On our first outing of the year last Saturday, a small group of us fished the Big Thompson River below Lake Estes. The condensed report: great weather, great company, and lots of fish to cast to!
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| Tyler and John work the pool at Sleepy Hollow Park on a glorious spring day |
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| This nice brown was fooled by a beadhead Prince Nymph |
Chris Miller, John Bahr, Tyler Hildebrand and Larry Rider met up at Rocky Mountain Anglers at 7. We had a cup of coffee courtesy of Chet and Randy, picked up a few flies, and headed off to the river. We parked at Sleepy Hollow Park about 6 miles down the canyon. The river was running about 50 cfs and clear, so careful casts and drag-free drifts were the order of the day. As expected, fishing was a little slow early on, but by mid-morning, the fish became more active and we were soon hooking up on nymphs and soft hackle flies.
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| Tyler with a nice rainbow taken on a BWO |
There were a lot of fishermen on the river, but you didn’t need to move very far to find good numbers of fish, and it somehow didn’t feel crowded. There is a nice variety of water in the little stretch near the parking lot, and we switched off between the riffles and large pools upstream, the deep pool and adjacent flats right at the parking area, and the small pockets and pools downstream. The fish became very active as the sun rose higher, and by mid-day, we were casting dries to large numbers of rising browns and rainbows.
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| Typical catch du jour |
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| Gin-clear water made it just a bit more challenging |
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| Pretty Rainbow, courtesy of John |
It looks like the trout wintered over in very fine shape, so if you have a chance to get up to the Big T over the next few weeks, take it!
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