New FF Style, Highest Air Show and More 13Jun15

TK's home for the summer and starts at FNET<NTCT tomorrow, so that's cool. The rains and my work are thwarting our rides thus far but he's already gotten back to elevation and looped Ute a couple times daily... and of course wrecked a chain & chainring on the 575.

I'm retro-transcending (is that a word?) to a new fishing phase. I've recently read a lot about the earliest flies fashioned in England (early 1800s); this while the raging rivers in CO have put me in a chair rather than on the bank of a river. I've never fished streamers well except in my very early "western states" FF endeavors after college in AZ with wooly buggers on Canyon Ck. I went there often for a variety of browns and rainbows and states of mind. But now, with long line and Czech nymphing understood and my Awesome midge nearly all I need beyond BWOs and a cool caddis, at least on the tailwaters, I need to tackle a new challenge.

Sure, getting to the best alpine spots in the Gore, Clear Ck County and the FlatTops will be hard and I'm all about it, but I mean down on the Arki and elsewhere like So Platte, Big Thompson, Blue and so on. I am switching to a soft hackle fly from two centuries ago. I've tied a proximate version (but be dammed, I gonna have a thorax). Here ya see the orange partridge (with a thorax). I've yet to add a lot of flash but I will once I understand the action. I caught one big cutthroat last year in 11 Mile on a "birds nest" and that was telling. I know I need to mend the line to enable presentation of a profile view in the current to the fish (called "greased line mending" from very early salmon fishing).

I also caught the highest air show on earth over Lake Dillon Lk last weekend... very cool; met the dudes from Dead Drift... cool Ts; shredded some cocktails and hottub skyviews with Kosbabs... whew; circumnavigated the lake in style on the 9er MGC... winning the battle with Swan Mtn Rd; oversaw the modification to roller furler jib on Mon Ami; more. Nice... Colorado fish will appreciate retro-transcendence.

Canyon Ck Brown

Orange Partridge w/ Hare (kindof) Thorax

SPAD over Peak 1 @ Dillon Air Show

Going Vert in Thin Air