Michael Gracie

Marshall says:

The browns and the fall spawing rainbows are staging in the inlet for their run up the middle fork of the South Platte. In a week or so areas like Badger Basin and Tomahawk will be hot with big browns spawning.

Best you leave them be so we can have tons of wee little baby brown trout next year.

I’ll of course be observing this precious wildlife on a new hook for a new book.

Editor’s note: Please don’t step on those inviting beds of fine gravel. It’s quite easy to fish from shore in most of these places - if you can’t cast a bugger across a 25 foot wide stretch of water without stepping on our fine finned friends’ beds, I’ll be glad to give you a quick casting lesson. You wouldn’t want someone stepping all over you while you’re getting busy, now would you?

Filled up the truck and drove to South Park. Stripped streamers all morning while everyone else nymphed. And everyone got into fish but me, unless you consider a sucker on a brown woolie bugger a fish (which I don’t).

We had a fine picnic lunch and then headed back out. Nary an hour had passed when the skies grew dark - then I saw lightning and called everyone back to the vehicle for a little sit and wait. I was minutes from taking a snooze when I looked in the side mirror and saw a funnel cloud forming behind us. Needless to say we immediately hauled butt out of there.

After putting a extra mile or so between us and the storm, I beckoned for the camera from my vest, and caught these:

We went up to the mercantile store in Hartsel and chatted with the nice lady at the counter. She was working the radio when we heard the call for emergency assistance. At least a dozen sets of flashing lights roared down SR 24 over the next fifteen minutes. We waited a bit to see if there was any need for volunteer assistance (which didn’t happen), and then we high-tailed it home through some more nasty weather.

Now safe and sound, and I’ve since heard on the news that there were a few tumbled vehicles around Eleven Mile Reservoir but (very thankfully) no serious injuries. And that news was the best part of the day.

SIDE NOTE: Ok, so I got outfished and we had plenty of laughs about it too. And, tornado or no tornado, the worst day on the river is still better than the best day sipping lattes in some cafe in the city. Nonetheless, hearing that nobody was badly hurt was welcome relief.