Cutthroat, Friends, Family, Hounds and Thunderstorms

Fly fishing can easily take a back seat to having a great time with good friends, family and just plain relaxing. The last week has truly been a blast. The focus is the camping and great times at the fire. The laughter, stories, lies and being entertained by our hounds can usually put fly fishing for cutthroat on the back burner, especially after getting thunderstormed BIG time in the space of three days. The fly fishing on our Eastern slopes cutthroat streams is awesome this time of the year. The cutts are certainly fun to catch and they can actually become challenging to catch because they have become well educated over the course of the summer! Cutthroats to many of us mean beautiful places to spend the day or as much as a week. You meet all kinds of characters on the rivers, some all wound up and others just enjoying where they are for the that moment.

Over the last week, several of us tried new techniques including: tenkara fly fishing and then we got into Euro Nymphing. Euro nymphing  is all about the correct set up and paying attention. Phil Rowley showed us how to do it and many of us gave it a shot. I was amazed at where the cutties were hanging out. Many trout were caught in water 99% of us walk right by and not even consider as a productive stretch of water! That in itself makes you think about where you put your time in on the river!

My son-in-law tried cutthroat fly fishing for the first time and he has a blast in less than perfect conditions.

It was nice to slow down the pace. The weather slowed the fishing for a couple of days but for the most part, the fly fishing was awesome.

I feel very lucky to have such great friends and family to hang out with on a favourite cutthroat river.

Philip Rowley Euro Nymphing. What a great technique.

The 'slinky" above is the magic of the Euro Nymphing! 

...more about that later!

Larry practicing Euro Nymphing!