How Close is Too Close?

How close can you be to trout and still catch them?

6/12

I think that far too many fly fishermen believe you must be able to whip out a 60 foot perfect cast to that waiting trout.

This is just not so. At least in Colorado and other Western States, many trout are caught within 12 to 25 feet of you. So make your focus on perfecting a great roll cast or water tension cast that will reach out 35 to 40 feet. Generally, this is more than adequate for all but the really large streams.

How close to trout can you be and still catch them? This depends a lot on the stream conditions. If the water is murky, you can get closer than if the water is gin clear.

Monday, June 6th, I was on Bear Creek just west of Denver. The flow was 88 CFS and water conditions murky. My trip was to test out a new St Croix Legend Elite 9 ft rod that I had finished building the previous Saturday.

Take a moment and imagine this setup. The hole I was fishing is about 40 feet long with a large 8 to 10 ft boulder directly across from me. Distance from me to the boulder is about 30 feet. The flow around the boulder is some 4 or 5 foot deep and fast. After 2 or 3 drifts along the fast water by the boulder, I hooked a nice bow and lost it at the tail of the pool.

Most of the stream is covered by a 30 foot willow tree here that makes casting difficult except with a water tension or single haul water tension cast. Fortunately, 3 feet in front of me is seam water formed by a fast flow over some rocks at the head of the big pool. This seam water is out from under the willow and a cast can be dropped into the head of the seam. The seam is only about 18 inches deep but highly areated.

I caught 3 bows about 12 to 14 inches long in this seam water directly in front of me. I was high sticking a double nymph rig with 2 feet of line off the end of the rod and a total of 9 feet of leader. The actual leader in the water was only 6 or 7 feet.

So how close can you be and still catch trout? In this case, it was about 4 to 6 feet or less for one of them.

Tight Lines and Good Fishing,

Marshall Estes , Editor
www.fly-fishing-colorado.com
www.fly-fishing-colorado.com/wordpress/  Blog
http://feeds.feedburner.com/FlyFishingColorado  RSS Feed
Add this RSS feed URL to your reader and you will get all our updates right away.

copyright 2005 by Marshall Estes and Fly Fishing Colorado

Reciprocal -- Fly Fishing Links

Fishing Articles Index