Managed to hit the Colorado river below Glenwood Springs, CO on Saturday. Weather was stunning for this time of year and the fish were ready to play.
Launched the boat at New Castle and immediately we were into smaller browns. The browns are in full spawn right now so we were looking for Big rainbows.
We did see a few big browsn give chase but for the most part they are busy!. We pulled into the first likely tail out and started to drift deep with a Bead Head Prince and a Soft Hackle PheasantTail. First cast..It was on!
Banked a nice 18" Bo and she was fat like a football, I yelled at my com padres that we might have found a run with a bunch of trout stacked and feeding up for winter. Gee, what a shock to find them right there within seconds.
I cast out again and immediately another fat river Bow. They are stacked on this seem at about 8 feet deep and the water is moving fast. I had a bowling ball sized split shot to get me down fast. One guy looked at me and said they can't be in that water it is too fast...I said that is excatly why they are there.
After landing another nice 14 inch fatty I move back into position and cast out to the fast seem, my indicators jump furiously to the side and I set up, within half a second I felt like I had the bumper of a sports car and before I can even respond this fish pops my 3X Orvis tippet. For a minute i thought my 490 was going to explode, even with the drag set loose this fish hit so fast and hard he popped it like it was a frayed thread.
The fish came up and next to me and wouldn't you know the one that got away was an easy 25" and maybe 10 lbs, a wild bow with an attitude, he seemed to insist on giving me the fin and then departed to the deep. The one that got away!! Drat!
The run continued to produce some very nice fish and these fish are so strong and wild river smart I feel privileged to have landed even one.
Back waters and flat waters produced several browns but they were mostly 14" or smaller, I think the big boys and girls were doing their thing.
All in all a great float on one of our bigger more testy rivers.
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