11/08/12 Blue River Below Green Mountain

11/08/12
Blue River Below GM
Flows 200
10:00 - 3:00

Flows below GM are perfect right now!  Fishing has been good with good sized fish being caught.  It wasn't on fire, but it was decent.  We started the day fishing a 3 nymph rig with a golden stone up top, a copper john, and then a soft hackle pheasant tail.  We managed fish on all 3 for most of the morning, but the bite died down around noon.

So I decided to change it up and put on a good old san juan and managed a few more fish!  My buddy decided to try to swing a double articulated streamer and managed 2 more nice ones!

Overall a great day!  A good mix of browns and bows.  We tried some eggs too, but didn't get any hits.  Fish were still keyed in on bigger flies and they really liked the stonefly patterns and the san juans.  A 20 incher and golden stone were my point flies for the day.  With the water dropping and temps dropping, I can see a decline in stones, but for now, the fish are really keyed in on them!  Remember, even though we fished on the private stretch, the same things will work right below the dam at GM.  Flows are perfect bringing lots of bugs into the riffles so thing big and fish big!

10/14/12 Arkansas Below Pueblo

10/14/12
Arkansas Below Pueblo
Flows 41
8:00 AM - 3:00 PM

Another day down in Pueblo!  My buddy Andy joined me today and I was looking for the fishing to improve compared to yesterday!  We started at Valco again and picked up a few fish at 3 rocks, and we made our way upstream to the gauging station shortly after.  The fishing was still pretty slow like yesterday, but we were getting consistent bites.  Not a fish every cast, but we could pass our rig through some fishy water and eventually pick up a fish.

I was rigged up with a red san juan and 2 midges.  Andy had a red san juan, a soft hackle hare's ear and a midge.

Andy managed this nice bow at the far run at the gauging station.

Later in the day, we moved over to the Water Treatment Plant and caught a few more small guys.  I was starting to get discouraged, and Andy had to leave to go back to Denver so we decided to head over to the dam to see if we could find anything bigger.  The water looked even skinnier here so we decided to call it day.  Andy made his drive back to Denver and I started heading back into town...but I just couldn't resist one more cast at Valco...

I'm glad I stopped!  I ended up finally catching a decent fish above the gauging station.  He took a beadhead olive emerger pattern.

He measured out to 19 in, so certainly not the biggest, but a nice fish when all you've been catching all day is 12 inchers.

Here he is swimming away...

On my way back to the car, I ran into this little fella.  Made me want to tie on a crayfish streamer and see what would happen!

I guess this proves that there's plenty to eat in this river for the big fish!

So...a good end to the day.  Fishing was ok, but not incredible like I've seen it before.  I'll attribute the poor fishing to the low flows and windy conditions rather than my fishing ability.  :)

If you're going to head down, stock up on midges, mayflies, bwo's and trico's.  We witnessed an amazing trico spinner fall at 11:00.  Fish were rising to them, but took our small black size 20 midges as well.  I imagine a drowned trico spinner would get lots of hits too.  I tried a z wing caddis, but had zero hits on it...looks like the caddis are pretty much done.  Moving into winter, bwo's and midges will be the go to flies.

03/11/12 S. Platte Dream Stream

03/11/12
S. Platte Dream Stream
7:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Flows at 112

I didn't want to go...I knew it was going to be crowded...I knew it was going to be windy...

A friend talked me into it. At the last minute, we decided to get up early and head to the Dream Stream. I'm by no means a fair weather fisherman, but considering the nice weather and the anticipation of the rainbow spawn, I knew it was going to be a busy day on the water...After my last trip down, I was hoping that some of the bigger fish had made their way up. Unfortunately, they are still taking their sweet time making their move.

Lots of these...


A little brownie...


More little guys...


A few coloring up and getting ready for the spawn...


The fishing was good and relatively consistent. Lots of 8-14 inchers in just about every bend. Unfortunately there were also fisherman in almost every bend. We were the 6th car in the lot at 7:30, and we could see that the lot was full by 9:00.

Fish were taking egg patterns, baetis patterns, and san juan worms. Red is the key. The water is slightly stained, but visibility is still very good. Fish an eggs and bacon set up and you will catch fish.

We fished our way down to the outlet, but it was so crowded that we decided to head back since we couldn't find a spot to fish. We were within sight of the outlet, and it looked like people were lined shoulder to shoulder. We didn't see a lot of catching going on, and we only spotted a few fish, but nothing of size. At the end of the day, we did hear from some other fisherman that there was a group of guys that were hole hogging the outlet that caught quite a few fish over 20 in. In a way I'm glad we didn't make it all the way down...those guys were in that hole all day long, so we wouldn't have had a chance to fish it, but it would have been cool to see where the fish are staging getting ready for their move up the river.

Towards the end of the day, we decided to goof around and fish the gauging hole and the bridge hole. We could see numerous fish and the lots of spin fishing guys chucking gear and not getting any bites. I saw a few risers so I tied on an eric's midge and managed to land 3 little bows. It was fun catching fish on dries again!

After a while, the hardware chuckers left so we put our eggs and bacon rigs through there and managed a few more fish.

My trophy for the day was this nice 17 in. brown.


So...would I go again? Well...yes. The fishing is good, but I would get there early. Unless they bump the flows again, the big guys are still going to stick around the outlet without moving up. They need the higher flows to feel more protected on their journey upstream to spawn.

I would also try to go on a weekday. The weekends are brutal and the pressure keeps the big fish weary.