Finally Flows Are Wadable ~ Fishing The PT On A Hot, Dog Day 22Aug24

The flows on the Arkansas Tailwater finally dropped to ~450cfs a couple days ago. I haven't fished the PT since March due to unwadable water levels! So, despite the 93° temps, I headed down to Pueblo today, to the Nature Center and arrived before 10am. I was all alone; fishing was meh, I caught a half doz fish in several hours but everything was small rainbows/cutbows 11"-15". I tied on two Perdigons, one oil can and one like a rainbow warrior, and a new caddis trailer... all of these worked. I used flashy stuff because the water is very off color and turbid. I saw tons of yellow-green hoppers of all sizes on the way to the river (which never seem to work) and tons of blue and other colored dragonflies on the river. I observed a bit of other bugsign like small grey midges but it was really too hot. I wielded the Rodfather Bombadeer (RFBA), a light 8.5' 4.6wt 4pc fast rod, my latest build. It is mated to the Ross Evolution LTX 1.5 reel with MPX Mastery 4 wt (a half weight heavy) today ~ the green rocks better with the wraps than the orange Rise, and it's smoother. The RFBA is a bit more refined than the Rodfather Diamond Blaze with a lighter feel and swing weight but equivalent power - almost too light, it's a toss up. It played great but couldn't cool the air or the water for me; in the water was the place to be down here in the heat.

I was snagged on a small twig and when I pulled it out there were plenty of caddis larvae on it ~ I tied one on as #3. The new caddis is a chartreuse or cinamon brown micro chinnele "detached body" thing tied with a peacock herl head over opal mylar flash on the shank. Chinille is tied on with wire from the back forward basically but it is fully secured under the thorax initially. The whole tie is simple & fast and not unlike Mayer's micro leach really. It worked well in Summit recently and again on the Ark today. I mainly go to it, my Wired Up Ice, or the beige chamois or yarn tie these days for caddis... depending on depth and color needed. I could tie this with a bead head for depth, but don;t. And I use caddis throughout the summer. Though, my caddis box is also full of many less used ties.

Also worth noting are the velcro fly patches on my vest. I use these constantly and they get destroyed in a quarter year or so. The original Simms ribbed foam is good but $10/patch. I've used alternative types of foam patch products and even made my own ~ depending, the less dense foam deteriorates much more quickly and doesn't hold as well as more dense stuff or closed cell. Well, I'm cheap and I believe I've discovered the answer for these on the most recent attempt finally. [Cheap like when I suggested you buy arrow feather drying duff as your refill on desiccants ~ just keep the drying crystals and add more duff.] I bought THESE for $9 and cut each one of the two supplied cards into 4 rows of bumps... so I got 4 patches for $2.25 each. I tossed one row from each card and kept the hanging thing for something down the road. Solved... I paid $9 instead of $40.

Summer Will Be Time For PMDs 15Jun24

The rivers are still raging but with total loss of my mayfly box I still need to tie up some summer flies. I have my Chubbies but soon enough it'll be time for PMD and green drakes, Today I tied my most effective PMDs: for weight, it's a jigged Rainbow Warrior and for a nymph it's my PMD pheasant tail variant. The warrior is what you expect. the DRC PMDPT is #18 PT with a red bead and a white ostrich or pale & UV pearl dubbed thorax. PMDs have big red eyes so yeah...

I've yet to do the green drakes. We did get in a 2nd ride with Kala's Skitch. The pic is from America The Beautiful park (and of the Olympic museum in the bg).

Solid Day Again On The S Platte ~ Cold & Wind Had Folks Leave Early 29Apr24

With the PT still flowing heavy, I made another outing to 11 Mile Canyon today. Fishing was good. Flows are consistently 130cfs and there were 28 cars up to the last bridge area. It was cold and windy so despite the car count I had my favored sections mostly available. But my toes and fingers were pretty cold, especially "early." I didn't arrive till 10:45am. While it started slow in the cold waters from snowmelt. I again caught a passel of fish, including one near pure cutthroat, a couple of browns, and many healthy 16"-18" cutbows, but no 20"ers. The play remains maroon/brown midges in the morning and then a modest BWO hatch occurred at ~1:30pm. I went to two mayflies below the Perdigon (which also worked) before that and caught bigger fish then. Unlike my last outing, the egg did nothing today. The deadliest tie was my Destiny's Child. Fun with the Rodfather Diamond Blaze ~ it is the favored among my 4s (plus it is the one rigged and in the carrier). Here are the better or unexpected fish.

