Marty and I left Manitou around 10:30. We had planned to leave around 10:00 but while packing the jeep I managed to drop the key in between the back seat and our speaker box in the trunk. After searching everywhere in the house along with emptying the trash can, my better half Alicia looked behind the seat and found the key. Great start to the trip!
While driving up into the canyon we noticed how much water was frozen up. In some places the river was frozen over completely. This is pretty unusual for moving water. Especially a tail water (river section just below a dam). This should have been an indicator as to just how cold this canyon is. We had to get within a mile or two of the dam to find open water. We drove as close as we could to the dam and parked in the pull off. There were about 4-5 other cars. Not too bad but there wasn't a lot of open water so it got crowded fast. As soon as we stepped out of the Jeep we realized just how cold it was. I didn't have a thermometer on me but I would guess it was around 0.
We waded downstream a few bends and focused on the deeper slower runs. I hooked a few rainbows in a nice run on the far bank, including this little guy, but we hadn't found a good pod of fish and decided to move on. We found a really nice section a few more bends downstream. The river was divided by a small island which created a really nice run on one side of it. The run started as a nice knee deep riffle and dropped off into a deep bend hole with a really nice sandy bottom. I didn't want to spook the fish trying to wade down along side of the island so I ripped off some fly line from my reel and made a slack cast directly downstream from me. As I was feeding line out my indicator (a small plastic bubble attached to the leader that acts just like a bobber but should never be referred to as a bobber even though it is very similar in design, look, and functionality) sunk and I set the hook to a nice little rainbow.
After catching this guy I waded down just below the first bridge and found a bunch of trout stacked in a run. For about 25 minutes the fishing got HOT. I got a hit almost every cast. The trout were tearing up a trout bead peg egg. The only break in the action was when I got hung up on the bottom and had to re rig. I wound up catching half a dozen nice trout and missed 3 or 4 more before I decided to head back upstream to see what Marty was doing.
I found Marty on the side of the island where I landed the piglet brown. He was actually in direct sunlight which was really hard to find this day in the canyon. He was hooking fish in the sun so it didn't make sense to move. He wound up catching a few in that hole to include this nice bow. One of these days I'm actually going to be around Marty when he catches a nice trout so I can get him in the picture. For now I'm taking him at his word that he's actually catching these fish.
Another great trip and my first winter trip to Eleven Mile Canyon. Learned that it's friggin cold and iced up. But it beats the mob that lives up there in the summer.
