January 22, 2020
Flows: 110 cfs
Water Temp: 38 @ 9:15a
Water clarity: ~4’ (clarity is improving – even though there is still a lot of moss)
Air Temp: 36 @ 9a – low to mid-50s @ 4:30.
Hatches: Crane Flies, some midges, and sparse BWO – 1 to 3:30p.
Brian and I hit the Pueblo Tailwater on Wednesday – the Pueblo weather was forecasted to be cloudy with highs in the mid-50s. Perfect weather for bug activity and I was expecting a great midge and BWO hatch. Well it turned out to be mostly sunny in the AM and started to cloud up in the afternoon. It was also a bit windy – and even though it got somewhere in the 50s in the afternoon – it was still pretty chilly. And the hatch wasn't that great to boot - - except for the Crane Flies that is!
Adult Crane Fly - Brian captured this in his aquarium net
We started out at 9a downstream of the Bend Hole – which already had a fishermen casting bait (it’s flies and lures only in this section!!). So Brian headed to the Double Tree Hole and I stopped at Tom’s Hole. I named this hole after a fisherman I ran into a couple of weeks ago – Tom from Denver. He caught 3 nice fish in this hole – that to my knowledge was unnamed. It doesn’t look like much at first glance with one boulder just barely out of the water and 3 big boulders submerged – but it's pretty deep, with pocket water behind the boulders and a short tail-out.
Tom's Hole
While I was rigging my nymph rig – Brian landed a nice 15” Rainbow. Right off the bat – that is usually a good sign!! My rig was setup with a #24 Red Zebra Midge, followed by a #24 Black Beauty and a #24 Miracle Midge. The Miracle Midge was a pseudo Miracle Midge I tied with a gunmetal bead and white thread with opal tinsel covering it. I found one of these in the mouth of a fish I caught a few weeks ago – so I thought I’d try it. I covered the pocket water side-to-side, front-to-back, and was just about to give up on it when I hooked up a nice 15” to 17” Rainbow. I had a good set on him and on his 3rd run he somehow spit the hook. Ugh! I had him close enough and high enough in the water to see he hit my pseudo Miracle Midge!!
At this time, Brian had moved upstream from the Double Tree Hole and was heading to the Bridge Hole. So I gave the Double Tree Hole a try with a Pine Squirrel Leach, fishing it as a streamer. After several casts – I had a nice 14” Rainbow in the net. I was surprised that the fish was only 14” – as most of the time, larger fish hit the streamer. After a while I tried my nymph rig – set the same – and didn’t get any hits. It was now about 12:15p and I headed to the car for a lunch break.
The Double Tree Hole (there's actually more than 2 trees! But 2 are most prominent...)
During lunch, a guy came over and said the Department of Fish and Wildlife just released 1,000 10” to 12” Rainbows into the river. Wow – that will definitely help keep the Rainbow population up! When I finished lunch, I headed to the Bend Hole as this hole usually has fish rising in the afternoon. On my way there, I ran into Brian who was heading to the car for his lunch. He told me that he saw the Fish and Wildlife guy release a ton of fish off the bridge above the hole he was fishing.
Brian captured the release on video
Video courtesy of Brian Kenney
As I was adjusting my rig to fish the Bend Hole, I saw a fish jump out of the water from the corner of my eye. I thought for a second – did I really just see a fish just jump?? So I stopped what I was doing and took a look into the hole – and sure enough – there were fish aggressively making splashy hits on adult flies. A few minutes later Brian showed up – and he used his small aquarium net to capture a few of the flies as they floated down the river. As we were looking at them – Brian mentioned that they looked like mosquitoes - but we couldn’t identify them.
It's a Crane Fly
After trying a #22 Parachute BWO, #24 Sparkle Wing BWO, #22 Sparkle Wing BWO, #24 Tryco Spinner, and a #22 Barr Emerger Dry – for about 2 hours without a single take – I gave up. It bugged me that I didn’t know what was hatching – but the trout were very selective and only hit whatever it was. It looked and sounded like they were hitting Caddis.
I was headed downstream intending to hit Tom’s Hole. As I was walking down, I met up with Brian and he said he was in Tom’s Hole about 30 minutes ago and hooked up a nice Rainbow in the 17” range. He had it on for quite awhile and then it broke off. It took a small (I think it was a #24) Red Larva.
There were some baetis hatching so I changed my nymph rig to baetis nymphs, and I decided to try a few drifts in the hole since I had to walk by it anyway. I had on a #20 Prince Nymph, followed by a #22 Baetis Nymph and a #24 Chocolate Thunder. There were no takers – and I couldn’t see any fish – so I moved on down to the Double Tree Hole. I’ve had great success in this hole in the late afternoon and I was hoping for the same on this day.
It didn’t take too long to hook up what felt like a nice size fish. He spit the hook on me though – and the line flew straight back at me. I had to duck to get out of the way – and the line got a granny knot like no other. I actually had to cut some of my leader off to get the tangle free. (I’ve never had to do that before!). So I rebuilt my whole set up and on my first cast – I got snagged on the only branch that was lying on the side of the river. I was able to get my flies free with no damage – then on my first cast into the hole – I got snagged on a boulder and had to break the line to free it!! Jeez – it felt like a test.
At that time – I had about 45 minutes left to fish. So I rebuilt the rig again with a #22 Pheasant Tail, followed by a #22 Stalcup Beatis and a #22 Flashback Barr Emerger. My patience paid off as I landed a 13” and 12” Rainbow – one hitting the Stalcup and the other the Bar Emerger. I wouldn’t say it saved my day – but it felt good to get a couple in the net after all the hard work and no fish since earlier in the day.
As Brian and I were driving home – we were trying to figure out what that hatch was. It donned on me that I’ve researched a fly that looked like a mosquito before, but I couldn’t remember what it was. So after doing some research at home and comparing pictures that we took, we identified it as the Crane Fly. Here’s a couple of excerpts from Pat Dorsey’s Fly Fishing Guide to the South Platte River: “The adult Crane Fly looks like a giant mosquito with spider like legs”. He also writes: the trout's “rise forms are extremely aggressive and splashy! I’ve watched trout jump entirely out of the water to grab an adult on numerous occasions”.
The weird thing is, through the research that I’ve done - Crane Flies are not supposed to be hatching early afternoon, or in the winter. So it goes to show you as far as fishing is concerned nothing is absolute. To cover my bases for future Crane Fly hatches (expected or not) I now have a few mosquito adult dry flies in my box – and will be adding Dorsey’s recommended John Uhlenhop’s Furled Crane Fly Adult.
This is a stock image of an adult Crane Fly from Google. It's called a Winter Crane Fly (so maybe they are supposed to hatch in the winter!!)
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