8/1: EAGLE RIVER FROM EAGLE TO AVON: This is a big wedding weekend as a local pair of friends are getting hitched at a fancy bash tomorrow. My role was to take whoever was coming in from out of town and wanted to fish - out to fish. So I did. It was a party of one. He was here last fall and we did the same thing then and he had some success that time too.
The Eagle is always very tough to wade, given brown slime covered softball sized rocks everywhere, so even with his cleated felt soles, my guest had problems last fall, and again today, and that really effected his strike rate.
The fishing was tough. Down in the public water near Eagle, I landed one 16" bow & lost one a couple of inches longer, but that was about the extent of it.
We stopped several more places and the results were generally abysmal. Finally found a place where I could get across the river (it's still tough wading and way above normal) and then the connections really picked up. Probably hooked and/or landed 15-20 fish evenly split between rainbows & browns in a size range of 8-16 inches.
The best fun of the day was hooking & landing a double of browns - one of 8" and the other roughly 13. Thank heavens one was small enough for the other to haul it around without breaking off the tippet.
Hatches occurred mostly in the late morning and consisted of midges, caddis of all sizes, red quills, and sallies. Other fisher people reported success on nymphs, but our best luck was with the ever popular elk hairs.
8/2: EAGLE RIVER WOLCOTT AREA: A late start found us scrambling for a rock to fish on. The river was loaded with anglers, thanks I suspect in part to the article in the (damned) Denver Post this week touting the Eagle as the place to be.
Sorry, but we have enough fishing pressure already without more promotion. Anyway my partner & I finally found a fishermanless stretch just below Wolcott and went across the river. (See Commandment # 1). Dropping off the bank we immediately had hook-ups from a couple of very nice bows.
For the next three hours we worked our way up through this stretch and had numerous strikes, probably landing over a dozen fish.
All were large, healthy trout (for this river) in the 14"-16" range. Again the best success was on the double elk hair rig, although today the use of a diving caddis pattern with peacock herl body also proved productive.
After a nice picnic lunch we ventured into the brown trout water (still a bit too high to wade easily) and managed to hook and snap off a bunch of good-sized browns. But to be honest this water will be much more productive when we can access the pockets in the middle of the river. The break-offs occur simply because the fish get out in the current and there's no way to chase them downstream. Everything considered it was a decent day, but not a great one.
8/4: GABIONS AND GREASED PIGS: A wonderful breakfast of pecan waffles, pure maple syrup, and Canadian bacon called for a digestive hike to reduce the caloric suffering. So we drove to the Gore Creek Campground & hiked about a mile up the old highway to a spot, where during freeway construction, a series of gabions were built across Black Gore Creek to mitigate erosion of the stream bed.
Setting up our pack rods we fished the small pools above these man-made obstructions and laid into myriads of tiny brookies. An hour's worth of plunking small caddises produced lots of strikes and a number of fish brought to hand. Let us be direct and describe these fish as verrrrry small. The best of the batch was a clean nine incher by my partner that trout claimed fish-of-the-morning.
Around noon we had to head to Eagle for a date at the rodeo with partner's family at the local county fair and we elected to take our rods into the fair grounds (which abut the Eagle River) and fish while waiting to meet the relations. So we went onto the grounds and found the spot where my partner hypothesised that a greased pig of a previous year's fair had escaped the clutches of its attackers and apparently chose suicide by leaping into the Eagle River, rather than be subjected to more indignities.
The stream looked good. But it was not. Or we were not. In any case only one fish came to net in a half hour of casting - though it was a sparkling 16 inch rainbow. That was the extent of the catch.
Leaving my friend at the fair I headed back to Vail along the Eagle & as it was a Sunday, once again could barely find a place to park the car, much less wet a line. Finally finding one lousy looking stretch with no one on it at the time, I clumped down to some ugly water and cast ineffectively for a half hour. Two strikes - one fish - but again it was a good one that finally yielded after it had got into my backing and measured out on the marks on my rod at close to 18 inches.
8/5: A SERENDIPITOUS EXPERIENCE: Last evening after that marginal day of fishing I got on the bench and tied up some #14-#18 serendipities. Never had used that fly before & wanted to give it a chance to compete with the old favorites. So when the computer keyboard locked up my brain around 3:30 this afternoon, I shut the system down and headed to the closest point of the Eagle to try these new guys.
Leaving an 18" gap between the ever present elk hair hybrid and the "S" fly on my leader, I dropped down to the river above its confluence with Gore Creek. Casting to small pockets yielded fish after fish - all browns at first - and all came to the elk hair. Happily I was able to give slack and allow 9 out of 10 of them to exit without my having to handle them.
Finally there came a strike to the "S" fly and then another and another. These fish took it firmly even when it trailed beneath the surface film and I could rarely get them to release it without having to do the job manually. (One small rainbow was landed in this stretch - a nice occurrence)
Shortly I gave up fishing. An hour and a quarter yielded probably 50 strikes and half that many fish landed & released. None were heavily bodied, but one did leave me standing with the tippet in its mouth and some were in the 12-13 inch range. I worked only one quarter of the water I had intended, giving up simply because I didn't want to land any more fish. What a nice change from yesterday. Tomorrow is a trip to Aspen, so it will be a trip with some casts using the same fly combination on the Roaring Fork.
8/6: OK - LET'S CALL A SPADE A SPADE: I fished like $%#!* today. That's the only way I can describe my skill pool on this expedition. And boy what a shame. After spending several hours in the Eagle and Pitkin County Clerk offices inputting data, I was really ready for some high level fish attachment time.
So where to do the duty on the Fork? After a little thought I dropped off Highway 82 at Sutank and opted to walk the far bank all the way down to the confluence with the Crystal. Never had done that before. There should have been a hint at things to come when I fell in the stream three times while walking down. But I finally got all the way to the mouth of the Crystal and started fishing my way back up hill. It looked great! There should have been another message click in when my first two fish took the elk hair and/or the "S" fly sunk instead of towards the surface.
But no, I continued to fish the surface. A downstream wind added to my woes, and it was a bitch of a time trying to punch the line into the wind. I rarely knew where the floater fly was.
The gist of the story is that I probably landed & released a dozen modest rainbows, browns, and whitefish, but managed to miss at least 20-25 strikes, and at the end of the wade, I missed a good 15 in a row. I was smoked and knew this day should have gone differently, but stubbornness won out over reason, as it probably will a couple of more times this season.
Lots of not very subtle messages here for me, but I managed to ignore them all. Hopefully that won't be the case when my brother, Rick, shows up on Thursday for four intense days of action on the local rivers.
8/7: WITH THE RAINDROPS PELTING ME and gusty winds preventing any kind of delicate presentation, I scrambled out of Gore Creek & headed home for dinner. At least it wasn't a repeat of yesterday.
An hour and a half of wading & casting yielded roughly a dozen fish brought to hand and that many more strikes missed. Rainbows, cutbows, and one lone brown made up the crew. With the largest around 13", there was not much size to the catch, but at least I didn't screw things up today.
Most connections were to the ever popular elk hair hybrid, but a new #18 trailing "S" fly did some damage as well. The latter is tied with a brown floss body, ribbed with copper, and uses the standard trimmed deer hair head.
Tomorrow should be fun as I'll pick up my brother at DIA and then we'll get to fish Clear Creek, the Blue, and Ten Mile Creek on our way back to Vail.
8/8: BROTHER SHOWED UP AT D.I.A. AND after missing each other for 40 minutes, we finally connected and raced up I-70. Stopping at Idaho Springs, he picked up a seven day license and five minutes later we were plucking brown trout from pockets along Clear Creek. An auspicious beginning to the weekend (hopefully).
Moving upstream we passed through a massive thunderstorm which cost us chances of fishing several likely spots, but we finally got back on Clear Creek again above Silver Plume. A caddis hatch resulted in lots of hook ups and landings of lovely little cuts. In an effort to reach the Blue before 5:00 we again raced down I-70 & exited at Silverthorne.
