04/13/12 Inlet at Green Mountain

04/13/12
Inlet at Green Mountain
2:00 - 3:00 PM

Before heading to Vail, I noticed that nobody was fishing the inlet at GM, so I pulled over and made the hike down to the inlet.  The water was stained and rising, and it didn't look promising...

I decided not to change up my rig from fishing below GM and lazily made a cast into a seam behind some rocks.  Immediately after my indicator made a swirl in a whirlpool, it dove under water and shot upstream!  Fish on!

What a surprise!  A nice little chunk of a rainbow.  Not too long, but it had plenty of fight.  Another cast into the same spot and a little longer drift yielded another, and another!

The fishing was hot!  Even though the water was dirty, the fish are stacked at the inlet and feeding heavily.

No monsters, but consistent action with hard fighting rainbows is always fun!  I did have to change up my flies as there are quite a few snags in this section, but fish were eating everything.  Large beadhead flies as a lead, and drop an egg, san juan, or a smaller attractor nymph and all flies would catch fish.  An orange bead egg was also an extremely effective pattern.
All fish were rainbows, and all gave a great fight.  If you can get a long cast out, you can systematically fish the seams and bubble lines without standing in the water, but with the way the water is moving, getting a good drift is a little tough.  Luckily these fish were very forgiving to poor presentations! 

Since GM is filling slowly, access at the inlet will remain good for a couple more weeks, but as the water warms up, these fish are going to make their way into deeper water and the wade ability of this stretch will diminish greatly, so get out there while it's good!

08/21/11 Blue River

Float Trip
Blue River Below Green Mountain Res.
Flows: 500
Time: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

So we decided to have another go at the Blue. With flows down to about half of what they were the last time we went, we figured on this trip taking a little longer with some more fishing in between.

Again, we put in at Blue Valley Acres and with a quick trip to the take out, we were on the water by 9:00 AM. We only saw 1 other boat come through when we were about to take off, they must have put in at first light.

Fishing was good through the private stretch, many fish were taking hopper, stimulators and adams on the top as well as a few copper johns, pat's rubber legs and stonefly imitations.

Again, at the 1st diversion, we tied up our usual fare for Jurassic and Jones Ranch. Right at the 1st diversion, I hooked up a huge bow and I was able to bring it up to the surface, only for it to make a run to the rocks, a few short minutes later he snapped me off. Oh, if I didn't say it before, use at least 3X tippet through here. These fish aren't as leader shy and you're gonna need the heavier tippet.

With the flows being low (ideally, you want to float between 600 and 1,000) we figured we might get hung up a few times on some of the rocks and diversions. And of course, there was the horrible sound of the toons scraping over some rocks. Nothing too bad, but any lower and you'd get stuck pretty easily.

No real surprises or monster bows this trip, but fish were definetly bigger than our last trip.

On thing that we did different, (which was a mistake) was to use the Gore Canyon put in. We thought that it would be easier to move the boat up the raft slide instead of trying to carry it over the ditch and the small foot bridge. This proved extremely difficult considering the pitch of the steps and even with 3 people, it was a chore. Do yourself a favor and use the 1st new take out instead of floating to the Gore Canyon put in. The water is shallow on the way there and there isn't much fishing to speak of. There is no structure in the water and you are fishing the banks pretty hard with streamers just to get follows from small fish.

But, a day on the water is always a good day!