Time: 10:00AM – 1:00PM

Location: Edwards rest area; downstream of bridge and then back above to the high bank

Fish Landed: 6

Eagle River 07/30/2015 Photo Album

The life style change was a shock to my system. After spending four days and three nights camping in the wilderness next to the Conejos River, I returned to Denver, and then on Wednesday Jane and I journeyed to Beaver Creek. Our sister and brother-in-law invited us to visit them at their luxurious condo at the Timbers at Bachelor Gulch, and we were grateful to join them. Bell hops, valet parking, maids, and chocolates on the pillows contrast to the extreme with pit toilets, no showers, sleeping in a tent and soup for dinner every night.

Joining our in-laws were the Weekley’s, Gail and Jeff, also from Atlanta, Ga. Jeff was the only member of the group who expressed an interest in fly fishing, so he and I made plans for a morning outing on July 30. The Eagle River flows within a few miles of the Timbers resort, so I targeted that stream as our destination. The reports of the fly shops indicated that the flows dropped to the 300 cfs level, and I know from past experience that fishing on the Eagle can be quite challenging after the run off ends and water levels normalize. Compounding my concern was the weather report which called for clear skies, bright sunshine, and high temperatures in the mid to upper 80’s.

Jeff and I left the condo on Thursday morning by 9AM, and our first stop was the Vail Valley Anglers at Riverwalk in Edwards, CO. Jeff purchased a fishing license and rented waders and boots for our morning on the river. When I asked the salesperson behind the counter about the fishing, he informed me that dry/dropper was working best in the morning and evening. He showed me some attractor dry flies such as chubby Chernobyls, but I declined to purchase since I have quite a few close facsimiles that I tie myself. Next he opened the fly case and pointed to some small flashy nymphs that were probably size 18 or 20. I thanked him for the suggestions, but decided that I had enough options that were close to his choices.

Next Jeff and I drove to the parking area at the Edwards rest stop and prepared to fish. I elected to use my Sage four weight, and I set Jeff up with my Loomis five weight two piece rod. We hiked through the trees to the bridge below the rest area, and then we found a path to the river. Here some trees and bushes blocked our path, so we carefully waded along the edge of the river until we were just above a very tiny island. The river here had some attractive deep pockets, and I wanted to introduce Jeff to fishing this type of water even though navigating the round slimy boulders was quite challenging.

Initially I tied a chubby Chernobyl to Jeff’s line along with a beadhead hares ear nymph, and I demonstrated how to make short upstream casts and then allow the large attractor to drift back while raising the rod and keeping the fly line off the water. He was fairly proficient at this style of fishing immediately, and we observed a fish that repeatedly swam toward the surface to inspect the chubby, but it would not commit to eating. Eventually we decided we were wasting our time with this picky eater, so we moved upstream to the next juicy slot. Because he was receiving refusals to the chubby Chernobyl, I swapped it for a conventional Chernobyl ant.

While Jeff was prospecting with the dry/dropper technique, I began rigging the Sage four weight for myself. I decided to fish dry/dropper with two nymphs, so I knotted a tan Charlie boy hopper to my line and then added a beadhead ultra zug bug and salvation nymph. In the middle of this preparation Jeff called out that he hooked a fish, but before I could even glance toward him, the fish escaped and popped off the Chernobyl and hares ear. Jeff asserted that the fish felt quite heavy as it began to charge downstream, and I was happy that he at least felt the tug of a significant Colorado trout.

I tied another Chernobyl ant to his line and added an ultra zug bug as his dropper, and he resumed prospecting in a very enticing wide deep slot across from his position. I delayed fishing myself, as I watched him make some nice accurate casts to the top of the deep trough. Suddenly on the fifth drift, as the flies began to sweep at the end of the slot, Jeff felt a tug and set the hook. The battle began, and Jeff expertly allowed the valiant fighter to run a bit, and then stripped up some line. The tussle lasted for a few minutes with several runs and counter moves, but eventually Jeff tipped the head of a thirteen inch rainbow above the surface, and I slid the net beneath it. Jeff and I were quite excited that he landed his first fish of the day, and it was a very nice hard fighting rainbow trout.

