A big part of my plan for this summer is to spend more time fishing small streams with the goal of simplifying my fly fishing. It’s easy to have all kinds of expectations when you set this kind of goal. Among them is thinking you’ll find less crowded conditions on small streams, but that’s not always the case, especially if you can drive straight to the stream, get out of your truck, gear up and walk a few yards to the water.

That’s what I had in mind when I headed to a section of the Middle Fork of the South Platte River located off Colo. 9 south of Fairplay in the Tomahawk State Wildlife Area.

My intent was to get out of the house (that’s always my intent!) and spend the morning covering the water with a hopper/dropper rig which is a mainstay for small stream fly fishers. Like anything else, you can complicate fishing a hopper/dropper as much as you want, but that’s not the point. The hopper/dropper is a free-wheeling technique that is best employed when you’re on the move and covering the water in search of trout.

Needless to say, it doesn’t hurt if you’re far enough into the summer for there to be some grasshoppers along the river bank, but you can still catch trout on the dropper if the hopper doesn’t attract the trout’s attention. I try to keep my dropper imitations basic preferring a beadhead Prince nymph, beadhead Gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear nymph or Flash Midge. The key is to suspend the dropper from your hopper so it drifts off the stream bottom. That means you don’t want the bead so heavy that it pulls your hopper under the water’s surface and gets the rig hung up on the stream bed.

As much as anything the hopper/dropper is just a fun way to fish. You’re constantly moving upstream making sure to cast against the grassy banks and to any pockets, riffles or flats that might hold a trout.

My anticipation of a mellow day on the river was disrupted when I saw the parking lot was full. People were milling around in waders waving around fly rods. It didn’t take me long to realize it was a dreaded “group trip.”

Apparently, a fly fishing guide service had contracted to take a group of people to the river for a few hours of fishing and a shore lunch. When I was in the guide business I’d done plenty of group trips. The groups invariably had a good time and some of them caught fish.

From a solitary fly anglers’ point of view, coming upon a big group of mostly beginning fly fishers can be disruptive, but fortunately I knew a little side channel that took off from the main stem of the Middle Fork that I figured the guides wouldn’t venture into with their clients and headed for it. On the way, I made a few casts here and there on the main stem where no one from the group was fishing.

As I expected, I had the side channel to myself. Over the years, I’ve considered the Middle Fork to be a brown trout fishery, but interestingly the side channel has held a good number of rainbow trout with only an occasional larger brown trout. Since the rainbows tend to be similar in size, I take them to be stocked fish, although I’ve never gone as far as never checking to see if Colorado Parks and Wildlife stocks the river. I also see small, young of the year brown trout that I assume to be wild fish.

Every time I fish the side channel, I like to fantasize that a large brown trout has chased some stockers into the channel and I’ll catch it. It’s not a total fantasy, either. Later in the season I streamer fish the Middle Fork for brown trout that come up out of Spinney Reservoir when the water is high and off color from runoff.

But I digress. I can’t say I caught any monster brown trout in the side channel. In fact, it was more the other way around. I caught some of the smallest trout I’ve ever caught on a dropper fly and some standard size stockers.

I’m not complaining, either. The stockers give a pretty good tug when they take the fly and there will be plenty of time to catch larger fish this summer. It beat laying around the house eating potato chips! It always does.

See you on the river.