Our photographer/reporter missed the third session of Stream Explorers, so there are no notes or photos from the fly tying. The students learned how to tie flies, and tied a number of them in preparation for today’s session.

Today we had a chance to fish at the Kelly ponds near Buena Vista. They are private ponds, stocked with fish, and it is a privilege to be able to fish there. Hardly any pressure on the fish, good habitat, it was the perfect place to take our students — likelyhood of success was much higher.

Huge thank you’s to the Kelly family and the Hi Rocky store for letting us fish there!

The students started by assembling their fly rods, obtained by GARNA through an outdoors grant. Most already knew how to tie flies on, as that was covered in the previous session, and soon everyone was fishing! The weather did not cooperate very well — a snow storm was coming from the north, and twice overtook us. We saw some hail, lots of wind, not the best conditions for learning how to fly cast. But the students persevered, they had the inside of the warm bus to take a break in. Nice fish were caught, including one trophy!