Time: 11:30AM – 3:30PM

Location: A couple miles below the dam.

Big Thompson River 04/18/2022 Photo Album

I reviewed the weather and flows on several Front Range streams for a trip on Monday, April 18, 2022, and I eventually settled on the Big Thompson River below Lake Estes near Estes Park. The air temperature was 41 degrees at the start of my day, but it eventually rose to the low sixties. For most of my time on the river it was sunny and windy, and I wore my fleece hoodie and light down coat along with the New Zealand billed cap with earflaps.

Pocket Water Ahead

I began my search for gullible trout with a yellow fat Albert plus a beadhead hares ear nymph on a dropper and beneath that an ultra zug bug. In the early going I landed a small brown trout that nipped the ultra zug bug, but then I suffered an extended fish drought. I paused for lunch at noon with the fish count stalled on one.

On the Board

Nice Wide Pool

After lunch I continued through some promising water with no results, so I changed my strategy. I concluded that the large size 8 fat Albert was too impactful for the 33 CFS flows. While eating my lunch, I noticed a few random rises in a nice pool with a deep center cut run, so I switched to a peacock hippie stomper trailing a CDC BWO. I tossed out a cast, and a sip and set produced a brown trout for number two on the day. I wanted to persist with the CDC BWO, but even with the leading hippie stomper it was difficult to track in the faster water, so I swapped the olive for a size 16 olive-brown deer hair caddis. The caddis nailed a fish, but then it became the object of refusals, and I was forced to reevaluate my strategy.

Nice Size for Big T

For the remainder of the afternoon I switched between the CDC BWO and the caddis and boosted the fish count to twelve. In many cases, the caddis produced refusals, but at least it allowed me to identify the position of a target catch. I then re-armed with the small CDC BWO, and fooled the previously picky eater. This model did not yield fast and furious action, but steady fly fishing was nonetheless a result. I was proud of my ability to accomplish a degree of success with the “bait and switch” strategy.

Another Fine Pool Beckons

I noticed only very sparse blue winged olive activity between 1PM and 2:30PM, but even that disappeared over the final hour. I tried a yellow size 14 stimulator in conjunction with the stomper during this time period, but it was not an answer.

A twelve fish day under cool and windy conditions with virtually no cloud cover was very satisfactory. The Big Thompson remains a solid return candidate during the pre-runoff time frame.

Fish Landed: 12