Time: 2:00PM – 5:30PM
Location: Upstream from Philadelphia Mills Access and then from trailer park upstream east of Idaho Springs
Fish Landed: 13
Clear Creek 08/15/2011 Photo Album
I enjoyed the success on Clear Creek, and I was caught up at work, so I decided to leave work at noon on Monday and return to the water Dan and I fished on Sunday. I arrived around 1:30 and was on the stream at around 2PM. I remained on the frontage road and fished water upstream from where Dan and I ended on Sunday. This water was faster and required more edge fishing than the previous day.
I began with the gray Letort hopper and had a few refusals before finally hooking a fish. Eventually I added a beadhead hares ear and worked my way upstream mostly fishing the pockets and slots along the south bank. By 3PM I’d covered a quarter mile or so and landed 8 browns between 7 and 10 inches long. Most of the browns took the hopper, but several grabbed the hares ear. It seemed the hares ear worked better in the faster runs and the hopper produced in the slower water along the edge.
Small Clear Creek Brown Trout
I spotted one green drake shortly after I began fishing and tied on a green drake I’d bought at Taylor Creek Fly Shop in Basalt, but this didn’t produce. Next I tried a comparadun I’d tied with an olive CDC body. I promptly hooked this in a spruce tree on my backcast and had to tear it off along with a large portion of my tippet. The green drake ploy didn’t seem to work, so I tried a yellow Letort hopper and BHHE.
At 3PM I decided to go back to the car and drive east beyond Idaho Springs. I exited I70 at the last exit going east and drove on the frontage road over a hill. I came to an intersection with a trailer park ahead of me and a dirt road that turned left and went underneath I70. I liked the idea of fishing Clear Creek on the north side of the interstate so I parked along the dirt road and went down the rocky bank. I immediately caught a couple small browns plus a few too small to count in some tiny pockets tight to the rocky bank.
Interstate 70 is 50 Yards Away
Action slowed however as I reached the overpass and some sweet water around the bend north of the overpass produced only refusals. I switched to a size 14 olive body caddis and this enabled me to land three more browns as I covered quite a bit of water north of the Idaho Springs landscape maintenance facility.