Time: 10:15AM – 7:00PM
Location: Eleven Mile Canyon just below Springer Gulch and special regulation water
South Platte River 05/23/2016 Photo Album
My love affair with the South Platte River encountered a small rough patch on Monday. It was another solid day, but I was spoiled by the three previous visits that yielded bountiful quantities of fish and above average size.
I contacted my young friend Danny Ryan to determine whether he was available to join me, and of course I touted the phenomenal days that left me in a state of euphoria on May 12, 13 and 20. Very little arm twisting was required, and Danny texted me that he cleared his calendar and planned to join me on a trip to Eleven Mile Canyon.
I arrived at Danny’s apartment at 7:15, and this enabled us to pass through the entrance gate for Eleven Mile Recreation Area by 9:30. We were about to discover one of the factors that made Monday more challenging and less enjoyable than my previous visits. We slowly drove on the dirt road that snakes along the nine mile length of the river, and once we passed Springer Gulch, the boundary with the catch and release section, every pullout was occupied with one or two vehicles. How could this many fishermen be on the river on a Monday? Does anyone still work in this nation? I speculated with Danny that the South Platte River in South Park is the only river relatively close to Denver that is not affected by early run off, and this explained the hordes of fly fishermen swarming along the upper reaches of the river. The other explanation was that too many people are reading my blog, but I suspect that reason is not likely.
We executed a U-Turn at the parking lot below the dam and returned along the dusty dirt road toward the entrance gate. After two miles we passed the border of the special regulation water, and we continued for another .5 mile. Here we noticed that the gradient increased, and the river passed through a narrows section with huge round boulders and deep plunge pools. This lasted for a short distance, and then the stream bed opened up a bit, and we decided to park and test our skills in this more moderate canyon section.
When I opened the car door, I met a chilly blast of wind, and this weather condition would be a constant irritant over the course of the entire day except for the evening period after 4PM. I elected to wear my Adidas pullover along with my raincoat as a second layer windbreaker. There were a few brief windows of sunshine, but overcast skies and a chilly breeze predominated for most of the day. I never experienced much success fishing after a cold front moved through an area, and Monday’s weather seemed to be one of those days. Certainly the atmosphere was cooler and drier than what Steve and I faced on Friday May 20. I blame the slower action and smaller fish on the combination of more adverse weather and crowds of fishermen forcing us to accept a secondary stream section.
Nevertheless Danny and I persisted. Experimenting with fishing the unregulated portion of Eleven Mile Canyon was actually an idea I pondered on Friday, but I was reluctant to suggest it to Steve when the highly desirable segment of the catch and release was open and unoccupied. I did well in the Happy Meadows area, another section open to bait fishermen, so I was convinced that I could catch fish in the section of Eleven Mile where standard regulations applied. The crowded circumstances of Monday forced me to test my theory.
Beautiful Brown Trout
Danny and I both began fishing with dry/dropper configurations. In my case I tied a fat Albert, ultra zug bug, and beadhead hares ear to my line; and I began to prospect all the usual locations that could harbor trout that evaded the bait and spin fishermen over the weekend. It took twenty minutes, but eventually I was on the board with a nice twelve inch brown trout. At eleven o’clock I spotted a few blue winged olives hovering over the stream, so I swapped the hares ear for a soft hackle emerger. Between our starting time of 10:15 and our lunch break at noon, I landed six trout, and all were brown trout. Three of my catch chose the soft hackle emerger as their food source, and the other three were attracted to the ultra zug bug.
Danny Prospects a Promising Run
After lunch Danny and I continued our progress upstream, and we actually passed under the bridge at Springer Gulch and fished the very bottom section of the special regulation area up until 3PM. At this time we bumped into another fishermen, so we reversed and returned to the car. During the early afternoon session, I abandoned the soft hackle emerger, as it ceased to deliver results, and instead I reverted to the beadhead hares ear. My lineup therefore consisted of the fat Albert indicator and the ultra zug bug and beadhead hares ear. The fish counter ratcheted up to ten during this time period, and my netted fish included a husky fifteen inch rainbow. Hooking and landing this fish was clearly the highlight of my day. I angled a short cast around a huge boulder to a narrow deep slot, and after a very brief drift I lifted to make another cast. This action apparently looked like escaping food to the rainbow, and it struck the beadhead hares ear.
Dave’s Best on the Day
Once we returned to the car, we decided to make another move toward the gate, and this time we found a small pullout next to the river just southeast of the single tunnel. Once again we applied our dry/dropper technique to water that was similar to the section fished earlier. I managed to add five additional fish to my tally, but these fish were smaller on average, with one or two reaching the twelve inch measurement. Since Danny works long hours, he wished to take advantage of a rare fishing day, and this motivated us to continue fishing until 7:30.
Beadhead Hares Ear Performed
Over the last hour I endured several refusals to the fat Albert, so I theorized that the fish were focusing their attention of surface food. In conjunction with this logic I decided to experiment with some dry flies that were more natural in appearance. I cast a light gray size 16 deer hair caddis in a nice pool with no response, and then I switched to a light olive size 12 stimulator. Neither of these options generated any interest, so apparently my hypothesis was off base. Danny meanwhile persisted with the dry/dropper arrangement and managed to net a few small fish on the hares ear and salad spinner.
In conclusion I ended my day with fifteen landed fish, and that sounds fairly decent. Consider however that I fished for nearly eight hours, and this translates to a catch rate of two fish per hour, and that is fairly average. In addition the size of the fish was beneath my experience on each of the three previous trips to the South Platte River. On a positive note I managed double digit fish on May 23, which is a decent accomplishment for a stream, when most of Colorado is in the early stages of run off. Also I spent my day in a beautiful canyon with my friend Danny who I had not fished with since March. Danny also achieved a double digit fish count day, so in retrospect it was a fun and productive day.
Trout Landed: 15