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Dentry: Fly Fishing Show casts cure for cabin fever's frustrations

Published January 5, 2007 at midnight

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Colorado's rivers are skinny, black and crimped by jagged promenades of ice and snow. The same white flooring has clamped lakes and reservoirs shut, and more flakes are drifting down.

In other words, if you wag a fly rod for amusement, The Fly Fishing Show probably has your deserved attention.

Back for its seventh year at the Denver Merchandise Mart, the popular event runs today through Sunday, with enough fishing wizardry to lure anglers into buying an array of new and indispensable fly-fishing gizmos.

In a shared passion for fly-fishing, the faithful will congregate to try out rods, buy flies, inspect drift boats and float tubes and meet fishing heroes and old pals.

Besides serving as a lunker department store, The Fly Fishing Show offers higher education under the tutelage of guides, fly tiers and authors. Seminar topics cover how to fish Colorado's four seasons (Brad Befus) to escapes to the Amazon (Xclusive Xpeditions).

For seminars and demonstration schedules, a list of celebrities, fly tiers, exhibitors and special features, visit www.FlyFishing Show.com.

HOOKED ON BIG TROUT: You can catch trophy trout by accident if you are lucky enough to win Lotto. Or you might target them on purpose, which would be the choice of trophy-trout specialist Landon Mayer, of Colorado Springs.

One of the show's celebrity speakers, Mayer, who guides out of The Peak Fly Shop in Woodland Park, will tell how to catch the big ones in Colorado and elsewhere. His presentation includes a trailer from Landing the Trout of Your Life, a DVD he made with master fly designer John Betts, of Boulder.

Mayer's biggest Colorado trout, from the Avalanche Hole on the Taylor River, weighed 17 pounds. He says he looks for trout that are migrating to spawn or in response to a particular food supply.

"Fish will migrate at a different time in different rivers, so the timing of each location is important," he said.

Mayer will reveal more in seminars at 3:30 p.m. today and 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

SPYING ON TROUT: Show goers can peek into the underwater world of trout thanks to New Jersey angler/filmmaker Wendell "Ozzie" Ozefovich. He has labored to record trout behavior in amazing detail for a pair of DVDs, which have smitten gatherings of fly fishers.

His unique approach to spying on trout in their natural habitat reveals how hydrodynamics drive feeding, swimming and holding behavior and how light refraction affects how trout see and how we see them.

Ozefovich will narrate The Underwater World of Trout at noon today and 10 a.m. Saturday. You can view clips of his videos at www.Underwa terOz.com.

SPINNING YARN: A stream of flies from midges to saltwater streamers will spin off the vises of 30 angling alchemists at tables along the Fly Tiers Aisle. Also, a lineup of featured fly tiers will perform for the close-up lens, including Phil Camera (Montana patterns), Barry Reynolds (pike flies), A.K. Best (quill bodies and beetles) and Ed Engle (midges and tailwater flies).

FAR AND NEAR: The show's Destination Theater offers to soothe our cabin fever with reveries of eastern Russia, the Sea of Cortez, Patagonia and other dream trips.

Closer to home, experts will catch us up on the latest at the Henry's Fork, Bighorn, North Platte, Arkansas, Gunnison and San Juan rivers, for starters.

So it's off to the fly show. Or you can go ice fishing, but you know what they say. It's hard to fly cast down that little hole.

The Fly Fishing Show

• What: A three-day extravaganza for fly fishers casting for information, entertainment, gear and tackle for the coming season.

Exhibitors sell everything from flies to drift boats and guided trips to exotic destinations.

Speakers offer 30 presentations daily on how to fish and where to go in Colorado and the world. Subjects cover fly- fishing for trout, pike, bass and in saltwater to improving digital photography of your outings.

Visitors can try out new fly rods or learn two-handed Spey casting at a casting pool, or talk with expert tiers at their vises. There will be a special testing area for casting bamboo fly rods.

• When: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. today; 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday; 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sunday.

• Where: Denver Merchandise Mart Pavilion Building, east of Interstate 25, Exit 215, and north of East 58th Avenue.

• Admission: Adults, $14 for one day, $24 for two and $32 for three. Children younger than 12, $2. Parking is free.

• Information: Go to for lecture and demonstration schedules, biographies of fishing celebrities, a list of fly tiers and more.