March 25, 2021 – The Pueblo Tailwater
Flows: 253 cfs – dropping to 137 cfs @11a
Water Temp: 34F @ 9a
Water clarity: Crystal clear
Air Temp: 27 @ 8:30a, 57 @ 4p.
Hatches: Midge – 10a to mid-afternoon. BWO – 1p to 2:30p.
Flies: #10 Pat’s Rubber Legs, #22 Blood Midge, #18 BH Red Midge Larva, #24 Top Secret, #24 Purple JuJubee Midge, #24 Mercury Beatis, #22 Mole, #22 Improved Sparkle Dun, #12 Chubby Chernobyl, #22 Red Zebra Midge.
Top producers: Red Zebra Midge, Pat’s Rubber Legs, Sparkle Dun.
Brian in early morning fishing the top of the Diver Pool .
It was Samuel Smiles – a 19th century Scottish author – who is noted for, among other things, his books on self-help and self-reliance who said “We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.”
I think it’s true. When you make a mistake it costs you something, somehow – and you don’t easily forget it. Well I learned a lesson this week on the Tailwater. Luckily it didn’t cost me monetarily but it cost me a fish that I wanted. Totally disgusted me more than anything else. More on that later…
When I met Brian at the Diver Pool at 8:30a or so, he had already caught a 17” rainbow and a 20” sucker – landing both on a #20 Red Zebra Midge. Sounded promising, but Brian was a little worried because for the past few weeks he started out lights out – then nothing for the rest of the day. I was sure that both he and I would get into more fish that day.
Brian's first rainbow of the day. Beautifully colored 17 incher.
Photo by Brian Kenney.
My optimism was based on the warmer weather and the increased flows. I had visions of rainbows and brownies moving out of their winter lies and into the faster water. We would be able to sight fish – hunting them from one run to the next. My kind of fishing.
But the water was actually very cold, only 34F. Geez, I didn’t expect that. It must have been from the cold nights leading up to our outing. The general rule is that once the water reaches 40F the fish become more active. None the less, with the flows up my plan was to use a bigger lead fly – a #10 Pat’s Rubber Leg – and follow it with a red midge larva and then a midge emerger. In this case I had a #20 Blood Midge followed by a #24 Purple JuJubee Midge. I wasn’t really sold on the JuJubee – because I thought it was a little too early in the day for an emerger, but I gave it a try anyway.
Downstream from the Diver Pool. The Nature Center observatory at the top of the hill.
As Brian worked the run just before the Diver Pool, I fished the deep pool. We couldn’t see any fish but I knew there where some in there from past experience. After I covered the pool once with no action, I added more weight and covered it again. I kept repeating this until I had way more weight on than I thought I needed, but finally I got a hit. I missed that one, but I new my flies were now at the right depth.
A couple of drifts later and I had on my first fish of the day – a nice 15” rainbow. He took the Pat’s Rubber Leg. My hunch paid off. I kept at the deep pool area for a while then moved down stream to try the tail end of it. But nothing. Brian wasn’t having any success in the faster, shallower water at the head of the run and he moved back into the deep pool. So I worked my way up the run between the Diver Pool and the Plunge Pool. In this run you can see the fish if they’re there. But they weren’t. Hmmm.
My 1st fish of the day. Fooled him with the Pat's Rubber Leg.
So after a bit we decided to move upstream. We wanted to end up at the Flag Hole. It’s usually a reliable place to find fish. I worked my way up the river – stopping at little pockets and runs that held fish in the past. They weren’t there. So I waded out of the water and walked along the path toward the Flag Hole. As I looked into the Blue Heron Hole I spotted a handful of rainbows feeding just below - and on - the surface.
I’ve caught a bunch of fish in this hole before and they are usually feeding on the surface. Lot’s of fun – getting them on dries. I tied up a Dry/Dry/Dropper rig. I used a Chubby Chernobyl as my first “Dry” followed by a Matt’s Midge – my second “Dry” and a Top Secret Midge after that as my “Dropper”. The idea was to entice the surface feeders with my Matt’s Midge – which is a true dry fly and floats on the surface, and to get the fish that were feeding just below the surface with the Top Secret – which is an emerging nymph – and would float in the film just below the surface.
Brian got this caddis larva out of my rainbow at the Diver Pool.
I spent some time getting this rig tied up and I could see Brian already in the Flag Hole just upstream from me. There was another guy fishing the other side of the run below him. Once I had everything in order I was ready for my first cast. I always tell myself before my first cast “the first cast is the best cast”. It’s an axiom that fly fishing guides tell you. The idea is that the fish have not seen your files yet, they are not spooked by anything unnatural – and therefore, you have the best chance of getting one hooked up on that first cast.
So I carefully threw in my first cast – my best one. No takers. After about 3 casts – all the fish had left! Man oh man. That’s the way it goes some time. I’m not sure I understood what spooked them though. My casts were well upstream from where they were lying and I didn’t have any splashy landings. I’m still shaking my head at that one.
Having missed these guys, I gathered my stuff and headed up to meet Brian. The other guy had left by then and we had the hole and run below it to ourselves. We still couldn’t spot any fish - which is weird for that area of the river. It was just before noon and we could tell that the water was getting lower – but we didn’t know that they lowered it at 11:30 by some 100 cfs. I found this out the next day. That kind of drop off has an effect on the fish – they need some time to acclimate. Needless to say our old reliable hole didn’t produce on that day.