A short trip to my favorite pull off revealed that the river is fishable, but still a bit high for my taste. Locals over in that area probably prefer this level, but I still think it's a hundred c.f.s. higher than the best fishing level. We couldn't work some prime water, but both managed to connect on several smaller browns and a rainbow or two.
Grabbing a burger we continued up I-70 past Frisco and reversed course to hit a favorite section of Ten Mile Creek. A short stay there earned me mostly brookies and a couple of browns, but no action for bro. Our last stop was at the ponds just east of Copper Mountain where brother landed one tiny rainbow & I was skunked.
It was a lot of fishing for a short period of time. I'm pooped. Tomorrow the Eagle!
8/9: I THOUGHT WE'D FISHED HARD YESTERDAY: Not! Today was a marathon if ever there was one. But was it great? Again a big, fat Not. In hindsight we probably started too early. Nothing was hatching. The river (the Eagle) looked dead and really fished dead for the first two or three hours.
We hit the Squaw Creek water first, fished it dry, wet, and with streamers and picked up nary a strike. Then a great stretch below Muddy Creek that last week was howlingly good yielded only a single hit apiece. Finally around 11:00 we dropped into the river by the sandstone cliffs and gradually began to pick up fish. Both of us collected around 1-2 dozen strikes but released only a few fish as our reactions had become dulled by lack of practice.
But that was better. Eventually we moved upstream to brown trout heaven and on the first stretch landed lots of those dumb fish. The pocket water fished well, but we were invaded by fishermen who didn't seem to care if they jumped someone else's water, so we moved once again.
I took Rick into my favorite stretch nicknamed "The Land..." and was looking forward to blowing his mind by the great fishing here. Wrong again. The bottom part yielded no strikes at all. I couldn't believe it! Finally by the upper pocket water we did catch a number of browns, but overall this section was another disappointment.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day and our tactics will bring more success.
8/10: AND DID WE FISH HARD TODAY: YES! But did we do well? - sort of. The fishing's become somewhat strange. It's as if we have entered a twilight zone where neither fishermen nor quarry understand that it's a changing of the season and neither really knows how to respond.
Early mornings are worthless. That nicely addresses the concerns of those who do not wish to arise at the crack of dawn. But it means that there's a narrow window of opportunity for both hunters and prey.
We tackled all kinds of water today from tight brown trout pockets to slick rainbow runs. Success ranged all over the place but overall we were successful. Browns and rainbows from 6-16 inches fell to our emergers and caddis and RED QUILLS. Tomorrow we fish the Gore all day (midday) and we'll post a report the next day on all local rivers along with hatch information.
8/11: THE LAST SUPPER: Or rather the last breakfast, depending on your point of view. This morning was my brother's last day here, so we elected to start out early on upper Gore Creek all the while knowing it was probably going to be marginal fishing - and that it was.
To spare the boring details we did catch some fish spread around between rainbows and brookies, but it was not a day either of us will file away as a favorable memory. But it was a nice four days of a get together, and now I'm looking forward to joining him on the Deschutes & North Umpqua in September for some fishing on his turf.
There are many conflicting opinions regarding local fishing conditions right now. Let me add my two cents worth to the pile.
Gore Creek: Lots of hatches - large caddis, green drakes, midges in abundance. Fishing varies wildly from the upper stretches in East Vail to the confluence with the Eagle. All of the above named patterns both in floaters and in nymphal form will produce. Err on the small side.
Eagle River: Seems to be worthless to fish early on. Wait until 10:00 or so. Very small pmd's, red quills, and still some elk hairs will produce. Again both nymphal and floaters. Both rainbows and browns are lying in very aerated sections, often quite shallow. Evenings are probably best although hatches occur from late morning on. Some tricos in evidence.
Roaring Fork: Guide services are having difficult times getting their clients hooked up over here. Wade fishing is still producing good catches if you can find a way to access the river. Elk hair & flat water caddis, small stones, standard nymphs, princes, red squirrels, and peeking caddis will take both rainbows, whitefish and the occasional cutthroat.
Colorado: Surface flies producing if casting is accurate. There's little room for mistakes as these fish have been hit hard for the past month. Exiting the boats for bank fishing is more productive if casting skills are up to the task.
Frying Pan: Way too many warm bodies chasing too few fish, but the midday hatches still bring fish to the surface and small specialized nymphs are producing by the dam.
The Blue: Water is still coming down and is almost optimal right now. Mycis and other standard small nymph patterns will take the difficult Silverthorne fish if properly presented.
8/12: ONE THIRD - ONE THIRD - ONE THIRD: I think there was an old TV pizza ad roughly to that effect. Today worked out the same way. One third of the day was spent writing code that didn't compile, one third was spent tying some new comparaduns that did compile, and the last one third was spent testing them.
Forget the code. The tying and fishing were a lot more fun. Made up bunches of red quill and PMD comparaduns which I'm reluctant to admit I've never fished before. But the local guide reports indicate that mayflies are now the way to go, so who am I to argue.
Finally got out on the river around 3:30 and began my quest using the PMD (perfect time of day, right?) And what was my first catch in brown trout heaven? A 15" rainbow naturally. About an hour & a half of wading & casting yielded a dozen more browns & an equal number of additional strikes. So it was a decent afternoon considering how badly my brother & I had done on this same stretch the past few days.
Are these flies useful? I guess so. Actually tried both types & found them to be more or less equally productive in similar types of water. Will check them out a little more closely on Wednesday when I go to Eagle on data business and fish that river on the way home.
8/13: A NICE COUPLE OF HOURS ON GORE CREEK: As a follow-up to yesterday's testing of the "new" comparaduns, I biked out to the golf course area and tied on a #16 red quill trailed by a #18 pheasant tail. Casting my way up the stream there was no sign of a bug in the air. The fish were all holding close to their lairs instead of riding in the riffles as they had done a couple of weeks ago.
Nevertheless I got at least one hookup at each of the likely holding areas, most of which were small rainbows, but some were modest brooks. It was wonderful languorous wading & fishing. All the world seemed at rest and in balance.
All but one fish took to the red quill imitation, and in all honesty, I don't know if it would have made much difference what surface fly I placed on the water. As time passes, it seems more and more that the key is putting the fly in a place where the fish should be and getting it to drift effectively. Time will prove or disprove that theory.
The last fish of the day was a beautiful 11" cutthroat that got sucker punched by the quill dragging along the bottom as I was reeling in for the last time. A nice finish to the day.
8/14: BEST BROWN OF THE YEAR!: But other than that, it was a more or less marginal day. Leaving the Eagle County offices just before noon, I picked up a Burger King whopper, gulped it down on the way up old Highway 6 and pulled off at an old favorite spot on the river.
Decided to try different tactics today just to see if anything worked better than something else. So started off with a rig of a small pheasant tail at the tippet and one of the red quill comparaduns as an indicator fly. It worked real well. Probably fished 400 yards without a sign of a strike. Finally on a flat I hooked a nice brown but he did a long range release. A few more strikes followed but I was incompetent in gaining hookups.
I then switched to a sunk rig of a dark muddler up front trailed by a small soft hackle. That worked real well too, as in nothing. Next came a single #14 PMD comparadun. Ditto on the next flat. Then came a double of the comparadun up front and a elk hair at the tippet.
That's when I landed the big brown. It was on the comparadun, however. Fish took the fly deep and as I was working on him with my forceps he bolted with the fly still in the roof of his mouth. Hope he's OK. I'd like to catch him again. He was just under 20" and I suspect weighed 3 # or so. That was fun.
Next set of pockets and flats and riffles yielded a few more browns, but no rainbows. All fish were relatively large - between 13-15 inches.
8/16: THE EAGLE: A LOT OF WORK FOR FEW FISH: A friend I'd made while guiding last year came out from Connecticut to spend a couple of weeks and I offered to fish with him for a day to get him reacquainted with our local conditions. We headed off to Eagle and picked up his license, then dropped down to the river at a favorite spot on the lease water.
While he casts well and is an experienced fisherman, this friend still doesn't haul properly and consequently has a tendency to false cast way too much - and that failing more than anything else cost him chance after chance today at success. Rather than belabor the point let's just say that it was a humbling experience for him.
