Birthday Tenkara

I think I am getting wiser the older I get. I finally realized that I probably shouldn't work on my birthday and instead take the day off and go fishing. Life is too short to let such a opportunity go unused.

We have had some really odd weather around here lately. Spring has been slow to come and I measured this last Monday 10" of new wet sloppy SNOW in my backyard. Needless to say all of it was gone Wednesday. 

Again, I kept scratching my head where to fish. The South Platte around Deckers dropped flows down to 200cfs but I really didn't feel like fishing the "big" river. Bear Creek was too high and probably muddy from last night's rain. Clear Creek - forget it, it's in run-off mode. South Boulder Creek looked great, about 80cfs. Of course, halfway through the day the boys at the dam opened the valves to 101cfs... 

Got there around 9am (hey, I am not getting out of bed at 5am on my birthday!), first car in the parking lot (yeah!) got ready and hiked down to the river. Flows looked good, water was pretty clear. This time I hiked in for a while, about 1.6 miles as per my phones GPS. It was pretty hard to walk by all that great looking water but my plan is to hike-in and fish-out. 

Fishing started out pretty slow, but once it warmed-up a bit things changed. Not a big number fish day but they kept me entertained throughout the day. After lunch-time I started bumping into other anglers, more showed-up the closer I got to trail that leads out of the canyon. Glad I got here early; I was surprised how many folks were out fishing on a week-day. Don't they have to work???

Enjoy the pics!