Prep for Late Fall on PT 18Nov15

I'm coming off a "win" at Keystone... successful re-entry onto snow. And I'm headed to the PT tomorrow despite CO Dept of Wildlife planning to do elctro-shock fish inventory around the Valco bridge. In prep for the outing I sense I need to add some winterish bugs to augment the purple Jimi's Ax that worked well last outing. Visibility is still just ~18" so flash is in order (but it always is).

I need a small BWO emerger to compliment my mercury head RS2 and I found a recipe from O'Grady at the Drift Flyshop called the Fly of Destiny. I mimicked it some but added a metallic blue bead as a head and changed materials a bit (#22 TMC2487 hook, rusty-dun/gray-brown thread, metallic blue glass XS bead, 8 pheasant tail fibers for the tail then left in for the wing/legs, XS copper wire ribbing, UV callibaetis ice dub (kindof grey and lavender UV)... put on bead, start thread, tie in tail, tie in wire, build slim thread body, wrap wire, move thread in front of remaining PT fibers with several wraps, dub callebetis UV ice dub thorax, fold PT fibers over thorax for wing casing, tie in fibers behind eye and separate 4 fibers on each side of thorax sweeping back, secure fibers and then whip finish). This one should be awesome with low winter flows when BWOs are hatching, like now... let's just call it Dave's FoD.

I need a cobalt blue headed midge larva with a little more visibility than my highly imitative Awesome midge I tie for for spring. I don't know what to call this blue-headed green midge. It features a cobalt blue glass head, a green thread body with krystal flash rib wrap, and peacock UV ice dubbed thorax.

These flies plus some silver stuff if viz is really bad and some larger red midge larva should be my rig. I'll report results on all the new ties in a subsequent field update.

Ok... I hit the PT about noon at the Nature Center. It was crowded and I was relegated to fishing between the good holes/weirs. I caught quite a few fish but none too big - most ~14". I fished upstream pretty quickly, moving around guys as needed, and caught up to the electro-shock raft. I turned back intent on getting to Valco before it got too dark. I was pleased with the performance of DRC's FoD; it took most of the fish till later in the day. It is not as rugged as I'd like though - the PT fiber wing casing tends to shred. The glass bead version shown above actually seemed to work a bit better this particular day. The bug activity was astounding... I should've arrived earlier to get some good spots and hit more of the BWO hatch (I thought I'd be there in plenty of time but was not). The flows are very low but visibility is still only mediocre. In the PM at Valco a new #18 red vinyl midge on 202R hook took a couple nicer fish as did the cheeseman emerger (I was thinking the mayflies are pretty small). I didn't fish the cobalt blue headed midge. All rainbows... very few fish were really worthy of imaging but my camera is back at Fuji for repair anyway.