Breckenridge, Day 3

Fishing is so fun!

Dad had planned a guided trip to a little stretch of the middle fork of the South Platte River yesterday.  It's private water and a fishing shop in Breck called The Mountain Angler has exclusive rights to fish it, but they're very careful with it and don't fish it every day so the fish don't get too much pressure.

We started fishing probably around 8:30, and were immediately onto the brown trout, which were everywhere.  After that came the rainbows.  Then T scored a brook trout and I landed a cutthroat, which put us both on track for a grand slam - I needed a brookie and T needed a cutthroat.

M, our guide, was fishing with me since T probably fishes enough to be a guide himself.  He had been on this water last week and found a spot right near the edge of the property where at least two brook trout were living, so off we went.  It was really a group effort: T stood on the bank spotting fish, M kept my line untangled, and I caught brown trout.  And brown trout.  And more brown trout.  Seriously, enough with the brownies.  And then a brook trout!  Grand slam!

At that point we broke for lunch.  M shagged ahead to get it ready. T and I fished our way back down, and arrived to find grilled pheasant stuffed with cream cheese and jalapenos.  Not bad for a river lunch!

The afternoon was a little slower in terms of catching fish every time you put a fly on the water, which is to say, I think I caught four.  Two were teeny little browns, one was a pretty decent brown, and one....  Oh baby.  We were all on a little pool in the river, I was fishing the fast water up above and T was fishing the slow water at the base of it.  We fished and fished, and even using the teeny #20 zebra midge, caught zilch.  Then, at the same time, we were both on.  Dad had a brown

I never saw this fish.  It wasn't in a lot of water, but it was in the shadow of a rock, and it was big.  And it took a long time for him to tire out.  He ran a little bit down river, but luckily there was nothing there he could get hung up on; it was just a big flat pool.  So I reeled him back in, then he saw us and ran again.  Then I reeled him back in.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  When M finally netted him, it turned out he was a steelhead.  And he was big, probably 20 inches long, which I believe makes him (or her) the biggest fish I have ever caught.  What's better than a grand slam?

So, steelhead (I learned yesterday) are the same species as rainbow trout, except that they swim out to the sea, where they eat loads of food and get huge.  Then, just like their more famous running cousins the salmon, they swim back upriver to spawn.  So my question is this: different size, different habitat, different eating habits, different life cycle - at what point to they become a different species?

Anywho, you'll probably notice there are no pictures of these fish.  That's because none of us even had a cell phone.  But I have witnesses.

When fishing was over, we hit the road for Denver, only to get stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for six miles because a giant sinkhole had opened up in one of the lanes of the interstate.  Oops.

We arrived much later than expected, but managed to make it to dinner at North in Cherry Creek.  We ordered calamari as an app, and it came basically as a calamari salad on a bed of arugula, which was unexpected but delicious.  My dinner was a spicy chicken sausage pizza with asparagus and peppers, which was a little less spicy than I expected (it didn't quite stand up to the wine), but was otherwise good.  Pretty much anything with asparagus is good.  We stopped at a design-your-own fro yo concoction on the way home whose name I don't know, but my mango fro yo with peaches was a prefect, refreshing end to a great day of fishing!