On a positive note the little comparaduns that we've started using lately proved very productive and we were able to bring fish to the surface even in the heat of the day. Overall, however, I'll admit to being disappointed at the sum of the catch by 5:00 that evening. Maybe 30 fish were released over 8 hours of time, and that's really not a very good number for a whole day of fishing.
8/17: CRATER LAKE: WHAT A GREAT DAY! My friend from Denver came up the prior evening and we elected to do this jeep ride/off trail hike to the more or less hidden Crater Lake. I'm not sure it's even shown by that name on local topo maps. Hadn't been fishing there in probably 10 years and really felt no great hopes for success. It's a very deep lake, hence the name. And historically if one is to be successful there, sinking lines are called for. We didn't have them with us. But boy, was I ever wrong.
We got a bit of a late start and as I couldn't remember precisely how tough a hike it was, our failure to be on the trail early in the day probably cost us a shot at a big bunch of fish. But as luck would have it, when we finally arrived at the lake, surface dimples were in evidence everywhere. A quick check of the surface showed some small trico-like greyish insects, so I started with one of my little #18 red quill comparaduns and immediately hooked & landed three nice cuts between 13-15 inches.
As my friend did not have early success, I loaned her on of the "C" flies and shortly she landed a cut in the same range. Again to shorten the story, we only had an hour & a half to fish, but the trout kept taking surface flies throughout this period. They took PMD's, quills, and Griffith's gnats. Casting to rises worked pretty well and the fish definitely wanted the fly to be still on the surface rather than moving even slightly. We caught and released fish for the whole time we were there, barely stopping to wolf down a sandwich in between casts. Had we camped overnight there would have been fish on the fire for sure. It was the best high lake fishing I've ever seen.
8/19: GLORIOUS ON THE GORE: A 3:00 thunderstorm washed out my hopes of making a few casts on this creek before dinner. But around 6:00 I hopped on my bike with the rod, etc. hoping to peddle far enough upstream to escape the murky color that had inhabited the stream when I'd looked at it earlier.
Lo & behold it had mostly cleared. So I started wading immediately at a favorite spot. First cast a fat 14" rainbow. Working my way up this stretch then came a 12" and another and then some smaller ones. But, wow, what a lot of action compared to fishing this run in midday.
The new comparadun worked perfectly all by itself. A monsoon cloud passing over drove me to the shelter of a fir for a half hour, but as soon as the shower passed, I caught another half dozen including one wonderful 16" fish - the largest I've ever seen on this part of the creek. All in all, probably 13-15 fish came to hand in the hour and a half I fished. Wonderful night.
8/20: THANK GOD FOR STUPID BROWNS: I know they're supposed to be the smartest of fish, but in all honesty the smaller ones surely are not. With monsoon storms dictating when it's possible to be outside on the water I headed out between a couple, drove 5 miles to the first stretch of the Eagle I could reach and started hiking the bank and casting.
Sure enough these idiot fish came readily to the PED comparadun like dogs to a bone. I was trailing a small pheasant tail off a short dropper & a couple arranged to suck that fly in, but most of the action was on the "C" fly. An hour of casting provided roughly 25 strikes and 15 fish brought to hand. Sizes ranged from 6-13 inches.
8/21: ON THE EAGLE AGAIN - EDWARDS AREA: Too much morning brain damage resulting from some complications with a cgi script forced a mid-afternoon escape to the Squaw Creek public waters. Although the pools & runs in this area still hold some very large fish, pressures are causing them to become very, very wary.
One of my favorite pools/runs requires spring creek tactics to even have a glimmer of hope at getting a strike. However, many casts with a #18 comparadun coupled to a #18 pheasant tail resulted in a great big nothing. Shortly I learned a new lesson.
Moving across the stream I put on what passes for my equivalent of a #20 RS-2. And while I immediately had several strikes & landed a couple of nice fish, by moving into a position on the pool that is normally not wadable and short line nymphing into an area that is normally unreachable, all of a sudden the action exploded.
Several wonderful bows came to hand and more were lost or strikes missed. It was a great experience for me on this stretch of water. I went to a couple of more new spots and had similar success, but the lesson was to change the tactics to something the fish hadn't seen before, just like we often tie flies similar to, but slightly different than the standard versions.
8/23: THE ROARING FORK - VARIOUS PLACES: (And none of them great). Too much computer work in Aspen really limited my choices for fishing today. So I hopped on the river just downstream from Basalt and actually had a pretty good time. Used a #16 mahogany comparadun with a serendipity trailer. No bugs were evident in the air, but I did get a couple of fish on the floater. Most of the action was on the "S" fly. All the trout were rainbows (5) and I did land one large whitey of nearly 4 #.
A couple of more stops near Carbondale and Westbank yielded a few strikes and fish (browns & rainbows) to the trailing sinking fly, but the moss is horrible down in this area. I'll admit I don't really know how to deal with it. If you get the fly to the bottom where the fish are, almost every touch down results in a green moss hang-up that has to be cleaned off before you can cast again. So it's a real problem.
I'll probably fish the Glenwood area one more time before I leave for Oregon, but if I had to recommend a location right now, it would definitely be to spend all your time above Carbondale and preferably above El Jebel.
8/24 & 8/25: TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE: Namely two days worth of reports rather than one at a time, 'cause I got lazy last night & didn't input Saturday's when I should have. Bad boy!
Back to Saturday. Was tired of having to pass up spots on the Eagle I wanted to try because they were already taken up by others when I got there, so opted for a trip to Pando on the upper, upper Eagle to see if it was vaguely fishable. It turned out to be but ended up being the toughest casting I've seen all year.
The willows were all grown up - the pools were grown down - and the fish were hiding beneath the banks. Sparing all the grim details, the day took bow and arrow, underhand, sidearm, and any other kind of cast I could think of to get the fly into tiny, tiny areas.
Trying various imitations, finally ended up catching around 10 small-medium browns on a #20 RS-2 without any weight. It seemed to be the only thing the fish would take without being frightened by the surface splash of a weighted fly. It was a really difficult day, but at least I didn't see another human being.
ON SUNDAY my friend from Denver & I chose to start fishing at the mouth of the Eagle at its confluence with the Colorado. Basically that stretch stunk. She caught one small bow and that was it. We then planned to head up the Colorado between Dotsero & Burns and work as much of that public water as we could. Unfortunately the river was up, up, up and murky due to reservoir releases, probably for the Gore Canyon races being held this weekend.
So we retraced our steps and went back up the Eagle, stopping at a new spot between Eagle & Gypsum. The water was mostly nondescript and both of us had no luck at first. Then I got on a deep riffle stretch where the rainbows were obviously enjoying the highly aerated water. A few casts with the #16 gray comparadun brought an 18" fat-as-a-pig rainbow to hand. More casts yielded some smaller rainbows and one that escaped which was in the 17" range. Another cast brought a tremendous strike and ultimately a 19" perfectly shaped rainbow of roughly three pounds.
It was phenomenal fishing. A few more casts and another of the same size was hooked, but lost. It was very close to fisherman's heaven.
Eventually we headed further upstream to the lease water above Eagle and had more success, hooking and landing several nice browns and rainbows, all on the comparadun which is fishing wonderfully well right now. All in all, it was a really terrific day. Life's good!
8/26 : JUST WHEN YOU THINK THE EAGLE CAN'T GET ANY BETTER: It does. A trip to the County offices to pick up mid-month data of course called for stops at a couple of spots on the way back home. The river's quite low right now, warm, and very pleasant to wet wade. For the trout, however, it means crowding into more aerated stretches, which is probably not good for them, but it is good for the fishermen.
Since I only had a couple of spare hours, I rushed down to a nice section on the lease water just above the town of Eagle. My fly was a #18 gray comparadun again. It's been working extremely well lately. Casting my way up a "nervous" stretch of water below a small drop I was getting strike after strike, but no hookups. Next season I think I'm going to start using a slightly lighter color of deer hair for those wings because I simply can't see the fly on the surface of roily water and consequently miss lots of strikes.
