  For this kind of fishing I far prefer fishing the 5 weight switch rod to my 14 foot 9 weight Spey rod though that works too.

I caught one big brown, a few smaller ones and a decent rainbow. I went for a big brown and was completely satisfied to have caught one: you can't always get what you want. The take was textbook perfect - the fish took a white marabou streamer I was swinging in classic Salmon/Steelhead fishing style.   Jeff netted it for me and took a photo.  By then I was anxious to release it so it could continue the sexual business it was there for - and so I did not measure it.  I'd guess it was a 26 or 27 inch fish.  Jeff hooked up more than once but did not land one.

No snow up there yet - a shocking continuation of the current drought conditions.  People all over, even those who don't much like snow,  are wishing we'd get some.

More Winter Fishing

Looking down into Freemont Canyon - sightseeing, not fishing this time.

Based on the forecasts for warm temperatures again this weekend I suggested to Jeff we try fishing the North Platte. We fished the Miracle Mile last weekend but, contrary to my optimistic expectations, we didn't do so great. I caught a couple of small rainbows and fell in the river twice; not a great day.

Looking northwest on the drive out. Pathfinder reservoir is visible behind the hill in the foreground.

Through the week, the weather report for Saturday kept getting worse and worse with rain and snow and significant wind predicted; I'd all but given up when Jeff convinced me we should try it anyway. He's an atmospheric scientist and I trust his judgement about weather. Temperatures turned out to warm with a high of 45F and, other than a couple of brief squalls that blew through, we did not get the precipitation that was forecast.  On the drive up there were signs on the interstate warning of 60+ MPH winds.  We reasoned that they would not be that bad 100 or 150 miles away in Alcova.  Wrong. With the absurdly high wind it was impossible to fish in the normal spots which are virtually out on the open prairie so we headed up right under the dam. We normally fish the Grey Reef section, the the dam there it is a small structure and did not offer much in the way of protection from the wind.   In contrast, the Seminole, Pathfinder and Alcova  dams are all big enough to served as something of a wind block. We moved up to the base of one of the big dams and fished the bottom-release water which was flowing at about 500 cfs.

Medicine Bow river in late afternoon on the drive out.

Early on I hooked and landed two rainbows on size 22 midges; I was fishing a standard two fly/splitshot/thingamabobber rig.  They were beautifully colored fish a bit more than a foot long.  From where I was fishing I could see a warm water outlet between the bottom release outlet and the huge spillway 200 yards to the north.  There was a pipe about a foot in diameter that was spewing what was obviously warm water - there was steam coming off it.  And then I noticed that below the warm water outlet there were schools of baitfish (trout fry?) charging around, jumping and making quite a commotion.  They may have been feeding on midges.  But then, occasionally you'd see the wake of what must have been a large trout charging the shallows. When that happened there would be  some real panic among the schooling baitfish.

This situation had me thinking of winter fishing on the gravel bar that juts out into Cayuga lake at the outlet of the Milliken power station.  The outlet of cooling water from the power station generates a major flow of warm water.  Over the years a gravel bar has formed from the flow and, the last time I tried it fifteen or twenty years ago, you could somewhat precariously wade out onto it.  I'd guess the flow runs just at least 250 cfs if not more, but that's from old memories.  The edges of the bar were unstable with the gravel seemingly loosely suspended in the water.  A fall here in the winter would very likely be fatal.  In any case, the baitfish would school up where the warm water and the cold lake water mixed and the baitfish would bring in the big fish.  Cayuga lake supports healthy populations of landlocked salmon and lake trout. Milliken station was a place to catch a big fish on the fly.  You'd tie on a streamer and just let it drift out with the flow.  I had some good days there and was once spooled by what must have been a very large lake trout. That memory had me searching my fly boxes for a baitfish imitation.

This marabou streamer was the fly to have.

I don't fish streamers much but I found two white marabou leech/streamer patterns in my box - I showed them to Jeff and told him they'd be perfect.  The problem was how to get over to the fish - they were across a wide channel and completely unreachable from where we were.  Jeff said he thought we could wade halfway across the river to a rocky island from the far side and then work upstream from there.  I didn't believe it was going to be possible.  I was ready to try fishing somewhere else.  But we tried his plan and it worked perfectly.  In fact the wading was not bad at all.

My largest fish of the day - a twenty inch rainbow.

Once we were in position we started catching fish, one after the other.  We'd cast those white streamers upstream or across the flow and let it drift down.  The takes were violent. I almost lost my streamer on the first fish, it just plain gobbled the fly. I was relieved when I managed to retrieve my fly without damaging it (or the fish.) Most of the hits came on the hang after the swing or even after a strip or two before the next cast.  I lost count but figure I hooked 12 and landed about 8 fish - including one of 20". That one destroyed my fly.  Jeff figured he landed about 6 and hooked more.  Fishing is most satisfying when a puzzle has been solved.  This was satisfying fishing.

Jeff pointing out a good run in Freemont Canyon.

During the days drive we passed through Freemont Canyon taking dirt roads all the way down from Alvova to Medicine Bow. This route parallels the river which runs north through Seminole, Pathfinder and Alcova reservoirs.   I haven't been into Freemont Canyon for more than twenty-five years. Back then we were scouting climbing routes and I was not thinking about fishing.  I have never fished the canyon but plan to fix that gross oversight soon.

Bridge over the Medicine Bow river.