Took off early, heading towards the foot hills of the Front Range.
Oh, I forgot to mention. Leaving the house, the temperature was 60F. Arriving at the stream 40 mins later, it was brrrrrrrrrr 37F. I guess packing the fleece was a very good idea this time.
However, it was a beautiful Colorado day, blue sky everywhere you looked. I rigged up a new line I was tinkering with (7 ft no 4 fluor carbon, 5 ft no 3 fluor carbon plus 5 ft tippet) and tied on a rainbow warrior and a RS2. Realized I forgot my stick-on strike indicators, so I had to go back to the car and see if there was anywhere a strike indicator I could use. I was lucky enough to find a small size "thingy". Soon enough, I hooked up with nice 'bow that fell for the rainbow warrior and was reminded that those South Platte 'bows are quite spunky. I realized that I still have to work on my fish fighting technique with a Tenkara rod... sometimes I do miss that reel!
I switched to a sakasa kebari and but couldn't buy a strike - not sure if it was lack of technique of just wrong fly for the river. The South Platte is a tailwater fishery with small nymphs being typically the ticket but right now I would like to blame lack of success to lack of technique, lol. I also tried to fish with the fly only, no weight, no indicator, but again, years and years of using strike indicators left me a bit doubtful whether I do have the technique to fish without. This is certainly an area I will be focusing on more in the future and try to learn better and simpler fishing techniques.
As it was warming up, I switched to a yellow CDC & Elk, size 16. I figured it would be a good pattern to imitate both Caddis and Yellow Sallies. I also switched lines, using initially a "tapered" fluoro level line (yeah, tapered and level, what was I thinking?) and moving to the Tenkara USA furled tapered line. Had issues casting with that line at first, I was wondering if the fly was too fluffy, the leader too long (5ft) or just, again, lack of technique. It took only a few cast's though to "get" it, the line being wet and having more mass helped also a lot. The wind however did NOT help.
Had to move around quite a bit to find good water for dries since this is mostly a nymph fishing river, but I was able to coax 4 more beautiful bows into taking my flies, all fish were in the 13-15 inch range. This one was a particular beauty!
As it was warming up, I switched to a yellow CDC & Elk, size 16. I figured it would be a good pattern to imitate both Caddis and Yellow Sallies. I also switched lines, using initially a "tapered" fluoro level line (yeah, tapered and level, what was I thinking?) and moving to the Tenkara USA furled tapered line. Had issues casting with that line at first, I was wondering if the fly was too fluffy, the leader too long (5ft) or just, again, lack of technique. It took only a few cast's though to "get" it, the line being wet and having more mass helped also a lot. The wind however did NOT help.
Had to move around quite a bit to find good water for dries since this is mostly a nymph fishing river, but I was able to coax 4 more beautiful bows into taking my flies, all fish were in the 13-15 inch range. This one was a particular beauty!
A few shots of the river today, before to rubber hatch started - I am so glad that Summer is over with no more float tubers on the river...
Fly of the Day: CDC & Elk, yellow, size 16:
Oh, one more thing. Did I mention that it was 90F by the time I got home?
Found your blog via TenkaraUSA. I love it, keep up the great work.
ReplyDeleteThanks, will do!!
ReplyDelete