The Quest

I grew up on the north eastern plains of Colorado. Not the western slope. Not Estes Park, Not Rocky Moutain National Forrest. THE EASTERN PLAINS! That means that I live in a place that is technically considered high dessert. And that meant at least for me growing up out here that my dreams of fly fishing grand rivers and catching big colorful trout on tiny hand tied dry flys would be mostly just that. DREAMS! But I manged somehow as a teen to teach myself the basics of fly fishing using an old rod and reel I found in my grandfather's garage. I would stand in the drive way in front of our house and practice roll casts, overhand casts, and would spend countless hours practicing tying 10lb mono fishing line to the end of my very worn out fly line ( I didn't have any real leader). And even though I didn't have bubbling crystal clear trout streams flowing through my back yard, I did some how manage to learn to fly fish. In high school I was able to make it up to the moutains a few times a year with friends and fish on the Blue River outside Silverthorn. Then, during my time in the service, I finally got to do some serious fly fishing in the Cascades of Central Washington and even the Black Horn River near Missoula, MT. Well now I am back in eastern Colorado, high dessert, no trout streams flowing in my backyard! So I thought.  Wray, Colorado is a tiny town that is literaly split in two by the north fork of the Republican River.  That is its name, but to actually call it a river is a huge overstatement. Its quite simply a very very small stream. At its deepest darkest pools, it may be 6 feet deep. And in the really shallow spots, it's not over 6 inches. It flows through pastures, past corn, and wheat fields east through Wray over the Colorado-Nebraska state line. From there it meets the Arickaree River which flows past the Beecher Island battleground and the south fork of the Republican river that once filled the great Bonny State reservoir. The tiny stream grows into a small river, and eventually that water dumps into the mississippi river and makes it all the way to the gulf of mexico. But here in eastern colorado its still just a stream. And all my life I never paid much attention to that stream. Until two years ago when I started hunting ducks on that stream. Now I had always seen kids fishing in the water that flows here through town. And they even caught some fish. Sunfish, bluegill, creek chubs. But two years ago somewhere around the end of December, I was standing in that stream throwing out mallard decoys, when the water to my left suddenly rippled the way only a decent sized fish has the ablility to make it do. Now I never saw that fish, but I know it was there. Sometime after that I was talking to a friend at work who swears that he used to fly fish that very section of creek for brown trout. WHAT? Brown trout? Yep he said" Wild Brown Trout". After that conversation I began hearing other stories, from good sources, of people catching wild brownies in our little stream. One very reliable story was of a man catching a 24 inch brownie on his property. But they were all just stories. I never saw a picture, or a live fish to prove anything. That was until this last year. Again while standing in the stream while placing plastic duck decoys out the water around me started moving. Only this time it wasn't some phantom fish. It was real live fish. Several of them swam out from the weedy banks and quite literally between my feet. "Look at the trout" my good friend and hunting partner Justin yelled from the high bank above me. They were there, and then they were gone. But we had seen them. Small, maybe 8 to 10 inchs in length. But they were trout. Brown trout, here in eastern Colorado. So now my quest. As part of my project this year, I have laid out a plan to pursue these little aquatic creatures. My plan is to start at the head of the stream which as chance would have it is only about 10 miles southeast of town, and to fly fish it all the way from its head waters to the state line. It's going to take me most of the year because of that whole work thing, but I plan to be done by September. I will most likely have to skip some sections of the river due to land owners not allowing any fishing on their property, but for the most part I hope to be able to cover the majority of the river (about 20 miles) between now and then. So that's that. My quest. I want to do this before the drought that has plauged our country and over irragation drains dry the small spring that forms our steam. Wish me luck. Hopefully there will be some great stories and pictures to come.