Friday, Aug 19th, Colorado River

My mom was in town from NC and I decided to take her on a surprise trip up into the mountains - do a little horseback riding, fly fish a little and then she'd end the day at the hot springs with a massage.

The morning started late for us fly fisherman, but early for a 62 year old woman. We left around 6:45, stopped in Silverthorne for some coffee and a donut, then at Cutthroat Anglers to get a day fishing license, then were in Kremmling at Rusty Spurr Ranch at 9am - we had a horseback riding trip at 10am - this ranch was located up Rt 9, about a mile or so from the Pumphouse entry - but you turn right instead. About 4.5 miles back there is a ranch with no electricity. The area is almost all scrub brush, but it borders on some aspen/pine forest and has some good riding areas.



Our trip ended around noon and we bee-lined it for the Parshall Hole. When we got there we saw 2 cars in the lot, and as we ate lunch one of them left - the old guys said they caught a few on Barr's Emergers in size 20. Umm, ok, not going to fish anything that small with my Mom. We were then attacked by mosquitos - pretty crazy. We sprayed down, dressed and headed for the river. It took us a while to get my Mom down that little hill, over fallen trees, through the muddy banks and out about 10 feet into the water. But we made it and we actually caught fish. It took about 20 minutes to figure out the right depth, but we caught 3 nice browns in about 30 minutes.





As you can see from behind my Mom, the weather was starting to turn and we got some showers as we stood there and fished. My Mom had to be in Hot Sulphur Springs by 2:30, so we headed out. I dropped her off at the resort and told her I'd be back at 4:30 after her massage. Werm had mentioned there are some smaller dumb fish in the Hot Sulphur Springs section just north of the bridge - so I figured I'd try it. He was right. I hooked a couple little guys.

I did end up hooking one nice brownie, I taped him just over 16" and he fought a lot better - I thought for sure he would go 19". He ran down the fast water and headed for a bush that was submerged because of the high water. I landed him after a fun fight - and he was a fattie. Great fish for this section.





That was about it, I had a good 2+ hours total on the water today, but it was worth it - then I fought the rain and stupid traffic on the way home over Berthoud. We did see a moose along the road side almost at the top of Berthoud. I was home and eating Chinese food at 7pm.

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RMNP August 7, 2011

On Sunday, Steffan, my neighbor Tom and myself headed up to the Roaring River drainage in RMNP to do some fishing. I was at Steffan's house at 5:30am and we were in the parking lot of Lawn Lake Trailhead at 6:30 - lots of other cars in the lot - we assumed these were from overnight campers.

The hike in was pretty uneventful, it took a good 30 minutes, but wasn't too bad. I took a video of the entire hike up, but not a single picture the whole day. The water was rolling down the hill, fastest I have seen it in my few trips up there. We tied up and jumped in the water, leapfrogging each other. The soft/slow areas that are normally everywhere in this river were hard to find. We'd see fish, but where we had seen 5 or 6 of them in the past in the slow water, we could only see 1 now tucked up to the bank. We didn't catch fish for a while - it was tough going, so we kept moving up river - there is a flatter section further up where we started getting into fish - but not many. I think we got 9 fish total and by 12 noon we decided to head down the hill and head for the Fall River.

The Fall River right there by Lawn Lake Trailhead looks like a beautiful river, but it still had quite a bit of water in it. It was clear and we could see the fish, but they weren't any easier to catch. There are some great bend pools in this river - at lower levels I bet the fish just stack up in them. Steffan headed off with a dry fly and Tom and I stuck to nymphing. I managed a couple brown dinks and Steffan hooked a bunch on dries. We hiked up to the confluence of the Roaring and Fall to check it out and then headed for the truck. We left around 3pm and were home by 5:30.

Not much else to report. Beautiful day, not so great fishing.