My new friend Phil Echelman and hit the river hoping, in vain, it would warm up at least a little bit. With the wind setting in early afternoon, windchill set in to make things worse.
Fishing began a bit slow, I started with a Copperbari and teased a fish to flash but that was it. I decided to add my a small purple something from a tenkara fly swap and promptly hooked up with a acrobatic rainbow that I lost to bad know. Since it looked like they were into the small stuff, I tied on my old friend the RS2 as a dropper and things got a bit more interesting, hooking another fish or two.
We moved downstream around the bend and started working some interesting looking runs and pockets I knew were holding fish. Remember I mentioned it was BWO kinda day? Bingo, around noon I started seeing noses of some nice fish come up and picking up little sailboat like BWO duns off the surface. I watched a few them floating through the seam just to be picked up leisurely by a trout. I cast my Copperbari into the seem, kept a tight line to drift the kebari as high as possible in the column and promptly hooked up and realized that those were not the same trout I was catching during the Summer in various creeks, those were trout with shoulders from a quality tailwater; well fed and strong.
Since the Copperbari was a bit too heavy, I tied on a green kebari tied with thread and some grizzly hackle that I found at the bottom of my fly box. This made it a bit easier to keep it riding on top and the trout surely approved. I hooked and landed a good number of feisty rainbows and brown trout and Phil joined into the action also. But as suddenly as the hatch started, it ended as quickly.
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| Phil in action... |
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| ... but unfortunately my camera finger was too slow to capture the fish before it slipped back into the river |
The rest of the day left us in search of more trout further downstream, hooking up here and there before the wind and rain had us pack up.
I sure was glad having ventured back to the South Platte for some quality trout before "really" cold season.
Tight Lines, -K
PS: Jason - even you would have lost your South Platte skunk today.
Days on the water this yer: 28
