Dillon, CO. The Blue River. January 17, 2013…
What a great week on the Blue! The weather was definitely challenging, but I know we will get warmer temps soon enough – in fact, Denver will be back in the 50s this week. I want to savor every minute of this journey because a year seems to pass us by all too quickly.
I danced about seven trout this week. What kind of lessons did I learn? Don’t look directly at your feet while trying to walk across slippery rocks – let your peripheral vision get a feel for the pathway you need to take to get from point a to point b. As mentioned last week (and verified again this week) you need to learn to spot fish in the water. They are so well camouflaged that this is a very difficult task, but if you look carefully enough (at least for a Rainbow Trout), you will see the white of their mouths and the beautiful line of pink along their sides. Also, when the water is shallow, you need to get your flies to the bottom to imitate the larva or pupa stage of the fly, but if you cast your line too far up river, your splitshot (weight on the line) will either bog down your cast or it will get caught in the rocks and you’ll have to retie everything. So you have to cast just above where you see the fish. You must remember to keep your flies clean – none of that bottom salad on those flies or you can cast all day long and never land a fish. It’s almost impossible to wear gloves, so keep your jacket pockets empty except for those wonderful packaged hand warmers that can sometimes take 30 minutes to get warm.
I hope you get the drift here – oh yeah – you have to make sure you are not dragging your flies in an unnatural way otherwise the fish won’t even look at your fly. These few tips just scratch the service of what you need to know about fly-fishing, which is what makes it so challenging. It’s like learning a new language or reading – you couldn’t learn it all within a lifetime.
