Time: 10:30AM – 3:30PM
Location: Eleven Mile Canyon
South Platte River 04/30/2021 Photo Album
I was weary of somewhat frustrating hatch matching trips and anxious for some active prospecting with dry/droppers. High temperatures were forecast to reach into the upper sixties near Lake George, CO, and the flows continued at a steady 56 CFS, so I paid a visit to the open water of Eleven Mile Canyon. The area that beckoned me was open to all types of fishing including bait, but previous visits convinced me that decent fish remained in spite of the added pressure and harvesting of trout.
Water at the Start
I arrived at 10:15AM and prepared to fish by 10:30. My preparation included assembling my Sage four weight, and the temperature when I began enabled me to forego any outer layers besides my fishing shirt. Friday was shaping up as a spectacular spring day. In fact, the entire day evolved into a bright blue sky and sunny affair with minimal cloud cover, and the temperature soared to the seventy degree mark. Would the fishing be equally as magnificent?
Beast for This Stretch of River
Salvation Nymph
I focused on pocket water during most of my time on the water, and it paid off. I began with a fat Albert, hares ear nymph and salvation and landed two decent trout in the first half hour. Both consumed the salvation, and one was a feisty rainbow, and the other was a brown trout. After the first hour I began to notice small blue winged olives dancing above the surface, so I swapped the salvation for a sparkle wing RS2. This proved to be a mistake, although the RS2 yielded two trout that grabbed the emerger on the swing, I became disillusioned with the RS2, when I covered some very attractive deep runs and pockets with no action to report.
Prime Deep Run By Exposed Boulders
I ate lunch at noon, and after lunch I decided to return to the salvation/hares ear combination. In spite of the sparse hatch, noticeable rises were a rarity, What a move! Conventional wisdom would suggest that I imitate the prevalent insect, and in this case it was the baetis, but the trout seemed to prefer the salvation nymph. Perhaps the extra weight of the larger and heavier nymph explained the contrarian performance of the salvation.
Watch Band on Back
Likely Productive
For the next couple hours I probed every significant deep pocket and especially seams along deep runs, and I escalated the fish count from four to twelve. Most of the landed trout were browns in the twelve to thirteen inch range, but I also tussled with several muscular rainbows that measured thirteen to fourteen inches. Deep runs and seams, where the current entered pools, were prime producers, and I focused my efforts in those types of stream locations. This manner of fly fishing was exactly the type of carefree prospecting to nonselective fish that I envisioned on the last day of April.
Afternoon Prize
By 2:30PM I ran out of upstream real estate, as I bumped into a trio of newly arrived fishermen, who unknowingly high holed me. I marched back down the road to a downstream spot that featured another stretch of large exposed boulders and pocket water. I was hoping that similar stream structure would translate to success that matched the early afternoon. I applied the same techniques here that served me well earlier, but the magic disappeared. I managed to land three small brown trout to increase the fish count, but I covered some very attractive deep runs and pockets with no success. I am not sure whether to attribute the change in catch rate to the time of day, the different section of the river, or the increased presence of other anglers.
Lovely Run
A fifteen fish day on the South Platte River was just what the doctor ordered. I faced minimal indecision about fly choice, and simply fished the water with a three fly dry/dropper and enjoyed some respectable trout on a gorgeous spring day in a spectacular setting in the Rocky Mountains. Life was good.
Fish Landed: 15