A tough day of fishing at an easy place to like

 Ken Tarvin and a friend recently decided they had to drive up to Rocky Mountain National Park and fish before the crowds and reservations came into effect. He shares this report: (Editor's note: ignore the byline at the top; I don't know how to delete it. Ken wrote this: ☺

We wanted to fish Moraine Park and so, with the morning sun shining, we made the drive up the canyon into Estes Park and headed to the Beaver Meadows entrance. There were few other vehicles and we were quickly in the park after showing our pass. 

The plan was to fish the Big Thompson around the Fern Lake trailhead first. It was full however, so we backtracked to an open parking space down the road a bit. We both fish Tenkara, and so with rods and flies in hand we made our way to the river. The flows were good and the water was COLD at 46°F. The problem, as my friend put it, was it was a great day for fishermen. Bright and sunny with almost no clouds isn't a recipe for eager trout and it turned out the fishing was pretty tough. After a spell, I managed a small brown on a bead-headed kebari fly and we switched to size 18 nymphs in an attempt to get them down deep. The fish were only sitting in the deeper pools and reluctant to feed. My friend managed a little larger brown and a brook trout before we decided to call it on this section and move down into the true meadow section. 

We parked at the Cub Lake trailhead, which was mostly full. But it was almost entirely hikers as we only saw a couple other folks fishing. We hiked out into the meadows and got to work. My friend immediately hooked a small brook trout and figured it was game on. We figured wrong however, as the tough fishing continued. I did manage a couple more browns on the nymph, one of which was respectable at 10-11". 

But the fish of the day was one I spooked. After getting my fly caught on a submerged branch, I waded to go retrieve it and was rewarded with spooking the granddaddy of the meadow. It was a very big brown, easily 18"+ and just casually swam away in no hurry as I splashed around his pool. We tried to let the pool rest and came back later in an attempt to catch him, but to no luck. But it's seeing fish like that, and knowing they exist, that makes you want to come back.   

So after some hours of tough fishing, we called it a day and hiked back to the car to get into some dry socks and shoes and drive home. Not the productive day we would've hoped for, but this is where I tell you the scenery and the wildlife was amazing and that's great too, right? And that's true...but catching lots of fish is still better!

   By Ken Tarvin

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