Finally on the eleventh strike I did land a beautiful 15" rainbow. That seemed to break the spell of bad fortune and for the next 20 minutes or so, I was able to bring to hand another 6-8 fish, none of which were under 13".
Driving upstream I stopped at a place to explore a run I hadn't visited before. As I walked by it, it definitely was not dry flyable, so I changed to a #20 OS-1 (my version of an RS-2) and stuck on a conventional Palsa strike indicator which is something I hadn't used all year. It's amazing how simple it is to use that setup and I don't know why I intentionally avoid it most of the time.
Shortening the story again, the rig worked wonderfully. This run produced 4 rainbows and one nice brown, all between 14-17 inches. As I moved upstream to a heavily fished run, again landed a couple of 16" rainbows on the nymph rig in a place I'd never seen a trout before. Then came the treat of treats. A fortuitous cast came to an abrupt stop and the river erupted with a huge rainbow leaping twice before heading off downstream in a run that would make any steelhead jealous. It was well up into the 20-25 inch range and while I wish I could say I touched him with my hands, I did not. Unable to keep up with him after a splash and dash of 100 yards, he ultimately broke off my tiny fly and left me breathless, but in awe of his size.
8/29: SOME MORE BROWNS AND A TINGE OF AUTUMN: The late afternoon trip to brown trout water on the middle Eagle had a sense of fall's arrival and a winding down of the fishing season. Leaves were changing, the water's cooling, and while caddis & quills are still hatching, there was just a hint of chill everywhere.
Casts with that itty bitty OS-1 nymph brought periodic strikes and a handful of medium sized browns to hand, but the fish were more or less lethargic. Changing to a red quill comparadun finally tricked a 16 incher that fought well and grunted when I pulled the fly from its teeth.
The hatches are still strong and trout are feeding both up and down. Soon the fishing will ratchet up slightly as the fish gorge in one last surge before stream temps plummet with the coming of the snows.
8/30: THE FISHING WAS WILD ON GORE CREEK: It constantly amazes me how good the fishing can be one day and way off the next. This afternoon I jumped on the bike with my fly stuff and raced out to a short stretch of my "home" stream in an effort to get in an hour's worth of casting before having to start cooking dinner for a friend.
Popping down to the creek, I immediately saw some light surface breaks by what I assumed were the regular 10" rainbows in this particular stretch. But casting my way upstream I hooked & released four fish in the 12-13 inch range, which was way out of character for this water. Then I saw a really nice trout rolling in a small eddy and after a couple of casts was able to hook & land a beautiful 16 incher. Astonishingly large fish for this piece of water.
Fish were coming up all over the place in water no more that 8 inches deep for small green caddis, tiny grey drakes, and loads of midges. It was wonderful fishing and continued that way until I quit. An hour of trying resulted in a dozen fish landed, many of which were of good size. Dinner (no, not the trout) tasted even better after that experience.
Cursor up for other recent day's comments.
8/31: THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER: ANOTHER great couple of hours on Gore Creek. My friend of Denver & I journeyed up to upper, upper Gore Creek for a couple of hours of casting after watching the football games on Saturday while doing some joint fly tying.
There are loads of people in town so we had to bike past several nice spots and finally started working some holes by the golf course. It was good fishing again. The trout are rising for both red quills and tiny caddises, so we both got into fine fish from 10-15 inches in length and landed several.
Another mile of biking took us into the East Vail water and while the first couple of pools yielded nothing, the next run exploded with many brookies, a couple exceeding 12 inches and several in spawning colors. The fish were ravenous so we had tons of strikes and released fish from a long run before the setting sun advised us to head back home. Flies that were productive included any type of small comparadun and a # 20 green bodied flat water caddis.
NOTE THIS IS THE LAST ENTRY IN 1996'S SUMMER DIARY. GO TO The Fall/Winter Log TO CONTINUE CHECKING ON CURRENT FISHING CONDITIONS.
7/1: GORE CREEK - VARIOUS: It was deja vu. Just like yesterday. Had an hour to spare after working some programming problems in the afternoon. So headed off on the bike to a couple of my favorite high water runs.
Had tied up some more #14 micro buggers - this time on a slightly longer shank hook. And sure enough they produced strikes but not brought-to-hand fish. It's really odd how the fish bash the fly, but don't take it deep enough to create good hook-ups. I'll not complain, but I was only 2 for 13 today.
The nice thing was that these were all rainbows compared to all browns on Sunday.
7/3: ROARING FORK - GLENWOOD AREA: What a change from just a week ago! The river's down and clear as a bell. More hatches going on mid-day than I've ever seen over here. Several types of drakes, caddis, and various stones all at once. All the action for me was beneath the surface however.
Some takes on the micro bugger, but the best activity was on a combo setup of bead head prince up front and small black peeking caddis at the back. Interestingly only browns and whiteys took the prince, while rainbows went exclusively for the caddis.
Largest fish (trout) was a gorgeous 17 inch rainbow, although I caught bigger whiteys off and on all day. In fact finally had to move from some holes as the whitefish were striking on every cast. Nice way to start the holiday weekend! Just as a note, apparently the green drake hatch is going on in the evenings between Westbank and the mouth.
7/4: GORE CREEK - VILLAGE: Boy it's tough fishing. Water's still too high to wade, but the creek's clear and the fish are jumpy. Despite all the people in town I found a half mile stretch of stream for myself and fished down it using the old reliable micro bugger.
It produced a few strikes and bought to hand a handful of modest sized bows. Had one vicious strike that left me only with the end of my leader, but all in all, not a great catch for two hours of effort.
7/5: EAGLE RIVER - DOWD AREA: Took a friend new to the sport down to the Eagle for some streamer fishing. It's easy casting and you don't have to get your feet wet. I crossed the stream and we fished down river together.
He picked up the best brown of the day - a 14 incher on a big black bugger, while I had more quantity, but no size at all. Probably 20 strikes and seven small browns brought to the bank. Again, not the greatest of days, but it sure beats spending the afternoon at the computer.
7/6: GORE CREEK - PONDS AND MISCELLANEOUS EAGLE: Boy, the fishing's tough. We worked hard for a handful of fish between us - and I mean we worked hard. Can't add anything else to that comment.
7/7: EAGLE RIVER - HERE AND THERE:To sound like a broken record, boy, the fishing's tough - at least for me. We walked to a spot near Wolcott that normally fishes like crazy this time of year. But we produced a big fat nothing. A couple of strikes just up from there and we headed above Edwards for some of those stupid browns - not! I caught two 8 inchers and she had a couple of strikes.
I dropped her off for some shopping with her mom & went back near Dowd to a place I'd never been before. Incredibly difficult river access. First cast - 15 inch fat rainbow that had no idea what was happening. It was like fishing in a world that time forgot. Next eddy a fish that socked the fly so hard I couldn't release the line fast enough and he ripped the 5.7# tippet in an instant.
A few eddies later the next fish took, shook his head a few times, moved out into the middle of a raging current and held there for 30 seconds, then lazily took off downstream until my backing ran out (100 yds.) and popped off. Very big fish - and a very strange day.
7/8: GOD BLESS FISH THAT LOVE DRY FLIES! (Various locations on Gore Creek). Spent most of the day at the vise tying different color/wing/hackle combinations of my new fly for the summer - a flat water caddis. Yes, I know it's not an original idea - in fact the basic pattern may go back a couple of hundred years.
Nonetheless, given the increased pressure on local streams I felt that even the unusual elk hair hybrids that I've been using for the past couple of years might not be as effective as a more realistic imitation. Thus the attempts at a perfectly natural caddis.
Happily it works - at least for now. Fished a familiar run on the Gore that holds lots of various trouts, mostly rainbows. Since the water is still very heavy, I put on a tailer of a big elk hair in the hopes that if any trout took the flat water fly I might have a vague chance of seeing the strike. It worked more or less. After a few casts a beautiful spotted 12" cut came to hand.
More strikes followed and I landed & released a half dozen fish, missing equally that many more strikes in the hour I was on the water. It sure is neat to have fish coming to a dry again. Even though no hatches were in evidence tonight. Tomorrow we'll try a bit of the Eagle.
