Saturday, May 12, 2007

Saturday, May 12, 2007 - Blue River above Dillon

Saturday, May 12, 2007 - Blue River above Dillon
Flows were about 175cfs and the water was slightly tea colored.

The wife got a massage for mother's day and Cabo, Avelyn and I had to wait out some rain. After the massage the wife dropped the dog and I off at the bridge and went shopping for a couple of hours. We skipped the actual river and jumped in just as it dumps in. The reservoir was pretty low, you had to walk about 100 yards from the delta to the actual reservoir. I saw a few fisherman working the river, so skipping ahead was risky (I thought that maybe the number of rods would triple as I got closer to the inlet), but there was no one actually fishing down by the reservoir area.

The weather was clearing, and not 5 minutes after I hit my destination the sun came out at full force and it started getting warm. It was probably close to 65 degrees when the sun was out, but the big fluffy clouds dropped the weather 5 degrees every time one came by. The water was cold, cold enough to make the dog shiver - which only happens once in a blue moon. The water running down the slopes to the reservoir was fast and shallow - so I headed right to the area where it dumps in and was slightly flatter. The main channel looked nice, but I could see that there was some flats areas where the water was 2 feet deep and then dropped off quickly to 6 foot deep areas. I knew that the fish would be in the deeper areas, usually in schools. Of course the nympher in me wanted to catch them on nymphs, which I did manage to hook two and almost land one (a SDR). The rainbows seemed frisky and small, but that was fine. I switched to my microstreamer pattern reluctantly. I casted into the drop offs and hooked and landed 4 frisky rainbows. qall were maybe 13 inches, not overly fat, and almost completely bleached out and all silver. They all seem to have pouty snouts, smaller than an average rainbow. Their snouts seemed too small for your their faces - it just seemed odd. All fish took the streamer hard. All were offered up to Cabo for a look, she "tried" to bite them all (she's a big wimp - not much of an attempt, she's more afraid of them!), then she looked for them as they plopped in the water and disappeared. She'd look for them underwater for about a minute or two and then give up.

Jen was going to meet me at the boat ramp around 3 - 3:30, so I started walking through the mud over. These flats were all silt and were only about 2 feet or less deep for about 40 yards out. When Jen showed up it was nice and warm so we decided to get the kayak out and give Avi a ride. The kayak takes less than 7 minutes to set up and it is quite stealth on the water. I took her for a ride and then Jen took her for another. Jen took it out by herself. We really need to get that thing out more often. This thing will be awesome for still water fishing - it is stealth and not overly tippy.

That was pretty much my day in a nutshell.