After a busy work week in NYC, I was looking forward to spend some fishing time in Rocky Mountain National Park with my buddy Graham Moran of
Tenkara Grasshopper. We had initially plans to hit the West side of the park but my plane from NYC was delayed a few hours and I didn't get home until very late on Friday and had no time to do some research there. So Graham and I decided to hit Wild Basin since I know the area already fairly well.
I brought a new rod back home from NYC that I acquired from Chris Stewart, the
TenkaraBum. A soft action zoom rod, the
Daiwa Sagiri 39MC that zooms from 11.5" to 13" and weighs a whopping 2.0oz as per Chris' website. I fished this rod back in Utah before the Summit and knew I wanted one. Last week Chris got another shipment and I had one put aside for me. Although I thought that 11.5" might be a bit long in that section of the park, I had to fish it. And it worked remarkably well until we headed way further upstream where I had to get the Daiwa Soyokaze 27SR (9ft) out of my backpack.
Fishing (and catching was great) although it started a bit slow until it got a big warmer and fish became more active. As expected, most fish we caught were brookies with a few browns, a rainbow and a few greebacks in the mix. So we had a Colorado Grandslam combining our catch (I missed the rainbow and Graham missed a greenback).
The weather was a bit cool for the season, with a few showers in the morning but warming up to mid 70ies late afternoon.
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| first fish of the day - a typical brookie up there |
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| a nice surprise, a good sized brown trout |
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| Graham getting into position with tourists checking out the falls |
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| nice water on the lower section |
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| Graham sneaking up on some fish from behind a big rock |
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| further upstream - perfect for the short 9' Daiwa Soyokaze |
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| chunkie |
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| it's getting tighter |
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| nice greenback to close out the day |
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| snowshoe rabbit |
Days on the water: 23
