Time: 12:00PM – 3:00PM

Location: Kemp-Breeze, first leased access after Parshall

Fish Landed: 0

Colorado River 07/15/2010 Photo Album

After my poor results on Wednesday, I could not foresee enduring another slow day on the Eagle River, so I decided to cut my losses and drive to the Colorado River near Parshall. The downside to this strategy was that I would spend the morning driving, and once again be on the river during the afternoon. Thursday was once again forecast to be a hot dry clear July day. I had to wait for the dew to dry on my tent before packing it up, so I didn’t leave the campground until around 9:30AM. It was still a two hour drive to the Colorado as I had to go north to I70, then east to Silverthorne, then north to Kremmling, then east to Parshall.

When I arrived at the parking lot, there were quite a few cars there. I immediately applied DEET to ward off the insatiable mosquitoes and then ate my lunch at the picnic table in the center of the parking lot. After lunch I put on my waders and set up my rod and walked to the stream. There were some fishermen near the stretch I like, but enough space for me to enter at the lower end. I began fishing with the yellow Letort hopper trailing a beadhead hares ear. In short order I foul hooked a small brown that refused the hopper, but I set the hook and nailed it with the trailing nymph.

I moved across the river, but was not moving any fish. As I cast repeatedly, I noticed quite a few yellow sallies descending to the water, then taking off again. I decided to tie on a size 16 yellow sally fly, and had no luck with this fly. I caught a natural out of the air in front of me and examined it. It appeared to be larger than a size 16, so I tied on a size 14 2XL lime green trude. This was close in size, but perhaps too dark in color. This didn’t generate any interest, so I found a nice yellow sally imitation with a quill body that I’d tied from A.K. Best’s Flybox book. This was a great looking fly, but again it did not produce.

I was making all these fly changes as I crossed the river to the far side and worked my way up along the right bank covering the water from the deep mid-river run to the south bank. At one point after some strong gusts of wind, I noticed several trout rise, so I decided to fish a double dry fly with the lime green trude in front and a parachute ant on the end. Two trout swirled to the ant, but refused to take it.

I continued working the right side to the top of the sweet area. I did hook a fish that took off down the river toward the top of the nice area, but the fish got off as I tried to turn it and bring it back toward me. Toward late afternoon the sparse yellow sally action slowed down, and I’d reached the end of the area I desired to fish, and it didn’t appear that conditions were going to change, so I called it a day and headed back to Denver. I got skunked on the Colorado River in July.