One of the most popular fisheries in the winter in our region is with fly fishers. While all the streams are either closed or choked with ice, Rocky Ford Creek near Ephrata is open for business. The creek is stream-fed and the water temperature doesn’t very much year-round. The stream flows ice-free throughout the winter months. When outside temperatures are above freezing, you will find a good number of anglers lining this stream casting for rainbow trout. The fact that the stream is ice-free is just one reason anglers flock here. The other is that the rainbow that inhabit Rocky Ford Creek are huge. The stream is supplemented with plants of rainbow that may be 12 inches, but there are real whoppers in Rocky Ford Creek. I have caught rainbow of 27 inches, and my buddy Rollie Schmitten caught one even bigger than that. There is no wading allowed in Rocky Ford, but there are many casting platforms of cleared reeds or rock along the banks. Some of the better spots are hard to reach or make casting difficult. If you are a fly fisher and want to get a shot at really big fish over the winter, Rocky Ford is the place to go.