 

The #1 bug in April this year, for me, on the SPlatte, by a wide margin, has been Coffin's maroon Pop Top. Recipe: #22 TMC 2288H, red & black thread body covered in Sally Hansen's, UV2 rust thorax, and UV cinnamon ice wings (the pop top). I drop this behind Juan's money midge, which also does some scoring, but the emerger trailer has scored more. We are getting into mayflies now finally, and I also expect more green midges will soon appear and I'll flip mornings to my Blue Oyster Cult larva midge trailed by the olive Pop Top. Anyway...

It's Silver Surfer Time And The Rodfather Rainbow Is Fixed 10Oct23

Fall is silver surfer time. Why? During the fall turnover in the lakes above tailwaters I fish, the water gets turbid and turns a bit off color at the effluent and below. In those conditions I like a bit more flashy mayflies to be visible through the dinge. It's a pretty easy tie but a bit crowded: #20 2488H, grey thread, silver holographic tinsel body, small blue wire ('cause they don't make XS), grey wet hackle fiber tail, silver holographic ice dubbed thorax, and grey wet hackle "legs." It has done well on the Blue and the Arkansas.

During the Brown's & our jaunt up Beaver Ck, Steve had an issue with his Rodfather rod ~ the fixed fighting butt and the end cap that holds the reel foot broke off and was lost. I found the parts needed and repaired his Rodfather Rainbow better than new. That is, given it broke of so easily last time, I added a dowel down the center of the fighting butt and end cap and into the butt section of the rod. If it comes apart again it will have had to have been a serious problem.

Our timing seems right to have come down from Summit as its color peaked, since we are now enjoying great color on the Front Range.

Vital Flies & Killer Brews 25Aug23

I've been procrastinating retying mayflies since losing my lot of 1000s to the Eagle before Ireland; this probably because it is a daunting task. I finally started today with bugs I need rolling into fall. I started with some competition weights, the Perdigons. This is a short and inefficient "run" for me but I need to get some mayflies loaded on each line. My Perdigon ties employ 2.3/2.5mm slotted tung bead on a #18 comp X barbless jig hook in mylar green/root beer, mylar black, and mylar purple. The purples are tied with copper colored beads and the others with silver; don't ask me why, I just like them that way. I use 140 denier white to make the bodies pop but I use a Sharpie to blacken the thread for the whip finish at the head. On the way I tie in 5 speckled Coq de Leon natural fibers for a tail as well as the body wrap. Keeping the thread underbody thin & smooth by unraveling the thread is advantageous ~ think slick with a slight taper. Then, after wrapping the mylar up and tying it off, I coat the body with clear UV epoxy, spreading it thin, before hitting it with UV. Touch up with dobbin if needed before lighting. Finally I dab the top, especially the slot of the bead, with black UV epoxy and cure it. These drop like a bomb and are FOMO for fish moving in fast water.

The 2nd part of this entry is about beers discovered over the last 10 days. Specifically a new brewery collaborating with a couple of my favorites. I'm in COS and these are distributed to "my guy" locally because of the collabs. I'm talking about Tripping Animals out of Doral, FL... not what I ever expected ~ born in garages in Venezuela. They have somethin' going on as they scored colabs with both ORB & Cerebral ~ yeah and the brews are what you'd dream to find: DDHs of stellar taste and feel. No weird hops combos just fantastic citra, simcoe execution: Frisco Screams & Great Run (displaying the respect for the Nugs). Great job, if not a smidge pricey. I also scored the Extra Extra Juicy Bits, a nice DDH DIPA from Weldworks ~ I still wish the project in COS had worked out.

Yeah... these guys are very capable. I'm glad the collabs got them into CO so I could enjoy.

Early Spring Midge Action ~ The Blue Oyster Cult 06Apr23

With some observed olive midges and my penchant for some blue on flies, I've tied #20-#22 Blue Oyster Cults, an olive midge larva. Even better, I've succeeded with them on the PT ~ gotta try 'em next on the SPlatte & the Blue. It's a simple UV epoxy tie on TMC 2488H with an olive thread body and a blue flash thorax area. I've used both black and olive thread - I don't think it makes a difference. I've also tied some with olive flashy body but that was too much. Bad pics below...

UPDATE 25Apr23... Blue Oyster Cult Refined ~ I fished several variants and have concluded that the variant of my BOC that is the most effective is the one with the black head. So, I now whip finish the olive back near the thorax and change threads to black to tie in the blue flash and then 6x whip finish a head over that. It's doing very well on the tailwaters right now. I may do a burnt orange variant for fall but olive is surely the ticket in spring. I also added a slightly better picture.

