A Bird, a Bass, and Two Dinks

They aren't lying!

Ben Lewis and I decided to do something a little different after having to postpone a guide trip due to a crazy Colorado spring snow storm. We were going to hit the Dream Stream with Landon Mayer but with a forecast of over a foot of snow we decided to reschedule. This left Ben and I with a free Monday. We decided to head down to Pueblo in two trucks and cover as much water as we could with only streamers.

I've tried to do this a few different times but had always switched to nymphs as soon as I thought I knew what the trout were feeding on. It really takes patience to fish streamers and that is something I've always been short on. This time I only brought my streamer boxes so I'd be forced to stick with the plan. All of the bigger fish that I've seen come out of Pueblo have been taken on streamers. Ben has stuck some serious pigs on streamers and I broke a rod on one at the end of the 2013 Frostbite Fish-off. With the flow around 300 (down from 900ish) I figured the fish would have been used to seeing some bigger prey items. What the hell, it was worth a try.

We parked Ben's truck up at the dam, loaded up in my truck, and drove all the way down to reservoir road. I figured that would be a good day's worth of fishing if we kept moving. We got out and took one look at the water and it looked great. Perfect flow and a lot clearer than I thought it would be. The long channel along the near bank from the reservoir road parking up to the first bridge looked fantastic. So fantastic that I think we spend nearly an hour covering that water which, in retrospect, was WAY too long since we had to get to Ben's truck up a the dam. I had a 12-14" brown bump me and follow me in in this section but that was it.

I didn't want to think it, but from the amount of birds that were hovering over the water I knew there was a killer hatch going on. I've never seen this many birds on the water and I thought that it only made sense that this was the day we chose to leave everything home but the streamer boxes.... On top of that we hadn't seen another soul on the water the entire morning.

We kept at it though and several weirs above the water treatment plant I got a tug and was hooked up. Unfortunately my fly was nearly as big as the rainbow on the end of my line. But I held him up and thanked him for being a little skunk saver before letting him run off to get big. 

I only managed to hook one other dink until we got to the flag hole and I hit a bird on my forward cast. Luckily this little dude wasn't hurt and once I unwound the line from around his wings and neck he was good to go. Neither one of us liked the whole experience and he let me know! Didn't know a little bird could get so loud.

That was it till we got to the hatchery outlet and finally had a good tug. I could see a shadow following my streamer and at the last minute it darted up and grabbed it. I really didn't know what to think of the shape that grabbed my fly.
At first I thought it was a short, fat little brown but it was way too dark. After an initial run it came right in and realized it was a bass. My first in Pueblo. I've heard that they are in the river but had never caught one. I have caught a walleye before so the bass makes for my 5th species on this river (rainbow, brown, bass, walleye, sucker). Would be sweet to do that in one day!

Tough day and a lot of walking but it was still nice to cover all of that water in one day. We didn't see another person on the river which was another first. If we had fished the midge/baetis hatch we would have probably landed a few more but we stuck to the plan (mostly because we had no other choice). We were exhausted by the time we got to the truck. We probably should have started at Pueblo Blvd and worked our way up. I'm thinking this day counts for some time in the trenches and hoping that pays of with a pig at the Taylor next weekend :-)