Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 Blue River, Silverthorne

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 Blue River, Silverthorne
Night fishing - evening started out rainy, but cleared up - overcast around 65 degrees. Water was off color due to heavy drainage up by the outlets - above outlets it was clear and cfs about 75 cfs of so.

Ok, I'll make this short and sweet since this was over two weeks ago. Chad and I hit the Blue - we were going to try the Palmer Gulch area, but the drive was rainy and we were anxious to get on the river - so we hit a section just south of there (by the pull out that loops behind the hills).

The area looked great, but the water was slightly off color (from all the rain we had just got) - we could see fish taking off the top along the shorelines. We started out fishing a deep pool and then working our ways up and back. I couldn't find anything. I tried everything too - from dries to nymphs. The water looked great with lots of fishable areas. I managed to hook one 4 inch fish before heading down river to see what Chad was doing.

He had just hooked into a huge fish that had run him down some rapids - he hooked him on a huge dry fly that he was flipping under a waterfall. Chad said he caught only 4 fish through this section.

It started getting dark, so we headed up towards the dam - hoping the water would be clearer. It wasn't, it was even more chocolate. I worked from under the bridge to just about half way through the outlets when I realized the cause of the dark water. The small stream that flows between the outlets was dumping about 100 cfs of dirt into the water - I jumped above this mess and found the water was crystal clear. The problem with water this clear is that all the fish can see you. I had no luck the rest of the night. Chad said he hooked 3 pigs down closer to the dam.

We were home by 10:30!

Friday, July 07, 2006

Striper Fishing - Narragansett, Rhode Island

Wednesday & Thursday, July 5-6, 2006 - Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island
Beautiful weather - clear, about 80 degrees

Wednesday
Wednesday was interesting - we started out by fishing the docks (as the bait shop had suggested) in the morning, but the tide was rolling out and it was the "wrong" tide. I started by chumming the water with huge clam bellies (as the bait shop had suggested). Of course there isn't a whole lot to see - the clams basically drift to the bottom (which you can't see), but I was hoping it was working by drawing the attention of some fish. Soon, the stripers were actually coming within site and taking the clams in fast smacks. I had tried earlier in the week to fly fish for stripers, but there is no "good" places to fish for them unless you have a boat. So, I stuck to bait fishing as it was my best option for catching fish.

We proceeded to tie on some clam necks and drift them down like they were chum. We had several hits and landed a few - none were bigger than 16 inches or so. They were a lot of fun fighting on a big 7 wt fly rod. We decided to head back to the cottage and wait for a higher tide. Later in the day we (my two uncles) returned and we proceeded to catch a few more fish. The largest was about 18 inches - but most were about 14 but very fat.

Thursday
The guys were ready to fish on Thursday and we went to the pier at the perfect time - with an incoming tide. We started chumming again and the fish were present. They seemed to love the structure of the piers that ran right beside the main channel (between a sand bar in the middle and the piers). We had seen a guy anchored on the sand bar fishing the incoming tide and he hooked into and landed a 29.5 inch striper - it was a keeper (28 inches is the limit). To me it looked like a 24 incher, but of course the guy wasn't going to toss that big of a fish back. We went right to work - hooking fish after fish until the tide peeked and started to turn over to slack tide. The fish were fun, all about 16 inches +/- - some smaller like 12 inches but all were fun to land. In all we managed about 2 dozen stripers between 3 people. Not bad for fishing from a pier!

The two weeks were a lot of fun, besides fishing, we went clamming several times, and crabbing a couple of times. We also bought lobsters straight off the dock and cooked them up, had linguine and clam sauce and had an amazing clam/seafood chowder that was the tastiest I have ever had. It was nice to relax for a couple weeks.