Needless to say, last weekend’s trip to Grand Junction for the Western Colorado Fly-Fishing Expo and the fishing that followed was great. It started with a 4 hour drive from Denver to Grand Junction. The weather was beautiful and getting over the passes was no problem. In fact, most of the drive was above 50 degrees with the windows rolled down and Justin Townes Earle blasting.

I arrived at the hotel and began my preparing for my presentation of Red Gold that evening. This was a last-minute gig, but was pleasantly surprised with about 20 people filled the room to watch the film and ask questions. Pat and Carol Oglesby gave me a warm welcome and introduced me to the crowd. After the movie, the attendees were very impressed with Felt Soul’s work and had so many questions (most of which I could luckily answer).

As my buddy Geoff from Ross Reels and I woke from a night of gorilla marketing, I found even more people pulling me aside to ask questions about the proposed pebble mine in SW Alaska. The genuine interest and concern was absolutely great!

The Western Colorado Fly-Fishing Expo is in it’s 12th year. This year focused primarily on introducing kids to the sport of angling and hosted fly-tiers from all over. It was awesome to see the turnout and just how many kids were interested in learning how to cast and tie flies. The next generation of our sport, right in front of my eyes.

While the show went great, Geoff and I decided to depart mid-afternoon and head for Glenwood Springs to prepare for a day on the Frying Pan and Roaring Fork rivers. We grabbed a small room, and then headed for a local showing of the Fly Fishing Film Tour hosted by Nick Clement of Reel Escape Films. The showing was not as large or rowdy as the Denver one, but it was great to meet Nick and other local anglers (not to mention watching some more fish-porn).

Geoff and I woke the next morning, grabbed some coffee and headed up the canyon to fish the Pan. The ‘Toilet-Bowl’, as they call it, was full of feeding bows, but they didn’t like my flies. Geoff landed a few, but it was tough going and disappointing because of all the fish we could see. Nevertheless, we headed down river, found a little spot with no anglers and just started absolutely killing the river on tiny zebra midges. Every other cast had one hooked, and we landed most. Small fish, but plenty of them!

Our last stop of the day was the Fork outside of Basalt. The flows had jumped from early morning when we passed, but we threw on some stones and went for some bigger fish. I only landed one more, but it was a nice brown holding just below a run in slow water. Geoff landed a nice whitefish in the fast water, but by that time we were beat and called it a day. Parting to opposite sides of the state, we drove off from the rivers and back to the working life that awaited.