The WTH home town fly shop of choice is the Laughing Grizzly Flyshop  located – 10675 Ute Highway   Longmont, CO 80504.  Everyone who works at the Griz is helpful knowledgeable and willing to help out everyone from the Pro to the Newcomer.  They say one of the marks of a truly great fly shop is it’s contributions to the community and the sport of fly fishing in general.   This is certainly true of the Griz.  I would add it helps if they also have a lot of experience with the local waters and what works, and what does not.   They are a full service fly shop, offering everything from the requisite flies to personal guided tours.

Probably one of the things that stands out the most is these guys love to fish and it shows.  When they tell you about something that works on the Blue River or the Colorado it is because they were just there, even though those waters are quite far from their home base of Longmont, Colorado.  Dick and Mike once told me they drove 8 hours to fish 2 hours and then drive home.  In our book that is enough dedication to be an honorary Trout Hound !  So you may already know these guys because they are fishing next to you on your local river.

If you get a chance we highly recommend dropping by the Laughing Grizzly. You won’t come away empty handed, and if you ask nice they may show you some special special flies for fishing in the Rocky Mountain National Park which work.

The Viking

We are starting a new section on our favorite fly fishing shops and guides. If you have a favorite please comment and let us know.

So you find yourself in a new area.  You have your favorite patterns, but nothing seems to work.  The fish are hard to find or they are rising everywhere and not hitting your fly.  What can you do?  Well, one thing you can do is visit the local fly shop and ask the locals what is the best pattern, where are the fish biting, what is the flow, etc.  Sometimes a  5 minute conversation can save you hours of frustration on the water.  But where are the good fly shops?

We are compiling a list of the shops we visit and find particularly helpful in the regions we fish.  In this post we are dealing with fly shops in Winter Park Colorado.

Winter Park Colorado

We have visited two fly shops in Winter Park Mo’Henry’s  and Grand County Fly Fishing.  Both have a lot to offer the visiting fly fisherman. On our last trip we particularly enjoyed the advice we got from Grand County Fly Fishing ,  601 Zerex Street, Fraser, Colorado. They are directly across from the Fraser fishing ponds and next to the ALCO shopping center - http://www.grandflyfishing.com/.    Our advisor was Brandon Omahen who answered our questions and helped us plan out our trip.  Turns out Brandon is also a guide and definitely very well versed in the fly fishing situation in Grand County (Winter Park, Fraser, etc.)  We ended up using some of the flies he suggested and adding some of our favorites to different nymphing rigs.  The result ?  Well seeing is believing here are a few of the fish we caught-

Tbone shows off a 20+ brown.

Tbone caught this nice brown on a nymph rig.

Viking shows off his Rainbow.