Good News Travels Fast

After a call with Shoe on Saturday night, he was packed and on his way Sunday with Willi in tow. They met up with Eric and I at the lake and we proceeded to have a great day for rainbows. I couldn't get the hoppers working on Sunday but the nymphing rig was producing and there seemed no reason to deviate from the hot subsurface action. As afternoon arrived, Eric decided to leave and Shoe and Willi curiously headed to another lake after a banner day, but I decided to hang around and see what would happen that evening. The nymphing continued to pay off but the sheer number of caddis landing on the surface of the lake later in the evening had fish sporadically rising. I switched over to a dry for a while but there were so many naturals on the water my caddis patterns were ignored. The massive volume of bug life descending on the water was incredible. It was really something to see. I called it a day as the sun waned and was thankful to have such a beautiful day of fishing with friends.

Big Bows On Hoppers

Eric and I made it out for a few hours to tempt rainbows with hopper patterns out on the plains. The fish are looking up for them with some consistency and these are the biggest trout either of us have ever had regularly rising to a dry. The good grasshopper populations this season are paying off in opportunistic trout paying attention to the surface.

Fast Float On Labor Day

Adam and I headed to the river for a float on a different section. We talked about it as an all day trip, however neither of us took into account the 2600 cfs flows at the time and our section got a little faster than we planned. Typically at 500 cfs it could be a nice float length. At least this lower section had some high desert beauty around and made for interesting scenery. We were finding fish but I boffo'ed every hookset or lost the fish when I was casting. I even broke one off in an over exuberant Jimmy Houston like display of way too much rod backbone. Adam did manage to boat one lone rainbow but it was a slow day overall. We were hoping for the hopper bite but it did not materialize. At the take out the hoppers were all over the place but apparently the wind wasn't strong enough to be salting the water with them. We talked about trying some other water on the way home but were both tired and called it a day.

River Scenery

Adam casting to a large eddy

An uncooperative rainbow

Stillwater Drift Boating

Adam was intrigued with my earlier success this month hitting lower lakes before you would traditionally think they would cool off temperature wise and warm up for fishing action. We launched the drifty and had a grand day of nymph fishing under indicators. We seemed to be constantly hooked up. Midges were taking the majority of fish with some PT takes mixed in. Quite a number of cutthroats on this trip too in comparison to earlier in the year.

My first fish of the day had hooking damage and a large piece of the gill plate missing. Poor guy was still a pretty looking brown though.

Some of the nicer fish we were finding


Adam fighting a brown

Releasing the brown

We kept getting "Colorado'ed" by other boats

More browns kept cooperating

Here is a pair of late day doubles, Adam unfortunately won large fish in each matchup.

Adventures With Floyd

Floyd and I headed into the mountains with thoughts of trying a lake known to have golden trout residing in its clear, cold waters. We hit a little snag though along the road (or lack there of) to the lake as it got a little muddier and rutted than we wanted to try to pass through.

We put plan B into action and got the float tubes on a different lake that neither of us had ever tubed on before.

The fishing was a bit slow and I had a couple hits but landed nothing. I explored an old mining site for a little while located on the edge of the lake while Floyd found one nice brookie.

It was decided a move was in order to get into more trout. Our plan C hit pay dirt and we had a fast paced evening of catching trout on various dries thrown on 3 weights. The top water bite got particularly good later in the evening. We found it hard to depart but we had both had more than enough good fish on the evening and with the cold evening shadows of the mountains dropping the high country temperature, the trip back down to the plains seemed in order.

A couple of the trout we were able to find. We both had some rather nice splake in the 15 inch range taking dries. That was a nice surprise at this lake and they definitely were the best fighters in the bunch.