‘The air above the water is busy with insects. Conventional wisdom has spinners falling into the stream of an evening, the spent males collapsing to die, females to dip their abdomens and drop eggs before succumbing to the same fate’
After the excesses of spring – ice melt, storms, and peak runoff – summer conditions on Tarryall Creek are much more agreeable. For several weeks the fishing was unappealing, or worse, but now flows have dropped to ideal levels and July affords perhaps the best fly fishing of the year. To complement the flows, bankside vegetation is at its verdant best, birds hurry and call with the urgency of parental duties and warm temperatures encourage insect life, both aquatic and terrestrial.
My morning and evening walks along the creek are without the distraction of a rod and fly-box, the focus instead being on observation. On recent evenings I watched a large brown trout rising from the sheltered hole behind a fallen bush to intercept surface food in the deflected current. Shielded by bankside vegetation, from only ten feet away, I watched the trout emerge every minute or so, usually taking two or three insects with each rise.
I have waited until early evening today to fish, with this individual trout as my target. The sun will shortly dip below the ridge to the west and already the bankside willows are shading the water. My fishing sessions at Tarryall are usually short – an hour, two at the most – but tonight will be evenmore focussed, just this ten yard stretch of water and its resident brown.
The air above the water is busy with insects. Conventional wisdom has spinners falling into the stream of an evening, the spent males collapsing to die, females to dip their abdomens and drop eggs before succumbing to the same fate: easy feeding for trout. Spinners are certainly present but so too are various mayflies and caddis, a typical mix of Tarryall entomology.
I approach carefully using the same bankside cover as before. There is no immediate sign of the trout feeding but I am not discouraged. In the most strident of dry fly traditions I should wait to cast to a rising trout but my pragmatic self is confident of enticing the trout to feed. In years past I have caught trout here by casting directly into the slack pocket to imitateterrestrials falling from the overhead vegetation.
Today, though, I plan to match the trout’s normal feeding pattern; intercepting edible flotsam in the current. My first offering is a quill-bodied parachute olive, size sixteen, a good approximation for the visible caddis and mayflies. Tarryall trout are usually hungry rather than selective, with fly size and presentation more important than precise matching of hatches, but my first few casts arouse no interest.
I have previouslywatched this trout move a considerable distance into the current to feed, but even with my fly placed inch-perfect in the seam, it elicits no response. The change to a smaller fly fares no better. A small dry fly needs regular attention to remain buoyant but instead I deliberately leave the hackle waterlogged, the fly riding in, rather than on, the surface for a closer representation of an emerger or a spent spinner.
The temptation is to abandon my target and move further upstream where doubtless there are less discerning fish to be caught. But catching fish at Tarryall is no particular challenge and to catch another tonight would be an admission of defeat. Instead I persevere and change my fly again, a third in fifteen minutes.
This time I bow to conventional wisdom and choose a spinner pattern; a thin, rust-coloured body, small white feather tips whipped in as wings to lie flush on the surface. The familiar, short cast into the seam; two; three; then a fourth time…
A shadow assumes the familiar profile and buttery tones of a brown trout as it rises from the deep hole. With an innate mastery of speed and trajectory, the trout accelerates to intercept my fly. My grip on the rod tightens, forefinger clamping the line against the cork handle. My wrist cocks slightly, raising the cane tip to take up any remaining slack in the leader, angler and quarry obeying their instincts; the outcome now being inevitable.
Until the trout demurs, caution replaces confidence. The urgent acceleration slows dramatically and, instead of a committed strike, a careful inspection is made as the fly drifts past. Then the trout sinks slowly back to the depths. No flamboyant roll or flick of the tail, nothing that disturbs the weightless fly. The rejection is undramatic but emphatic.
A slow walk back to the cabin follows. As the sun dips lower, shadows chase the last sunlight up the hillside to the east. The warmth of the day ebbs away in the still air. Birdsong is now that of discrete, defiant individuals, not the earlier enveloping background. I have no need to cross the river but walk to the bridge anyway. From this elevated vantage I watch the Black Angus yearlings in the front meadow. Having spent most of the day in a tight, boisterous group, they have come to the creek to drink and are now fanning out to graze peacefully. Back at the cabin,
I hang the rod and vest and swap them for binoculars. It is a short walk upstream, traversing the steep hillside, to look down on beavers just emerging from the lodge to start their nocturnal day.
The wide, slow pool above the dam is dimpled with rising trout…
Writing & Images Paul Adams, Colorado, Summer 2025
You must be logged in to post a comment.