Sunday, February 12, 2006 - South Platte River, De

Sunday, February 12, 2006 - South Platte River, Deckers.
Flows about 117 cfs, clear water in the morning, slightly off color by midday. Weather was beautiful – bright blue sky, temps about 45 degrees – very cold in the shade.

Fished with Chad again down in Deckers. After the previous weeks good luck I was ready to go. We met down at the first dirt road parking lot at around 11am. Chad had Quinn, so it was going to be a quick trip – which was fine because I wanted to get home too. I jumped in at the riffle right next to the head of the parking lot. Since the water was higher, this run looked pretty nice. As I was rigging up a streamer and nymph rig I could see the fish moving in the riffle. The water was gin clear and you could see sandy run areas between strips of rocks and green weeds – the fish would dash in and out.

I hooked an 11-inch rainbow right off that crashed the streamer, soon after I hooked a 12-inch rainbow that took the size 18 zebra midge. After that I was done. I proceeded to lose two green secret weapon streamers – not sure how, I think it was because of the tippet (the Wal Mart brand). After re-rigging twice I fished a nice little run on a bend. Chad had said he caught a huge fish there on Monday – but both of us worked the bend and the run and got nothing. Soon after I moved down to between the bridges – where again, I couldn’t scare up anything. I fished the streamer hard, but got nothing. I did see one small fish (maybe 7 inches) hit the streamer twice. We actually went back down the dirt road, but still could catch anything in Chad’s favorite spot – the Rock Garden. We decided to head home around 2:30.