There were a lot of fishermen passing us and moving upstream as we were fishing. We could see four guys just upstream from us alone. So we decided to head back down river to the Diver Pool. A lot of times the fish come from where ever they’ve been hiding into the faster, shallower water that feeds into the Diver Pool. We wanted to see if that was the case today.
As we arrived there was a guy just upstream from where we wanted to fish. There was enough room for us to fish, but we couldn’t stray too far upstream. A minor inconvenience. As we walked by, Brian asked him how he was doing. He didn’t have much action but noted that he saw a few noses coming up. Encouraging.
A BWO caught on the surface above the Diver Pool. He got a little mangled during the catch...
As we got ourselves together downstream from him, we could see quite a few fish rising. I didn’t hesitate to get my Dry/Dry/Dropper rig and go after them. Brian decided to fish nymphs at the top of the Diver Pool and into it. After a few on target, dead drifts with no interest from the rising fish I decided to change up flies. We had noticed BWO on the water and even though there were some midges – our thinking was they were going after the BWOs.
With that idea, I tied on a #20 Cripple BWO - it’s also called a Mole. This pattern imitates a fly that is emerging into the adult stage but is stuck in his shuck. It floats low on the water and it’s an easy meal for the trout which they find hard to resist. I followed it with a #22 Sparkle Dun. The Sparkle Dun is somewhat similar to a Cripple in that it floats low on the water although it is less imitative a stuck emerger. It imitates more of a new adult – and it is deadly.
On my first two casts I had two strikes. Missed both of them. When fishing a dry – of course you expect the fish to come to the surface and eat your fly. Sometimes they just sip it and sometimes they attack it. And sometimes it’s in between. Even though I fully expect a fish to hit one of my flies – it seems that I’m always startled when they do – and often I over react and set the hook too soon. The guidance is to let the fish go back under the surface before you set the hook. I didn’t do that on the first two.
A 17" rainbow who took one of my favorite dries - a Sparkle Wing BWO.
Oh yeah – that lesson that I spoke about at the beginning. After missing those two fish I noticed one rising farther to the opposite bank in slower water. I moved a bit to get into position and casted my flies to him. On my second cast, I was thinking to myself as the flies drifted toward him “now that was a great cast and this is a great drift”. And BAM the fish hit it. This time I waited a second or so after he hit and hooked him up.
At first, I didn’t think it was all that big of a fish. He swam toward me and I took in slack so he wasn’t really fighting that much. Then he went upstream and for a while he was parallel with me in somewhat fast water. I could see the fish clearly - a beautifully colored, large rainbow trout. I had him in perfect position. Then as I was reeling him toward me – he finally saw me and made his first run. Yes this was a big fish – much bigger than I had thought! After a few more runs – I had him tired out. His head was out of the water and I was gently reeling him toward my net. He was a big, slabby rainbow - and I had him dead to rights.
When I net a fish mid-stream, I have my fly rod in my right hand and my net in my left. I then gently pull my rod away from me – further to the right - and lean in towards my left and put out my left hand to get the net under the fish. Usually I have the net on the downstream side – so I can bring my rod back toward my body - which loosen the tension on the rod and line – and let the current push the fish into the net.
But this time when I leaned over to net the fish – I noticed that I had too much line out of my reel and I couldn’t reach the fish. He was about 6” out of the reach of my net. And when I leaned over, his head went back under the water and he made another run. Which was fine.
In Pat Dorsey’s book Fly Fishing Guide to the South Platte River – he says “a common mistake made by fly fishermen is to let the fishes head go back under the water once he has it up out of it”. When a fishes head is out of the water he becomes disoriented and can not fight. I follow this advise as much as I can – but this time it was unintentional. A mistake on my part.
After I made that mistake – I made another – more critical mistake.
After he made that run, I had him back near me, close to netting distance - but he was still under the water and I tried to pull him up to the surface. With his head under the water – he could still fight, even though he was tired. His fighting and my pulling motion caused there to be too much tension on my line. And just like that the fly came loose and he swam away.
The lesson is this: You can gently reel in and pull a fish toward you when his head is out of the water. But you can not pull a fish toward you or to the surface when his head is under the water. When you do, it constitutes “horsing” the fish. A cardinal sin and one I should not have made.
That was a trophy trout. And I was pissed. Very pissed. And maybe disgusted even more so – and let loose with a few expletives. Luckily there was only the one guy and Brian nearby who heard me. I think the guy upstream from us was amused.
After that I was able to land a nice 17” rainbow. I got him the same way I got the other big one. He made his presence known by rising to eat the bugs and I moved into position to get a good drift toward him. He ate the Sparkle Dun. The big one that broke off ate the Sparkle Dun too. I had another, smaller rainbow on but lost him midway as I was bringing him in. Not sure what happened, but the hook set was probably not firmly planted. I had few more hits after that – but missed them. Even though I lost the trophy trout, lost a smaller one, and missed more hits that I didn’t – it was a fun afternoon with lots of dry fly action.
Then as we often observe – it was like someone flipped a switch and the fish were gone. No more rising. So we fished for a bit longer with nymphs but didn’t have any takers.
An afternoon view looking upstream from the Diver Pool.
I always want to learn something when I’m fishing. Not at the expense of losing a trophy trout though. But that’s what happened on this outing.
Hopefully I won’t soon forget it.
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