T.V. Show Guide Trip with Brent Cannon’s Fly Fishing West 6/26A.M.

This morning was not an ordinary guided fly fishing trip. I had a camera crew from California, the producer from Colorado, and a host Brent Cannon along for a fly fishing trip to a very scenic place with good numbers of fish. I had a lot of places in mind that met the criteria, but nothing quite as unique as the 30-50 foot waterfalls of the Big Thompson River at Waterdale Ranch. I have to say there was some pressure in choosing the correct spot with a camera crew. You want to get it right the first time, we had 4 hours total to drive 30 minutes away, get geared up, and make magic happen.

Everyone was a pleasure to work with and it was the great conversation that made the whole experience very entertaining. I felt very comfortable on camera, and even got to plug my side business www.flyselector.com We were able to put some insects on camera and choose some flies for the day that were going to give us the confidence we needed to catch fish.

The fishing wasn’t exactly how I planned it, and I’m not one to blame anyone beside the guide; we made it work. I was planning on catching one after another wild brown trout from the far seam off the waterfall, but they just weren’t there for us like they were the other day. We had to change it up a little and fish some deeper water with bigger flies. I started off in 3 feet of water and by the end of the morning we were fishing 8 feet from the indicator. Sure enough, the bigger fish were in. The big fish must have scared off some of the smaller fish that I was counting on for a lot of camera opportunities. Brent had two really nice fish for the day. We got one really nice holdover stocked rainbow from recorded from hookset to in the net…that’ll make some great footage. The other big fish was a wild brown, likely the biggest in the river. He ran us all the way down stream and we went chasing after it. Brent did a great job keeping it on the line, and we managed to get it in the shallow water after many different runs; But the fish wasn’t quite beaten yet, a big head shake up in the air and he came unbuttoned right before I could get a net on the fish. We had the fish on a size 20 sow bug with 5X, and had it 90% beat, if we would have lasted one more minute we could have landed it. But, everyone said that makes great T.V…so, we’ll call it a win, and I’ll hope to see that fish again in the future. We managed to get some filler fish in the 10-12 inch range and called it a wrap.

Overall a great experience. I wish the Fly Fishing West great success as they continue to grain footage for there upcoming seasons.