Cast a grasshopper and there’s no end to the rainbows
Posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — Pat Stefanek was giddy, and he wasn’t even holding a rod. The fishing guide ran through the tall grass that ringed the meandering stream, swinging his landing net like a tennis racket, flushing a swarm of well-fed grasshoppers.
Some of the clumsily flying insects splashed down in the stream at Marabou Ranch. As the hoppers drifted downstream, brilliantly colored trout rose from their lairs beneath undercut banks, rocks and roots. They ate the grasshoppers, revealing their whereabouts in the process.
Stefanek lined up my wife on a particularly big rainbow. Emilie is a fly-fishing novice, but she’d spent the previous day under our guide’s watchful eye, and her casting skills had made a quantum leap. Thanks to the 20 or so big trout she’d already caught from the Elk River, her fish-fighting technique had progressed even further.
Emilie’s first cast landed just a little to the left of the big trout’s hide-out, drifting out of the strike zone. A trout in moving water is like a batter in baseball. The fish has a strike zone that’s zealously guarded. Like an overanxious batter, a hungry trout will sometimes fall for an outside pitch, but the fish mostly waits patiently until the current delivers a juicy snack right down the middle of the proverbial plate.
“Cast a little more to the right this time,” coached Stefanek. And, when Emilie complied, “That’s perfect. This hopper will drift right over the fish.” There was a silver and scarlet flash in the water, and Emilie’s fly rod was bowed by an angry fish that pushed very near the 20-inch mark. I knew Emilie was in for a lengthy battle so I left her in Stefanek’s capable hands and walked to the next likely spot. I didn’t even cast — just dropped the lure straight below me and peeled off a little line to allow a natural drift. The fly didn’t move 5 feet before a trout tried to eat it.
The manmade stream was a perfect way to end two days of the best trout fishing I’ve experienced anywhere south of Alaska. In some ways it was better than Alaska because Alaskan trout are seldom caught on surface flies. Of the 30 fish I landed in two days, more than 20 rose to a big hopper.
Marabou Ranch, 1, 717 acres, is the upscale Colorado equivalent of the shared fishing communities that are springing up in North Texas. Examples are Safari Waters near Athens and 7 R Ranch west of Fort Worth. The forerunners were famous fishing clubs like Coon Creek Club or Rainbow Club, where memberships are so coveted that they are passed down through generations.
Essentially, members buy into the property, which is managed for first-class fishing and, in some cases, hunting.
“This concept is really gaining popularity in Colorado,” said Stefanek, one of Marabou’s master guides and the ranch’s river keeper, another term for fisheries manager. The Michigan native has degrees in fisheries and wildlife science and spent $ 1 million improving the trout habitat in more than two miles of the Elk River and in developing 10 acres of ponds connected by the meadow meander.
Stefanek said fishing in the Elk River above or below Marabou or in any of the notable streams around Steamboat Springs can be excellent, but the fish are generally more difficult to catch because of heavy fishing pressure.
When retired NFL quarterback Bubby Brister asked Marabou sales manager John Hillenbrand if they ever kept trout to eat, Hillenbrand’s response was classic of the catch-and-release mentality.
“Oh, heavens no,” Hillenbrand said. “Eating one of these trout would be like eating your tennis partner.”
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