Taylor River Pink Hogs & East River Kokonee! 31Aug16-01Sep16

After a good day on the Gunny, despite the bear encounter, I spent the next day on the Taylor. I headed up to the C&R/trophy section and was the first to arrive at 9:15am. The canyon is pretty deep here and sun doesn't hit the water early. Still, there was plenty of fish moving and even rising to tiny flies. I would not call it epic conditions but I did best my last skunking on this section and caught several very nice fish. Weird as it sounds given the prevalence of rainbows here - all three were browns. They ran 19-22" and were very pink from their diet of shrimp. I caught them on FBPT #20. I got rejections on my BWO dry but in later talking to a guide I sensed my offer was too large. He likes the mole fly in #20-#22 here. It's hard up there - tiny flies, no indicators, flat water, perfect drifts needed... sheesh. NO PICS - the flash card failed and I lost all the pictures from that day unfortunately. While there I also met a female celebrity angler, Maddie Brenneman, she guides out of Granby... a cute girl with a nice cast being guided by a local shop to promote, hawked by a cameraman. No fish when I left. Who knew it was a job getting 400,000 likes on FB with a fish? - I get like 20 sometimes and I have to take the pic myself :). After lunch at the car I went downstream into the canyon proper and caught some decent ~12-14" browns and rainbows. I was back at camp to catch the PM showers.

Today I headed to the East River to try to catch the Kokonee salmon run up from Blue Mesa Rez. Boy howdy, did I ever catch it; what a blast. I caught a dozen salmon over a 1/2 mile of river below the Roaring Judy Hatchery! Most were on a #20 FBPT dropped at the end of weighted flies. I also caught some browns and rainbows - again ~12". This is wild trout water and therefore unsupported with stocking or other altering behaviors. I wish I'd landed a brookie or a cutthroat to land 4 species in a day - oh well, the salmon was very special. The Kokonee are running up from Blue Mesa via the Gunnison to the East River. The fights these fish put up was awesome including aerials and fin-skating on top of the water. They are not yet super red but do have kype jaws. Most were ~18" and strong. WEAK PICS - I was carefully using my iPhone and I mostly sucked at it. I stopped at Eddyline in BV on the way to Summit Co today and tried the pumpkin ale as well as the grapefruit IPA - meh - stayed with the Crank Yanker for my pint.