7/9: THE UPPER EAGLE AND SOME SPOTS ON GORE CREEK: Still tying the new caddis. At a rate of 10 per hour I'll definitely never be a commercial tier! But that's better than my usual pace. Had to go to the hardware store this A.M., so stopped off on the Eagle below Dowd for some more tries with the new flies. Used the same rig as yesterday and did have some success.
The water appeared better suited to either nymphs or streamers, but dammit, I'm ready for something on the surface. So surface I did. Limited success, but probably released 6-8 moderate browns in a 1 1/2 hour stretch. Missed a lot of strikes.
Out on Gore Creek this afternoon with the same rig I did lousy. One 12" brookie and a few other strikes in an hour, so that's not much to show for the effort. However, as we all know, it's a lot better being outside than inside.
Interesting observation. As before, the Eagle fish preferred the high floating elk hair, while the Gore Creek fish took the flat water pattern. The best fish, however, were all on the flat water. Those strikes were also more subtle, almost as though the profile of the flat water indicates a caddis in complete repose, in opposition to the elk hair pattern which may indicate an insect ready for flight. We'll find out more later in the summer. No more fishing until Thursday when I go to the county offices to pick up data, and of course, spend some time on the middle Eagle.
7/10: OK - SO I LIED TO MYSELF: That must be the sign of an addiction. Had promised to do no more fishing until Thursday, but after putting dinner on the stove, I couldn't resist running down to the Gore to make a few casts while the food cooked. The creek's still running high, but is nice and clear. Hatches of all types are in evidence and while I saw no rises, again elected to dry fly fish.
It's still really tough fishing which is great since that keeps pressure off the water for at least another couple of weeks. I did have a bit of success in and around some brushy eddies. Released only three bows ranging from 10-14 inches, but lord they were beautifully colored fish and all strong & healthy.
7/11: THE EAGLE - NEAR EAGLE: After spending two rotten hours inputting data at the county offices -finally was able to get out of the building and head up along the Eagle. Lordy it's pretty on the river right now. Not many people anywhere. A couple of guides with clients and that's about all.
Basically I enjoy a wet wading. Once the water temperatures are above freezing I don my trusty Tevas and splash about. With wading becoming a bit more doable I was reminded that it's time to don the Tevas WITH the felt soles. The Eagle's a slippery momma, and I almost went down several times.
Am still dry flying and it's still a bit iffy. Missed all kinds of strikes but landed a few fish, the best of which was a nice, fat-for-a-change 17" brown. Did sneak up on one favorite hole and turned a rainbow between 18-20 inches three times in a row. But he was too smart for me.
Being an advocate of fishing quickly, it was interesting to feel so happy on some runs that I could have spent all day in any one of them. Life's good! Saturday we head to the Crystal & Roaring Fork.
7/13: THE CRYSTAL RIVER: We headed to Carbondale and the Crystal early Saturday morning. It's running high, but happily quite clear. Access on the lower river is very limited, but we started hitting open spots as soon as we could. Strikes were sparse, but steady on small hare's ears, rs-2's, and princes.
Eventually we more or less figured out what to do and started catching nice healthy rainbows in the 9-13 inch range.
Strangely we had few hits from whitefish which are very common in this stream. Also it was interesting that most of the best strikes were on the swing. This is just a funny river to fish. The trout lie in places they would not do so in another type of river. Many are in the middle in shallow, swift rocky areas that would be barren of fish in other streams.
Anyway we fished the river all day long until exhaustion, eventually moving above Redstone all the way to Marble.
It was actually better above Redstone, although the whole river should improve measurably once the levels drop somewhat.
Camping near Marble that night we enjoyed one of the finest views of mountains in Colorado, almost rivaling those near Telluride.
7/14: THE CRYSTAL & ROARING FORK: Sunday morning we arose & broke camp early heading to Redstone for breakfast and more fishing in the village. It's normally great fishing right in the heart of town, but the water's still a bit high this year. We had a wonderful breakfast and then caught several more bows just east of town.
Around 11:00 we headed off to Glenwood with high hopes of doing well on the Fork. Dropping down to the river at my favorite spot we fished opposite sides to avoid casting conflicts and both immediately got into a number of good fish. Several nice rainbows and whitefish bit the dust (so to speak) as we worked our way upstream.
We were still using nymphs, although somewhat larger princes and rs-2's, obviously with more weight to get them down deeper in these heavier currents.
Since I'd spooked a couple of nice fish from the shoreline as I headed downstream, as soon as the water became shallower, I switched to a combo of flat water and elk hair hybrid flies and almost immediately released a big fat 17" brown.
The surface flies were just the ticket for the rest of the day, as multiple hatches were in evidence - caddis, various mayflies, and yellow sallies.
It was a super fine day. We considered biking up from No Name to hit the eddies in the Colorado on the way back, but the path was too full of weekenders to deal with, so we passed & headed home completely satisfied with our fly fishing experiences.
7/15: GORE CREEK IN AND AROUND THE VILLAGE: It sure is hard not to take an hour or so off from computing to fish each day. Finally got eye strain around 11:00 in the morning & just had to get out in the warm sun, so headed down to my favorite stretch and cast about with a elk hair floater and a partridge & green trailing just below the surface.
It proved to be mildly productive as strikes were almost equally split between the surface fly & the nymph. Fish all looked healthy & some, happily were in the 5-7 inch range. In past years it would be crazy to hope to hook small fish, but with the onset of the whirling disease, I think we all look forward to seeing some "future lunkers" turning up in our everyday catch.
Tomorrow will try part of the Eagle. Wednesday afternoon I head to Denver for a consulting project and then hope to test the Blue (it's still running high) on my way back home Thursday afternoon.
7/16: SOMEWHERE IN THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT: (Obviously also forgotten by guides, other locals, tourists, and myself for the past 25 years.)
Serendipitous happenings. Rather than head downstream to the popular waters below Edwards, I opted to stay close to home this afternoon.
Aside from the fact that I only caught one rainbow and one brookie today in-and-amongst probably 50 browns, that's the only clue you'll get about this place. It was one of those world class days. The fish acted like they'd never seen an artificial in their lives - and perhaps they had not.
There were no other signs of human presence on this stretch of the stream. Believe it or not, the fishing actually got boring after a while, and I'll not tell you what I did to make the day more interesting.
Let's focus on the fishing. Started out casting a searching rig of a trailer soft hackle supported by a large (#14) elk hair hybrid.
First cast resulted in a gorgeous 14" brookie. Second cast - a 13" brown. Third cast - a fish so strong that he dove to the bottom & wrapped me around a rock before I knew what hit me and popped the 6# test 4X leader.
All fish took the elk hair as their fly of choice. So who would not rather fish on the surface exclusively? Certainly that's my choice. Rapidly changed the nymph to a darker elk hair floater and stayed with that double dry fly rig for the rest of the day.
The fishing was unbelievable. Browns ranged between 8-18", all fat & sassy. The lone rainbow was also obese and roughly 17" long.
The day confirmed several of our local commandments. First and foremost, try to get away from people. Just accessing this water was close to impossible. Once on the stream movement along the banks was tenuous at best and casting verged on the impossible. Bow & arrow casts were common. Sidearms were 90% of the rest of the time. So it was a tough situation, but obviously worth the effort.
The other thing worth mentioning has to do with fishing pools or eddies. We always want to start working at the downstream end and move upstream, even if it's tempting to cast all the way to the top immediately. That fact was born out by one such pocket in which I first took a 10" brown, followed by a 13' brown, followed by a 15" brown, followed by the aforementioned rainbow who obviously had priority status at the top end of the food chain. Had I reversed the casting process probably only one fish would have come to hand in that piece of water.
This outing qualifies as one of the all time memories. The fishing was so intense I could easily have been on the most remote stream in Alaska, Argentina, or anywhere else that fish do not know what a human is.
7/18: CLEAR CREEK CUTS & TEN MILE TRIOS: A consulting obligation in Denver took me back to the city. The best thing about going there is knowing I can shortly leave and get back to the mountains. Don't misread that. It's not just Denver I dislike - it's cities in general. Having spent the past 25 years in a mountain town, I'm frankly intimidated by cities, traffic, the people, and tall buildings.