We exchanged fist bumps, and I moved above Jeff to some three star pockets (Jeff’s spot was five star) along the left bank. I began my typical short upstream casts while keeping my line off the water, and fairly quickly I landed a small brown and a chunky twelve inch brown on the ultra zug bug. Jeff seemed to be enjoying himself in the water below me, so I quickly moved up to the long deep run and tailout below the Edwards bridge. As I began to fan out some longer casts to the wide tail area, I spotted a pair of rises in the riffles just below the bridge where the light transitioned from shadows to sunshine. I took a few steps closer, and lofted several casts to the vicinity of the rising fish, and on the third drift saw the hopper disappear. A swift hook set resulted in a streaking fish, but I halted its downstream progress and managed to steer it to the side and above me. It was not long before I netted a spunky twelve inch rainbow.

I paused and waited for Jeff to catch up. He liked the appearance of the long run and pool, so I allowed him to continue to cover that water while I moved under the bridge to the head of the run on the east side. The seam along the faster current looked ridiculously delicious, but I was unable to attract any residents to my flies. I moved farther along the left bank and dropped a few casts in some marginal small pockets before I reached a deep pocket below some large exposed boulders. This spot was also a five start trout lair, as it was ten feet long and eight feet wide with a huge foam layer covering nearly forty percent of the surface. This was a perfect place for a trout to hide and pick off delicious snacks as they drifted by.

I lobbed a cast above the foam and as it drifted along the edge, the hopper paused, and I set the hook and landed a nine inch rainbow. Upon the release of the rainbow, I tossed another cast to the same area, and once again I set the hook, and this time I landed a small brown trout. Despite the small stature of this fish, it had a huge hump behind its head, so I named it the hunchback of Edwards. One of the nine inch fish snatched the ultra zug bug, and the other nabbed the salvation nymph. I saved the top half of the pool for Jeff, and went back to lead him to it. He appeared beyond the concrete bridge support, and I enticed him to the pool with comments about the certainty of landing a big fish. Unfortunately despite some accurate and repeated casts to the top of the pocket, he did not succeed in landing a fish let alone a lunker.

We exhausted our forward progress along the left side of the river, as we encountered some white water that rushed against a vertical fifteen foot high bank. We retreated to the area just above the bridge and then hiked back to the car. From here we followed the fisherman path back to the river and then hiked east until we reached a run that opened up into a huge long pool. This is probably the prime water on the section of the Eagle River near the Edwards rest area. Another fisherman had waded into the tail of the pool, so I asked if he minded if we fished the top section, and he replied that he was fine with that.

Jeff took the area at the very head of the run, and I began fishing in the midsection. I sprayed twenty casts throughout the run, but the water appeared to be devoid of fish. As this was transpiring, however, I observed some tiny mayflies slowly fluttering up from the surface of the river. The birds also seemed to notice the beginning of a sparse hatch, as they began to swoop back and forth across the river. No surface rises were apparent, so I wondered if perhaps the fish were locked on the subsurface version of the small mayfly that was present. I clipped off the salvation nymph and replaced it with a size 20 Craven soft hackle emerger, and despite my efforts to impart movement as well as fish it dead drift, the fish were not interested.

I could tell Jeff was losing interest, so I quickly made one last attempt to catch a fish from the gorgeous run and pool in front of us. I clipped off the dry/dropper flies, and reconfigured my line with a strike indicator, split shot, salvation nymph and RS2. I covered the middle section of the run with drifts, and after five minutes of effort, I managed to hook and land a nine inch brown that grabbed the salvation nymph as I began to lift and make another cast. I accomplished my goal of landing a fish from the prime run, so we called it quits.

Jeff landed the best fish of the day and hooked another fish that appeared to be of decent size. I managed to land six trout, two rainbows and four browns, although the size was inferior to most of my previous experiences on the Eagle River. I spent quite a bit of time setting up Jeff and pointing him to likely areas, so six fish in three hours was actually respectable. Thursday was more about introducing Jeff to the Eagle River, and I obtained almost as much of a thrill as him when he landed the nice rainbow trout.