Gorge Fly Shop Blog: Rio Chama gives up her Gold

November 21, 2014

My Trout Spey Chronicles was to officially kick off at the start of the new year. But why wait! With fall fishing being some of the best I've seen, I have an overwhelming desire to tell you about it. Why wait until new years when it's happening now!

Wrestling Gold

So where the hell is this Rio Chama?

"The Chama" as called by the locals is a Rio Grande Tributary that originates from the southern side of the San Juan Mountain range located in southern Colorado and joins the Rio Grande in New Mexico near the town of Espanola. It's considered one of the larger rivers in the state but still pretty small water especially in winter flows.

While not a bucket list fishery by any means if you're in the area during the fall/winter season you might just get lucky and find gold. Big Browns hide in the murky shadows of this small river and its a perfect place to swing streamers with a two hand rod.

Boron III TH-MS 4110-4

For this fishery I chose the Winston Boron III TH-MS 4110...Ok in English that is Winston's new 11 foot 4 weight Microspey. My reel choice was a Tibor Light Back Country CL Wide and my line was the Rio Scandi Short Versi-Tip in 320 Grain.

I experimented with a variety of flies that day but the proven choice would be a Solitudes' Sculpzilla in olive/black color and #8 in size.

This New Rod from Winston continues to impress me

I have really come to love how light and balanced it feels in hand. Never cumbersome. I've had enough time with it in my hands to really develop a working relationship with it. It's easy to understand and quite capable. I've yet to find any limitations to its abilities for the fishing it was designed for.

Tibor Back Country in Crimson Red

I originally purchased the Tibor Back Country for my Sage Bass Rod. With trout season in place I couldn't resist putting this reel to the test. Little did I know what a perfect fit it would be to the Winston MicroSpey. Balanced and with a smooth drag that can protect any tippet has made this reel a top choice in my arsenal. Maybe my fish engraving should have been a trout instead of the bass. Maybe I see another Tibor Back Country in my future. I'm crazy about the classic look of a solid back. The reel is surprisingly light for a solid back design but just right to balance this 11 foot stick. FYI...This reel scale weighted at 6.0 oz empty.

Small Water

I think I mentioned earlier, the Rio Chama River is small water especially for a two hand rod. That brings up a good topic of discussion. Are these rods too big for many small trout waters? The Rio Chama forces you to be versitile in the way of casting. If you're seeking long runs of wide moving water to quarter downstream cast and swing flies you might be disappointed with this river. While I did get to fish some water like this it didn't produce on this day. Instead I had to seek out the pocket water, foam lines, tail outs and undercuts.

He couldn't resist Sculpzilla doing the swing!

The real beauty of these small two hand rods is that if you think of it as a fly rod it will perform as a fly rod. Follow me here for a minute. First of all the MicroSpey gives the angler all the benefits of a two hand rod. Easy to cast good distances with sinking tips and larger than normal flies. Trust me these rods put the fun in two hand fishing. But they don't stop there! They can easily cast overhand and roll casts are amazing. On this day I had to pull off all these casts to find success. After this day I started to really think about my two hand rod in a different way. No longer is it that other type of fishing. It is my all fishing rod. It does what I need it to do, when I need to do it and does it better.

Line details

So Versatile

While I just claimed that this is my "all fishing rod" I need to give line detail a quick breakdown. For sure this topic is going to be a huge subject for the upcoming year but before I kill this article with line information overload let me point out that your line choices will fine tune what this rod does great. On this day I fished with the Rio Scandi Short Versitip. I have fished this line for over a year on various rods and all kinds of situations. It has become my standard (at least for now) "go to" line for the plain and simple reason that it is versatile. Being a Scandi taper it throws overhead casts quite well while this same taper is an awesome roll caster. Its also performs tight looped two hand casts to perfection. The versitips gives me choices for fishing depth. Of course it has limitations and those can include fly size and sink tip size. No one line will ever do everything! But that's one of the beauties of these rods. With a simple line change you can tune the rod to do different tactics. Like I said earlier we'll get more into lines at a later date. Even if I gave you all the line details I have now they'll all be out of date in another couple months anyway...Hint Hint! Some new lines are coming.