Click here to add text.
The experienced try to pick the right day to do battle with these trout of the frozen tundra. We lucked out as temperatures remained in the mid-20s throughout the windless Wednesday adventure. Our descent below the massive Flaming Gorge Dam was greeted by bright sun that illuminated the Green like a winter aquarium. Green River fly fishing guide Doug Roberts quickly loaded us aboard his Boulder Boat Works Pro-Guide drift boat and began rigging our rod collection.
“Don’t think we’re going to see too many other floaters today,” Doug quipped as he added a lengthy hunk of 3X fluorocarbon tippet and a weighted tan and white marabou streamer to Jean’s 6-weight intermediate sinking line.
“In this clear water, fluorocarbon adds more strikes to streamer work,” Doug emphasized. Out of curiosity, I left 2X Super Strong co-polymer tippet intact on a Teeny 200 sink-tip.
Green River lesson
Our 34-year-old guide grew up fishing Colorado’s famed Arkansas River, which flows near his family’s Salida cattle ranch. A pronounced hay fever allergy ended Doug’s ranching plans and forced him to begin his guiding career with nearby ArkAnglers. A talented fly tier, boater and creative thinker, our guide elaborated on his river’s 8,000 to 12,000 trout per mile and the feeding patterns he’d observed during recent float trips on the upper seven-mile section we were approaching. “Newly hatched brown trout fry are abundant right now and along with sculpins provide a healthy winter diet. We’ll try streamers until the day warms and the surface midge activity begins to appear. Then we’ll cast some small dries,” he promised.
Doug’s plan was pleasing and it circumvented the traditional tailwater drill of peering continuously at a clumsy strike indicator above plenty of weight and tiny nymphs mindlessly drifted ahead of the boat. Although initially requiring selection of proper depth, weight and fly patterns, indicator fishing is amazingly productive but maintains an appeal similar to watching paint dry.
Jean’s streamer immediately began getting smashed and landed interested browns and rainbows while my usually productive yellowish Platte/Big Horn Special Marabou Minnow got the cold shoulder. “OK, Doug, let’s try it your way,” I whined. “Hand me a length of your fluorocarbon and a different streamer.”
With a weighted black sculpin and a four-foot fluoro tippet, my back-of-the-boat action improved instantly. Casting to the bank and pulling the sculpin with the boat’s downstream movement also goaded enthusiastic trout. On previous fall streamer-tossing trips with Emmett Heath, it finally became clear that these Green River denizens favor chasing flies downstream more than most other river fish.
Winter float fishing doesn’t need crack-of-dawn departures because river traffic is minimal and it’s nice for the day to warm. We encountered a half-dozen other anglers fishing along the dam to Little Hole trail. By noon the telltale surface bulges of midge-sipping trout began. Jean and I both eagerly welcomed Doug’s expertise in reacting to this exciting situation.
The previous day, longtime friend and ageless Green River mentor Emmett Heath had joined us for an afternoon of attempts to unravel the visual trout feeding puzzle. Emmett is the most experienced angler, guide and naturalist on this piece of water, having begun fishing here with his father before the Flaming Gorge Dam was built in the late 1950s. Complicated health problems have reduced Emmett’s physical guiding activities but not his encyclopedic knowledge of this resource.
So when thousands of tiny miniature mayfly and midge patterns from the bulging fly shop bins begin to intimidate me, I beg Emmett to calm my overloaded senses.
“Honestly, I enjoy presenting a small unweighted nymph that floats in the film,” the big man with the kindly grin and chuckle announces. “That usually works for me,” he concludes.
Emmett’s fly theory is sound but is easier said than done for those of us schooled in lobbing size 6 and 8 giant foam and deer hair patterns to eager cutthroat on the Snake. For the unpracticed with aging eyes, presenting invisible size 24 to size 28 patterns with long 6X and 7X tippets accurately to picky tailwater trout is blindman’s bluff. Regardless, this frustrating game is heaps of fun when no one is there to chortle at my miscues.
Still bragging
Jean, conversely, from her guiding days on sophisticated Colorado trout hotel waters, relishes the tiny stuff. With Doug delicately sculling the boat into position along rock faces, Jean eagerly crammed the itty-bitty patterns right into the barely bulging trout faces. Delighted giggles and laughter filled the shady side of the canyon feeding lanes. Only the underwater swishing to rid her 5-weight Z-Axis of iced guides interrupted the action.
After a hot shore lunch break and luxuriating in the sun, Doug checked our leaders and piloted us into position to tackle a pod of the Green River’s demanding “scum suckers.” “Probably 7X would be better here,” he sighed, “but I forgot mine today.”
Before realizing that it came out of my mouth I helpfully reported that my vest had two spools of this dreaded cobweb material. “Let’s tie some on for you,” Doug delightedly cried. “I’ve got just the fly, too!”
Painstakingly with a six-turn blood knot I added 15 inches of 7X Super Strong to the existing 6X. Doug knotted on a No. 26 Parachute Adams. This fly speck proceeded to land several of the previously impossible scum line feeders before they wised up and went down.
“It’s surprising what a difference 7X and accurate presentations make on these clear-water fish,” Doug acknowledged. “Green River guides get really excited when we can fish like this,” he grinned.
Jean and I are still bragging about the great winter trout graduate course we received from Doug Roberts.
Doug Roberts likes to create a variety of streamer and wet fly colors and sizes to entertain the browns and rainbows in the Utah portion of the Green River below Flaming Gorge Dam. This Salida, Colo. native and veteran Green River fly fishing guide revealed a variety of fly fishing information during a delightful mid-February float trip last week. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / JEAN BRUUN
Green River fly fishing guides
Utah
Green River fly fishing guide
Utah
