More biting after big hatch
By Charlie Meyers
Denver Post Outdoors Editor

Hot Sulphur Springs - With a mounting wind whistling a mournful tune through the pines, big bugs were nowhere to be seen where the Colorado River makes a lazy departure from the tumult of Byers Canyon.

But there were plenty of insects of far lesser size, and trout didn't seem to mind that their porterhouse steaks suddenly had been snatched from the menu and replaced with parched peas.

You gotta love the way trout, like obedient children, are willing to eat whatever is set in front of them. Otherwise, this fishing thing just wouldn't be much fun.

What had been a surprisingly strong hatch of the giant stonefly pteronarcys californica - better known in the meadowlands of Middle Park simply as the willowfly - now had either been blown away or simply become a casualty of the winds of time.

Stonefly hatches on western rivers are like that: Covered with muddy water one year, launching a surface onslaught by hungry trout the next. So it is on the upper Colorado, which harbors a dense population of these oversized bugs, along with all the water vagaries to make a successful fishing scenario a sometime thing, maybe two out of five years if we're lucky.

For fishermen, it's always the same. The very notion of throwing a dry fly roughly the size of a feather duster to gape-mouthed fish sends us into the sort of tizzy that ignores all sorts of realities - like the vagaries of weather or the fact that the bugs seldom behave the way you expect.

All of which is why a savvy angler always carries... READ MORE

Article Courtesy of the Denver Post
Staff writer Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.