Day 88

Mark and I decided to go to Eleven Mile Canyon for what turned out to be a perfect day as far as the weather was concerned.  We get there around 11:30 and start fishing downstream of the bridge and campgroud with the flows around 110cfs and the water crystal clear.



I start the day off with a realistic olive hopper size 16 and get a couple bites immediately but can't set the hook.  Moving to the next pool I finally catch a little rainbow.  I move upstream to the next run and pull out another fish before heading downstream and under the bridge to see how Mark is doing.  Mark started off nymphing and had landed a handful of fish already.

So I change my set up to a size 12 black and yellow rubber legged hopper as my indicator and a rojo midge emerger size 20 thinking the midge will be the fly they hit.  I cast out through the first run, when Boom! I nice 12" rainbow hammers the hopper and I have landed my third fish.  Little did I know that this was the magic pattern for the day.  Over the coarse of the next few hours I probably did not have more than a five minute period where I did't catch a fish or have a number of fish hooked.

After watching me kill it Mark switched to the same setup and proceeded to kill it too.  Throughout the day we fish maybe 300 yards of river downstream from the bridge but don't have anyone near us and the fishing never turned off.  By the end of the day we have caught between 30 and 40 fish apiece with Mark landed the big one of the day, a 16" brown compared to my 14"brown.  Most of the fish were around 12" and almost all rainbows.

We call it around 7:30pm with what is to date my best day of fishing!  Love Colorado!

Rod:  Unagi 12' Universal Tenkara Rod
Line:  Traditional Tenkara Line 13'
Flies that worked:  Yellow/Black Rubber Leg Hopper, Rojo Midge