Time: 2:00PM – 5:00PM

Location: Downstream from Hidden Valley exit 0f I70 along bike path

Fish Landed: 8

Clear Creek 10/3/2011 Photo Album

The gray parachute hopper produced for half an hour on Clear Creek during my last visit and worked great on Tarryall Creek so I was anxious to return to Clear Creek with a fresh supply. During my last visit I vowed to cross to the opposite bank and fish back to the parking lot since I felt the stream flows remained high and few fishermen ventured to the bank next to I70.

I finished closing August at work and quickly logged off my computer and drove home, ate lunch and tossed all my fishing gear in the Santa Fe. I left the house at 12:45 and arrived at the parking area near the Hidden Valley exit off I70 by 1:30. By the time I put on my waders and rigged my rod and hiked down the path, crossed the stream and then hiked down the shoulder of I70 it was 2PM.

Next to Interstate 70

I tied on a parachute hopper and immediately had a refusal and then experienced a momentary hook up and then foul hooked a brown. I had lots of action but nothing to show for it. I continued working all the likely pockets and gradually landed a few fish, but there were more refusals than fish to show for my efforts. After I’d landed three fish, I decided to try something different and replaced the hopper with a lime green trude and seeing a few small mayflies in the air prompted me to add a RS2. In a nice narrow pool next to the bank I spotted three or four fish rising sporadically and after numerous casts got a 10 inch brown to grab the RS2.

Clear Creek Brown

This combination however was not working consistently so I tried a Chernobyl ant trailing the RS2. This caught one brown on the RS2, but that was it, and I wasn’t even seeing refusals to the Chernobyl so I returned to the gray parachute hopper. It was around this time with a fish count of five that somehow my plastic canister that contained my large dry flies and attractors fell out of my front pack. I immediately dropped my rod so I could use both hands to scoop the plastic container from the stream. In the process of doing all this I broke the rope that connects my wading stick to my belt. I recovered my rod and reel and then began looking for the rope and clip that previously attached my stick to my belt. Eventually I realized it was still on my belt, but it slid around behind me.

I looked for a means to reattach the wading staff to my belt, but didn’t see a solution, so I proceeded upstream casting the parahopper to likely pockets and wedging the stick in rocks as I moved along. This worked fairly well as I landed three more browns among numerous refusals. After ten minutes of fishing I spotted audio cables among the jumble of rocks along the creek bank. The cables were coiled and held by a twisty so I removed the twisty and used it to connect the remaining rope to the wading staff. Then as a safety net I used the audio cables to connect the stick to the belt in case the twisty couldn’t handle the stress. This setup sufficed until I returned to the car at around 5PM.

Makeshift Tether Found in I70 Debris