10 Mile Ponds @ Copper Mtn 16Jul19

With my primary river haunts still gorged with runoff, my field tying and casting skills rusting from underuse in June, my friends not quite ready for alpine lake ascents, and a big trip to WYO pending, I headed to the ponds just east of Copper Mtn along 10 Mile Ck and I70. I caught good looking but smallish brookies like that shown. The ponds are pretty full of water and I saw one much bigger guy who summarily rejected my offers - and even warned off smaller fish. I changed flies a number of times before a #22 black glass zebra dropped from my variant of Mercer's Missing Link began to yield above and below. The Missing Link has been often deadly for me - it has a number of stimulating features despite no direct proximation of a caddis or mayfly. Fun but kind of boring as the cruisers to which I cast were not immediately enticed and a better tactic was to cast to fruitful areas where rises had occurred and wait.