February 21, 2017 Decker’s Fishing Update
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Good Evening Everyone!
Well, this weather has been truly amazing. It feels more like spring and baseball season then the middle of winter! Temperatures reaching about 55 to 60 today, with plenty of sunshine and some wind gusts, but nothing to serious! Looking ahead to the rest of the week, we’ve got some snow in the forecast, moving in Thursday evening and into Friday. This should really turn the fish on tomorrow, as we are going to see high temperatures in the lower 60’s, but with winds up to 19 mph. The flow below the dam is currently at 61 (cfs), with about 70 through Decker’s/Trumbull. I’ve been out fishing mostly everyday for the last two weeks and today was no different! Getting out on the river at about 10 this morning, I already noticed a midge hatch taking place as I entered the river. Starting out with my nymph rig, consisting of a purple Pat’s Rubber legs, followed with a grey hare’s ear pheasant tail, and trailing a buckskin midge, I chose a stretch of river just downstream from a deeper run, where the river bottom shallows up and presents a shelf where tons of fish seemed to be congregating. This proved to be effective rather quickly, as I hooked up on three fish in a matter of about 10 minutes! I think the bug selection was appropriate, but more importantly, I made some adjustments to my depth, being that I’ve been fishing the deeper pools, which require much more length to get to the bottom. Therefore, I moved my strike indicator way down towards my flies, giving me only about two feet of distance between my indicator and my split shots. Basically, I made myself a shallow water nymph rig, with only one small split shot for weight. At about 11 o’clock I noticed a significant hatch of BWO’S that hadn’t made there way back down to the water quite yet, so I went ahead and set up another rod with a simple, two-fly set up that I like to use when the fish are starting to rise. I quickly tied on a Griffiths Gnat, followed with a grey, sparkle winged Rs-2. Once again, with no strike indicator or weight, I threw this concoction across the riffle and into the downstream flow, where seconds before I had seen several fish rising to what I suspected to by the dying off adult bugs. After only a few attempts at these fish, I hooked up on a nice 16 brown, followed by a respectable Cut-bow! . Both fish were taken on the RS-2. As lucky as I am and as much as I get to fish this wonderful river each day, I’m amazed at how conditions and how the fish can behave change from one day to the next. One day the fish are going crazy on one color, the next day they want nothing to do with that color or even that species of bug! That’s what makes fly-fishing so enjoyable to me! It’s the challenge of figuring out what the fish are feeding on and making those adjustments to catch the fish! As we get closer to the one year anniversary of livedeckerscolroado.com, I’m looking forward to having that year’s worth of data to refer to and see if I’ve learned anything over the last 12 months! Livedeckerscolorado.com is also currently under a site rebuild and I hope to be launching the new site soon! Stay tuned and keep coming back, as I hope to have the new site presented by early June! That’s all I’ve got for now my friends! Have a great evening and I hope to see you out there on the river soon!
Chris
