We received a trip report from Greg Krochta , one of our Colorado members, as he fished the South Platte river above Deckers. Our fellowship has fished this area many times in the past. Greg had just read George Daniel’s book on nymphing tactics and decided to give it a go. Greg is normally a streamer guy and always does well but maybe a little nymphing this time might be the ticket. As he tells us he wanted to streamer fish up stream and then nymph downstream in the short amount of time he had to fish. Greg never made it to the nymphing stage as the wind picked up and prevented him from using Daniel’s techniques. Regardless, it seems streamer fishing was the ticket. Here is his story on this day.

Re-read Geo. Daniel’s Dynamic Nymphing, and recently tied some flies, so eager to see if I learned anything! I didn’t learn a darn thing from George Daniel’s book!!!😤
Primarily ’cuz my strategy was to streamer fish the stretch I was going to, downstream first, then nymph it back up. Never got a chance to take off the streamer!😉. Got to nearly the bottom of the run, then BAM, 20” brown followed 30 minutes later by two 12” trout. Then the wind picked up to the point of no longer viable to nymph…left at 2:45p.
Caught in the softer edge water while swung below me. Got too windy.
This stretch has been good to me in the past…especially in the winter. Still ~8 miles downstream of Deckers. It’s a close-to-the-road stretch just 2 miles after hitting the S. Platte off Hwy 67. Kinda feels like a mini-Cheeseman stretch.

Admittedly, I DO owe a great debt of gratitude to all the greats who taught me how to read water and conditions…Randall, Dorsey, Daniel, Klimes, Craig…😉
I caught this Alpha on a muted sun, high 50’s-low 60’s ambient temp day, water temp initially 35 but 39 when I caught him (42 when I left), in soft water, on a swung streamer in February. I purposely focused my fishing primarily on this water type and it paid off. This wasn’t even the mandatory catch-n-release section, so he was a true, territorial Alpha. The two 12”-ers were also in soft water on the swing, but in sections below where the big guy was hunting.
Maybe I’ll post a summary on the FATC website, since I learned quite a bit.

Greg Krochta