If you’re looking for some solitude and brook trout, Woody Creek south of Aspen, Colorado provides some challenging solo fly fishing.  While a friend once told me how relaxing this river was to fish and how surprisingly large the brown trout were in this river, I have to now rescind that story as I can only say the opposite.  First off, it appears to be nearly all full of mid to small sized brook trout.  Second, access is beyond difficult, though it is possible. In nearly every access point I could find, it was a steep drop into the creek bed full of wooded terrain.  Earning its name, Woody Creek is a small creek with dense foliage around.  If you are not afraid of bushwacking or chasing brook trout, this can yield some solitude and gorgeous fish.  While it was a tough river to access, it was a lot of fun to fish and it was a fun challenge to catch a brook trout instead of a bush.  I found small streamers and dry flies were the best two options to fish here.  If you’re fishing down river, small streamers under the overbrush and undercut banks pulled out a few fish.  If fishing up river, a dry fly is just too fun to pass up.  It doesn’t have to be large flies, but small or medium size dries that float well are my go to flies for rivers like this where fly selection is less important than visibility of the fly and maintenance of the fly.

If you made it up here to fish for the day, carve out some time to fish the roaring fork and the frying pan or even the crystal.  All are great spots to explore and fish and while woody creek is a challenging small stream, there’s plenty of bonus places to fish in the wonderful Roaring Fork Valley.