Anyway I did my database duties & shot out of Denver at roughly 2:00. Planned to fish Clear Creek all the way from Idaho Springs to Loveland Pass.
As usual some things went wrong. Thunderstorms washed out the first 25 miles of my dreams, so I didn't pull off the freeway until the town after Georgetown.
Stopped at the first by-the-road-pool, rigged up with a small bead head peeking caddis & strike indicator of an elk hair hybrid.
Sneaked off across the verrrry cold stream, and casting into a couple of small pools, managed to land a handful of Clear Creek Cuts. They're beautiful fish and I was happy.
Another storm passed through and drenched me as I headed up the pass.
Pulled off I-70 at Silverthorne & planned to fish one of my favorite spots on the Blue - Not! River is still ridiculously high. While I'm sure locals can find an eddy to plunk a nymph in, I had no interest, so climbed back on the freeway.
Passing through Frisco I turned off at the next exit and headed back downstream to a well used pull-off.
Using the same efficacious rig, I fished about 400 yards of the small Ten Mile Creek.
Had small measure of success until one nice quiet eddy wherein I was fortunate enough to land & release a 13" cut, a 10" brown, and a 7" rainbow - all from the same tiny pool. That's a treat, as we all really understand. The rest of the day was simply an afterthought.
With a new thunderbumper coming through I hopped in the car & headed home to dinner.
7/19: I HATE TO TALK ABOUT GORE CREEK: But today it's OK, cause it was marginal fishing. I'm planning on taking my friend to the "Land That Time Forgot" tomorrow, but she's never really cast dry flies, so we hiked down the bike path and jumped in the water just above the sewer plant.
It's wide open there with no brush to disturb backcasts, and we moved upstream side by side, each working our own side of the river. (It's always a good happenstance when one of us is a righty & the other of the opposite persuasion - at least where casting's concerned!)
Eventually we separated as good stretches to fish appeared alternately on both sides of the stream. She did get the knack down pretty well and had a number of strikes, but no hookups. I didn't do much better, but managed to connect with a dozen or so smaller rainbows and one nice sized brookie. Pretty soon a group of tubers screamed by and the cut our fishing in half for the day.
7/21: A RETURN TO THE FORGOTTEN PLACE: We headed back to that special hidden section of the Eagle hoping it had remained undisturbed by other fisher people and it appeared that it did remain so.
Splitting up, I crossed the river and we cast our way upstream together. Strikes were tougher to come by this day and I found the opposite bank to be not nearly as high quality holding water, even though almost every decent stretch yielded at least a couple of strikes. We continued to dry fly fish all morning long - she used a single elk hair and I used my standard double rig.
Finally near the upper end of this wade strikes came with more regularity, and a couple of small eddies gave up over a dozen browns - two of which were strong enough and large enough (17"-19") to get out in the main current and break me off. My friend did pick up one rainbow, but all the rest of the fish we released were browns. Didn't try to keep track of numbers although I suspect we may have had on 40-50 fish combined. The wading is really difficult in this water and both of us went down at least once. Nice morning and a nice place to return to next week.
THAT AFTERNOON we loaded gear on the mountain bikes and headed to upper Gore Creek. It was nice fishing for decent sized cuts plus small brookies & rainbows. This part of the Gore is absolutely perfect right now. Plenty of water to allow the fish to spread out in the runs and pools but not so much flow that it's difficult to wade.
Hope to be able to hit the Roaring Fork and lower Colorado on Wednesday.
7/22: BACK TO ANOTHER PART OF THE GORE: Either the fish were sluggish today or I was. Changed the rig to a small syl's nymph roughly 18" behind the elk hair strike indicator and sure enough, the fish still preferred the strike indicator. No strikes at all on the nymph. In this middle stretch of Gore Creek, the water's still a bit high for my taste.
There was some action - all of which fish were bright red striped rainbows, but the level apparently has not allowed the fish to return to some of their favorite holding zones. We'll check out how another section fishes on Tuesday.
7/23: DITTO: Today I fished a little bit lower on the Gore. Water's still high, but fishing was better in this stretch. It's amazing how a lack of concentration produces a lack of hookups. Today I used the same double caddis rig with the flat water type up front and the elk hair at the end.
Right off the fish came to both lures. Actually I released a half dozen or so until I started thinking about having to file a couple of small claims tomorrow at the Garfield County Courthouse. Then everything basically went to hell. I missed fish after fish, and while I know some days are just going to be like that, today's poor efforts represent mostly a mind meandering elsewhere. Suspect I missed 7 out of every 8 strikes I had after that initial stretch of water.
And several were real good fish - especially for the Gore. There were, I'll bet, a half dozen in the 13-15 inch range and all of them eager for the artificials. Their gain - my loss.
The other thing that's bugging me - I wish this double caddis rig was not so effective. It would be more fun to have to work harder for strikes. We'll see how it does on a new stretch of the Roaring Fork tomorrow.
7/24: WHAT A WEIRD DAY: Even before I left for Eagle and Glenwood today I had a title for this diary entry ready in my mind. I thought this would be the absolutely, positively best day of the the year on the Roaring Fork. Not to be!
Got down to that river about noon and instead of heading across and downstream to my favorite bank area, I opted to visit the choice water of another friend of mine with whom I teach in the winter. Casting my way upstream with the elk hair doublet, I beat the water to death with only a couple of small browns to show for the effort. Eventually I reached the eddy he had often spoke about and managed to hook a great big nothing up there.
Changed to nymphs, small buggers, etc. and still had no success. There are plenty of fish in that eddy, but I was worthless today when it came time to bring them to task. Eventually returned downstream to the starting point, crossed the river and walked/waded down to the place I where I normally begin fishing upstream. At first I still had no success on a small hare's ear topped with a small elk hair. As the nymph was only sinking about 18 inches, I finally bit the bullet and tied on a bead head prince followed by a #20 peeking caddis and lots of lead.
Immediately the results changed. Strike followed strike on one or the other fly. Whiteys outnumbered rainbows by an order of six to one, but it didn't matter. Best fish of the day was a chubby 16" bow. Just as an aside, be prepared to deal with the annual bloom of green moss that now blankets the bottom almost everywhere.
Leaving the Fork I headed to the No Name rest stop to try the Colorado. Beautiful water, good level, clarity, and lots of hoppers along the bank. So did I kill them here? Not! Assuming the hoppers might be bringing fish to the surface, I put on the largest hybrids in my box and immediately caught a couple of browns. Had never previously seen any browns before along that stretch of the river. But that was it. Nothing else. Nada. End of story. No luck with streamers or nymphs. Very strange day.
7/26: IT'S NICE TO BE BACK HOME:Spent a fairly productive 2/3 day on the computer, so shut it down around 3:00 and headed to the lower/upper Gore on my bike. Hadn't fished this particular stretch this year and apparently not many others had either, given the numbers of shiny, new golf balls lying around.
Using the double caddis rig of a #16 flat water up front and a #18 elk hair at the end I fished happily up some nice runs and through a number of difficult-to-drift micro pools. The runs yielded several small but scrappy rainbows and one beautiful 13" brookie. Missed some strikes from better fish and noticed that the trout continue to gently sip the flat water fly, while making splashy rises to the elk hair version. It will be interesting to see if the flat water becomes more and more productive when stream flows drop markedly in the next few weeks.
7/28: NEVER THOUGHT BROWNS WOULD BE BORING: But they're getting that way. While the turkey was roasting this afternoon, I dropped back into the top part of that "Time Forgotten..." water and again proceeded to mop up the enemy - the brown trout. All fish again were taken on a double elk hair rig and almost every pocket held at least one or more fish.
It really is easy pickings in this kind of water. All it takes is a willingness to get your feet wet and some ability to place & drift a fly in tiny pockets between swift currents. A "dump" or "clump" cast is a necessity, but since many casters still don't throw tight loops, water of this type is suited to all types of abilities. Almost all of these fish are opportunistic feeders which makes it difficult to miss hooking them. I'm not sure they'd let go of the fly even if given the chance! A couple of hours of wading probably resulted in 20-30 fish. Few large ones though - the biggeys are wary. But the best of these swimmers were in the 15-16 inch range.
