The Fryingpan River was on fire during our Spring Break trip. With the Midge hatch starting around 10 am and lasting until around 2, many trout were picking them off the surface. We had the most success fishing to the trout that were taking emergers 6-12 inches under the surface. The first night we caught many small browns while fishing emergers under indicators in the bend pool. The next morning we ditched the indicators and fished barr emergers trailed with black biot emergers. This proved to be a huge success. We caught tons of fish, mostly browns 14- 20 inches. Late in the morning I spotted two large rainbows, a huge female with a good sized male laying next to it. They were feeding just a couple feet from shore about 20 feet down stream from me. I began casting to the two fish and within a couple of casts I hooked the male, only to have it rip the trailing emerger from my line with the turn of its head. This happened twice before the male swam back into the deeper part of the pool. Determined to catch the female I proceded to go through my fly box trying to find a fly it would take. I finally got it hooked on an emerger. I didn’t realize how large the fish was until it charged upstream at me and leap completely out of the water. It was the largest trout I had even seen, let alone hooked. This trout was pushing 12-13 pounds and didn’t like being hooked at all. I began shaking after realizing how large the fish was. It continued running up the river and I managed to turn it and bring it back down. The fish was doing everything possible to break my line, dragging its nose on the bottom and trying to get the line wrapped around the boulders in the river. After a long run down the river the fish managed to wrap my line around a rock and break me off. I stood there in disbelief of what had just happened. For the rest of the day my brother continued letting me know just how big that fish was. We fished the rest of the evening catching many large fish, getting into some nice 20-22 inch Rainbows and lot of browns of the same size.

The next day I returned determined to hook another one of those monster rainbows. We caught around ten fish each when I spotted the big male again. I positioned myself upstream from the fish and spent the next couple of hours trying to temp it to bite. It was with the first cast with the smallest fly in my box, a size 26 black RSII, that I finally got the fish to strike. It exploded towards me, tail-dancing across the water. It was large, close to ten pounds. I pulled my camera out of my vest and threw it on shore. If going swimming would help me get this fish in, I was all for it. We managed to chase the fish up into the shallow water, hoping it would be easier to net. We thought we had it when it managed to slip right between my brother and I. I ran back downstream, tripping over boulders and totally soaking myself. I had to stay on top of it or it would get wrapped around a rock. After I tripped on a rock and fell into the water, the fish got wrapped around a rock. I got downstream and found that the pull on my line was gone and the fish had again broken me off on a rock. After losing the larger Rainbow the day before I wasn’t too upset and counted it as an accomplishment just getting the fish to take a fly after spending so much time fishing to it. We fished the rest of the day and I managed to hook the 12 pounder again. I had two other people in the river trying to get it netted, but this time it broke me off in some sticks. We did manage to land a 5 pound brown and a couple of 3-4 pound rainbows. Overall we caught around 40 fish a day, mostly browns and a few small brooks. They were all 14-22 inches, most of them on the larger side. Temperatures ranged from 20’s in the morning to 50’s in the afternoon after the sun hit the river. The rainbows tended to hold in the rifles while the browns were below the rifles in the pools. The best flies were the barr emergers and biot emergers, but miracle nymphs, black beauties, pheasant tails and RSII’s also worked well.