Good times on the river

Hi everyone. I know its been a while since my last post, but the fishing has been very limited this spring due to the high water on the rivers and a bad case of pneumonia that put me in the hospital for a couple of days. I am all recovered now and have gone out fishing on some lakes around here. this last weekend my best friend Jesse drove up from Durango to go fishing for his 30th birthday. I took thursday and friday off of work so we could get lots of good fishing in a few days.

The only river that has low water is the Frying pan River below Reudi reservoir. The river was higher and faster than normal but not as high as some of the other local rivers due to the control of water coming out of the dam. We got to the river around 9am thursday. We found a spot in the flats directly below the dam and started fishing. I caught one within 15 minutes but that was the only one of the day. Jesse over herd some people who had a guide with them saying "I caught it on a candy cane". I had no idea what a candy cane fly looks like. After a while we got lunch and tried to pick up some candy cane fly at the local shop. The guy at the shop had no clue what we were asking for and recommended a mysis shrimp pattern to use. We drove back to the upper river and got back in the same area we fished in the morning we had some bites but caught nothing. We went back home and looked up candy cane fly and tied up a bunch for friday.

                  These are the flys that we tied up and caught a bunch of fish with

                          some of the shrimp from the shop in Basalt. they do catch fish

                                      some of the "candy cane"  flys we tied up

Friday we headed back up to the flats below the dam. We got there around 7:30am and very few people, so we were able to get the spot the guide and his clients were fishing on thursday. We both set up with a shrimp and our own versions of the candy cane and the fishing was great. I started the day by catching 2 brown trout on the first 2 casts. I caught a few more and Jesse still had not caught any. I wanted to help but did not know what to do, he came up here for his birthday and hadn't caught a single fish. He made some adjustments to his rig ,and next thing I hear is "I got one". Jesse was on fire. A fish slayer. He kept catching fish. It was awesome. The two of us with  the flys we tied were catching fish all day long.

                                                                  a nice brownie

                                                                another brownie

                                                                  Jesse on the hunt

      sometimes nice people will help net your fish and ask if you have a extra fly that has been working all day

                                          

On Saturday we returned to the same spot about 7am nobody there. We tied on the same fly patterns we were using on friday. I started the day the same way I finished friday. We had a great day. and caught a bunch of fish.  after a long day of "combat fishing" (jockeying for position on the river for the best spots) we decided to go home and celebrate a great fishing outing with cold beer and local whiskey.