Will have to start going after rainbows later this week even though getting to them involves a half hour longer drive down the Eagle.
7/29: MORE browns: A thunderstorm passed right after dinner. Too many hours on the computer today prompted a quickie trip to "Brown Water". The wind was rushing downstream and gusty, which conditions I really dislike, so I tied on the biggest bucktail caddis in the box and a really attractive (to my eye) flat water caddis directly in front of it.
Even with big sizes I rarely saw either fly. Throwing the tightest of loops seldom resulted in the flies being separated completely from the end of the line. Nevertheless fish came repeatedly to a fly and that fly was always the bucktail - and I'll be darned if I know why. Suspect it was the shear size of that hog fly. About a dozen fish trotted to shore in 40 minutes of casting. None were larger than a foot, but it sure eased the tensions of the day.
7/31: UPPER GORE CREEK: Fished with a couple of friends on this part of the creek late in the afternoon. The wife is completely a novice but is taking a float trip with on of the top local guides in a couple of days so she asked for some quickie help on casting.
She picks things up rapidly and did some reasonably good casting on a difficult, brushy stretch of this nice little stream. Like most starters she still drops the tip too low behind the back and gets too quick with the fore cast, but in the raft she should do well, and I'll try to report their results here on Sunday.
Interestingly all the fish caught today were brookies even though the normal catch here is dominated by smaller (6"-10") cuts. Best fly as always was the elk hair hybrid in size 16. The flat water caddis types caught no fish today. Something of a surprise.
6/1: GORE CREEK PONDS: Boy, is it ever going to get warm here? The day was a blend of 15 minutes of clouds, swirling 20 knot winds, 58 degree temps, and finally a few seconds of sunshine repeated endlessly. We headed out to a rarely fished area with open grassy ground around it with high hopes for the fishing and lesser hopes of staying warm. Fish were bulging on the surface to something too small for me to see (not that that's unusual), so we tried a series of top water, emerger, and weighted flies from #18 down. The 20's actually looked like battleships on the surface.
And what success did we have? - maybe six strikes in an hour from miniature brookies. So we struck camp & drove & walked to another larger pond that usually is quite heavily fished. But not today. So my partner hung out at the bridge, managing to get caught up in the encroaching brush and became very cranky.
After changing flies several times I found one they liked. It's kind of an unusual natural hare-line dubbed, sparkle back hare's ear in size 16. The fish liked it and attached themselves to it with regularity. Unfortunately I was less successful in bringing them to net, landing only one six inch brookie after having several on that were in the range of 12-15 inches. Do I dare to continue to call myself a fisherman?
6/2:SAMMY THE SKUNK AND BOOMER THE BULLDOG: What a great day! Sun shone brightly and it was actually warm for a change. My fishing partner came over to the condo late morning & we headed up Highway 24 through Minturn up to Homestake Creek. It was still running at summer levels and was clear as a bell, so we rigged up with some apprehension as it had reportedly not been fishing well. Sure enough the first couple of spots produced absolutely nothing.
We grabbed a bite of picnic lunch and then headed back to the main road and stopped at one final spot where there was normally at least a bit of action. My partner soon had a couple of strikes and landed one small brookie. I fished faster and harder and still connected with a great big nothing.
Shortly we headed off to the Eagle which was running high, but clear and stopped at an area below the Dowd Chute that always holds numbers of good sized browns. Another half hour of fruitless casting and we moved downstream to some small pocket water areas, again that hold lots of browns. While my partner hooked, but did not land a nice sized brown on a bead head caddis, I again was shut out - or should we say SKUNKED. I'm sure I'll meet Sammy the Skunk again this year, but I hope not often.
That evening I went to my fishing partner's condo for wine & a light dinner. We had crackers & cheese on the deck and watched the sun go down while her basset and her sister's bulldog contentedly "detailed" the floor for any crumbs that we happened to drop. The bulldog was being dogsat while the sister and her husband were away in Wisconsin on a walleye hunting expedition. Later the dogs retired to the bathroom for the night.
I spent the night at the condo. Around one o'clock in the morning my partner went to the biffy and shortly came out and startled me by asking me to quickly go look at Boomer who wasn't moving. Sure enough when I'd raced to the bath and bent over him, feeling for a breath or pulse, there was neither. Boomie was gone at age 10.
Much grief flowed then. I hauled his limp bulk to the back of her station wagon for the trip to the crematorium in Denver. She left town immediately to make arrangements for the dog's disposition and to make the dreaded call to the dog's masters.
As a retrospective, it was a wonderful way to die. Boomer was with his best pal to the end and he died happily in his sleep. I'd give up five years off the end of my life to have a perfect death like that instead of the endless months of slow degeneration that seems to happen to us humans.
And that's the story of Sammy and Boomer.
6/4: COLORADO RIVER: GLENWOOD CANYON: Another Aspen trip on a fine sunny spring day. All the rivers were running high, but there was the teensiest bit of clarity to the Colorado, so I stopped at the rest area on my way back to Vail & rigged up with some heavy metal. Walked about a half mile upstream and started working some shoreside eddies with a bead head prince and modified killer caddis.
Immediately had a few strikes and landed a couple of modest rainbows - all on the killer to my surprise. About that time some black stones started coming off the bank, so I added a black bugger in place of the prince. Interestingly it produced nothing. So after suffering some frustration with that setup, I shifted back to the prince and either it or the killer produced another half dozen strikes and landed rainbows over the next half hour.
Again it was interesting that I neither felt nor landed any whiteys, which species is very dominant in this part of the river. My suspicion is that the rig was not getting deep enough consistently enough, although I did get hung up several times. Oh, something else we'll be adding shortly is an "Observed Hatches" page that will report current hatches and what flies seem to be working best on that day because of or in spite of the hatch.
6/6 and 6/7: NORTH & SOUTH UMPQUAS: VARIOUS LOCATIONS: Took a quickie trip to Roseburg, Oregon to see the folks and brother who is also an avid fly fisher. In between rubbers of bridge with the parents brother & I tried some casting for bass in the South river and salmos in the North.
Neither proved to be very productive as water levels were extremely high on both forks. Did catch a few smolt and of all things, a bluegill on the south fork. On the North river we had tons of strikes later in the afternoon and landed lots of small holdover trout and smolts. It was neat to be able to cast during actual surface hatches on clear waters since our Colorado rivers are frothing with runoff. Saw golden stones, several types of mayflies and lots of small sedges, so we had plenty of surface action, albeit without much size to the fish. OK, back to Colorado.
6/13: GORE CREEK PONDS: Boy has it been some time since I was on the water. Today was a mess as I had to attend an all day course on Ethics & Professional Practices. Finished up at 5:00, rushed home, had a couple of glasses of wine & a salad, and slapped my rod & stuff on the bike & peddled out to the ponds.
Nice night - still water and warm air temperatures. God, it feels good to be back outside after sitting on my rear end all day in class. I still don't do this pond properly. Use too heavy a leader & too large a fly, but tonight things worked out OK. Used a #18 peeking caddis and slow hand twist retrieved it.
Almost every cast brought strikes and every other resulted in a small brookie. Only one reasonable sized fish all evening although it was an interesting one as it appeared to be a rainbow/brookie hybrid. I've never heard of that happening, although if I were a rainbow cooped up in a small pond with a bunch of horny brookies, I suspect I'd try to mate anyway despite what the biologists had told me.
6/15: EAGLE RIVER - NEAR DOWD JUNCTION: Ugly day - rain again. Couldn't stand being in the condo all day, so drove to the closest point on the Eagle & slid down a muddy bank to fish a small holding area. Put on a #8 black wooley bugger and ,wonderfully, in the space of 15 minutes, had six strikes and landed two browns of 10-13 inches, plus one of the largest cutthroat I've ever hooked in Colorado - almost 18 inches. After that the rains really got serious, so I headed home happy as a clam and as wet as one.
6/16: EAGLE RIVER - EAGLE TO DOWD: Boom, bop, boppa, boom, boppa boom. It's stripper time! My partner & I drove the freeway to Eagle and then started hitting any decent eddy water all the way back to Vail. Stream color is nice now, although the level remains very high. We were both using different invocations of black wooley buggers and action was spotty at first.
The rainbows in the lower part of this stretch just aren't overwhelmed by buggers, although we did have some short strikes and I landed a couple. As we moved upstream into mixed brown/bow water, stripping the flies along the shore resulted in more and more strikes and landed fish. My friend had on one huge rainbow in this stretch plus a couple of browns and I released around a dozen fish.
An all around neat day, especially since not only did the sun shine, but we didn't encounter any other fishermen in 25 miles of water! How about that?
6/19: VARIOUS:Two hours - two strikes. Not what you'd call a great day of fishing. Except maybe that's more like normal when you're fly fishing for pike in Williams Fork Reservoir. I only saw the first strike and it was a small fish - in the range of 16-18 inches, so suppose it could have been a trout. But it was better than nothing.
Finally threw in the towel after two hours of slugging out that heavy weighted wooley bugger and headed back towards home. Thought about trying the outlet river itself but based on how it was running this date I passed it up.
Did look at some water on the Breeze section of the upper Colorado, but it literally took bow & arrow casts to sneak the fly into the tiniest of holding areas and I had no action at all. Ditto for the lower Blue, so I'm glad to get back home and should be on the Eagle tomorrow after picking up some data at the county offices.
6/23: SOME COMMENTS ON WATER CONDITIONS: Here's what I saw on the trip to Aspen today. Eagle is coming down and running very clear. Colorado is a mess - looks like cocoa. Roaring Fork is visible 1.5 feet down, but fishing well (see diary below). Crystal is way out of shape. Lower Frying Pan is murky but fishable. 6/23: ROARING FORK IN GLENWOOD: It was a sterling day! Was tied up doing some techie work in Aspen & Basalt, so had only an extra hour to spend on some river before heading to Eagle for more of the same. So raced back to Glenwood & pulled off at my favorite parking place - got out of the car - looked down at a nice eddy & decided it was worth trying.
Started off with a standard rig of bead head prince up front and a large killer caddis at the end. Dead drifting a nymph got ugly fast. The water's 5 feet over normal summer levels and the weeds managed to collect & detach three sets of nymphs rapidly - all without a single strike. So I tied on a prince up front and a gold bead head black wooley bugger at the end in an effort to impart some action and get the fly out of the weeds..
Immediately the sun started shining brighter. Strike followed strike and rainbows were landed one after another. It was tough to get the bugger down to a perfect depth, but when it finally got there, dynamite!
This was great and it was an interesting lesson. Although the rainbows on the Eagle (less than 40 miles away) are not wild about the bugger, the Fork rainbows went wild. Plus - the forward fly attracted its share of fish as well.
So in about an hour of fishing I suspect there were 20-25 strikes and/or fish released, which is a great day by any criteria. I'll remember this one for a long time.
6/25: GORE CREEK PONDS: Gore Creek is running very clear, but still not wadable due to high levels. So I headed out to the ponds around 4:00 after a miserable day of not solving a bunch of programming problems. There was a bit of surface feeding going on, but I stuck with the old dependable nymph (today a gray hare's ear with a bit of flashback (#18)).
It proved to be an immediate hit and I landed 6 small/medium brookies right off the bat. Shortly the wind came up and a thunderstorm moved towards the area so I lit out on the bike for home, arriving just before the heavy rain hit. Will try another section of creek tomorrow night and the larger pond which I didn't have time for during this session.
6/25: EAGLE RIVER - VARIOUS LOCATIONS: Programming went better this morning so I rewarded myself with a whole afternoon of fishing. I did something a bit illegal, but it was worthwhile and educational. As many of you who fish this area know, the upper Eagle was a mess for many years in the 70's and 80's due to seepage from the Gilman Mine. Back in those early days I trekked to the Beldon area and looked for fish amongst the orange streamside rocks. Few were to be seen although I did scare up one or two in a couple of miles of seeking.
So I went back there today for another look see - after lots of work has been done to the clean up the mine. A three mile hike up the tracks (through the locked gate) revealed that there is still a little bit of orange stuff around, but not nearly as much as the last time I passed that way.
Casting near the mine outflow turned up several healthy brookies. They must be invulnerable to everything nasty! And as I walked and fished from time to time downstream I hooked and released more brookies and some very nice browns - and then at the last run landed one woebegone little rainbow. He was colorless and looked disheveled, but he was a rainbow and this was the furthest upstream I've ever seen one.
So that's some successful cleanup from my standpoint. There's still little sign of riparian insect life, but I suspect it too will come back eventually. It was a happy day for me - and for you.
Later I scrambled off the road near Dowd Junction and released another half dozen browns between 6-14 inches. The river's coming down quickly - too fast for my taste. I want it to be up and roily through July but don't think that's going to happen. Fish that were holding within three feet of the bank last week are now well out in the river. At least the wading's going to be tough through the 4th.
6/29: UPPER, UPPER EAGLE RIVER: It was a weekend day just before the 4th of July holiday, so fearing too many bodies working the better known stretches of streams in the area we opted for a drive to the Upper Eagle near Camp Hale. It proved to be a good choice. Encountered only one other fisherperson all day and he was drowning worms in a pond just off the main stream.
This is a beautiful stretch of small mountain water, albeit a noisy one as it adjoins the rail track between Red Cliff & Leadville. We mountain biked a couple of miles downstream and began working the water with prince and caddis nymphs. With only a few strikes to show for our efforts we changed to a small olive/gray wooley bugger and immediately started catching the larger (not big, but larger) browns that dominate this water.
Fishing and biking our way back up river some caddis & mayfly hatches started and shifting to dries proved somewhat successful, although the buggers still seemed to produce more and better fish. There were lots of fish in the deeper runs and pools, and they are getting spooky despite the light pressure on them. All in all, it was a great day, especially since we had the place to ourselves.
6/30: EAGLE RIVER NEAR MINTURN: Life's always good, but sometimes it's even better than that. This was one of those days though you wouldn't know it from my stats - 8 for 60. Yup. That's eight fish landed & released for roughly 60 strikes.
I know that's a rotten percentage, but it sure was fun getting all those strikes. I was on my own today as my regular fishing partner had some other activities scheduled. So I headed for the junction of I-70 and Highway 24, hopped over the deer fence and started fishing the bottom of Gore Creek. Had a couple of nice fish on with a prince and headed upstream to look at the aquarium. As always, it was full of all sizes of fish paying absolutely no attention to me.
Knowing it was barely worthwhile attempting fishing here during daylight hours I nevertheless dropped the prince in front of an idling fish barely 10 feet across from me. And astonishingly he/she took it. It showed not the slightest interest in fighting, and I quickly hauled in a gorgeous 13 inch cut - fat as a melon. That basically made my day.
A few casts more yielded a 15 inch rainbow to a tiny olive bugger. He quickly ducked into a brush pile and rubbed me off. So I took off up the Eagle on the rail bed and walked a half mile, roughly across from the Forest Service building. Dropping down the bank I started working all the small pocket water eddies by the shore.
It was dumbfounding fishing. Strike followed strike and fish on followed fish on, but few came to shore. Fearing a dull hook I kept changing to others of the same pattern, but nothing seemed to make any difference. It was like the strikes were just slashes by the browns meant to drive the artificial from their feeding lane.
To make this long story shorter I kept this up for a half mile and then did a bit more on the far side of the river. Probably fifty fish struck. There was a decent hatch of large and small stones going on and the fish I suspect took my weird bugger for a stone. For my future reference they definitely preferred the smaller model. It's a standard length nymph hook sized 12. Olive marabou tail and olive body with a dark dun palmering hackle. Steel eyes complete the process.
May substitute this pattern for the black bugger that was so successful on the Roaring Fork last week and I'll try it on Wednesday when I have to go back to Aspen.