Best Buckskin Caddis Alternative - Shetland Yarn 07Mar23

I love the buckskin caddis fly larva in Colorado, especially on our freestone rivers. The problem is that buckskin material is kindof tough to deal with and results in inconsistencies in the tie. I've long sought alternative materials for this fly and had been tying it for a couple of years with a beige vinyl tube, until now. I read of a bug called the Utah Killer that was tied using yarn and has gotten lots of use as a sow bug or scud ~ yet the yarn for these is from a brand which carries an awesome color called buttermilk, which very effectively mimics buckskin. This is definitely a Colorado guide caddis ~ super simple & fast to tie, and (likely) very effective. Recipe:

• Hook: #16-#18 Daiichi 1150 Heavy or 1160 Klinkhammer, or any nice sized curved hook
• Thread: UTC 70 or 140 dark brown
• Body: Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift yarn in buttermilk color
• Head: Thread head coated with Sally Hansen's or UV cure epoxy

You can imagine the tie easily. The only real tips are to: 1) make a solid brown tie down of the yarn with directly abutting wraps as the yarn becomes translucent a bit when wet and the under-thread should be consistent as body internals and 2) twist the yarn a bit tighter during the palmering so the body is consistent. I bought the yarn HERE for ~$8 for 100 meters.

Extending Coffin's Pop Top Tailwater Winter Midge Family 04Mar23

Yesterday reminded me that olive midges are relevant in winter and early spring on the tailwaters. I'd focused the Pop Top on grey & maroon but I could easily add olive, and so I did. I did so in two variants: one with double threads and one with olive and XS black wire overwrap. I think it's best, aka most slim, to stick with the two thread body, but both will work. Below are the recipes for the Pop Top Family; how to tie Coffin's Pop Top is described HERE.

	Grey	Maroon	Olive	Olive Wire
Hook	#22 TMC 2488H	#22 TMC 2488H	#22 TMC 2488H	#22 TMC 2488H
Thread Body	Black & White UTC 70	Red & Black UTC 70	Olive & Black UTC 70	Olive UTC 70
Overbody	Sally Hansens Hard As Nails	Sally Hansens Hard As Nails	Sally Hansens Hard As Nails	Black XS Ultrawire
Thorax	Adam's Grey Superfine	Mahogany Superfine	Brown Olive Superfine	Olive Superfine
Emergent Wing	Grey Dun UV Ice Dub	Grey Dun UV Ice Dub	Grey Dun UV Ice Dub	Grey Dun UV Ice Dub

Here's the family...

PT In Brutal Winds, Waist Pack Field Trial & Perdigon 08Dec22

My main reason for an outing to the PT today was to field test the new waist pack setup. While the temps were decent at ~50°, what I really got was a brutal & uncomfortable cold wind rendering wind knots and chills. Sheesh. At least NZ is featuring 75°F days and 60°F lows.

Nonetheless, I wore and debugged the butt pack a smidge between untangling my rig. I introduced the pack HERE. So, first, right away, access is a big issue ~ one must remove the net and drop it in the water or on the ground simply to flip the pack frontside for viable use. I don't see any way around this, as fly boxes will be inside the pack, but for using a smaller alternative net hanging on the side. Second, I definitely put the nippers on the wrong side and will flip with the lesser used weights... I could barely reach them. Third, the chosen hero cam setup is at a weird angle to get a good "show" pic (as you can see) and it also requires spinning the pack around my waist in order to be in front for the pic ~ that's probably too much to handle with a good fish on the line. In NZ I may try to affix the cam, using the same magnetic suspension idea, in my shirt breast pocket.

No bigs and no bugs today... I did manage a 14" cutbow on my perdigon jig weight again (as on the 22"er two days ago)... the river might be telling me something about this fly.

 

The perdigon is a tie invented somewhat by a Spanish competitor, José Carlos Rodríguez, and adopted & adapted widely by the French competitors. These are all Czech nymphing guys but I work it too on a long line nymphing rig when in fast water. It is designed to fall hard in fast water (slim epoxy body, small slick tail, and oversized tungsten bead head) like a bullet and elicit strikes from fast decisions, due to the flash. Good news is that "down there where the fish are" the jig rig doesn't snag. Whether invented 15 yrs ago, or 6 yrs ago, or this weekend, the perdigon is now my lead fly when mayflies are not obvious. While there are plenty of variants in my box, here I tied one with white UTC 70 thread (black Sharpee during whip finish) on a TMC 413J #16 with a 3mm tung jig bomb bead (on the #18 I like a smaller bead), classic natural Coq de Leon tail (shank length), peacock Krystal Flash body (I like olive and purple too), thin UV epoxy over-body, and Solareze black UV epoxy wing casing.

Tying The Pop Top Winter Emerger Midge 16Nov22

I improved my Pop Top midge for ruggedness and cleanliness and I'll share the complete tying instructions here. It's a killer tailwater midge in winter & early spring in CO. I dreamed of it clearly as reported HERE. 1st the recipe/ingredients:

• Hook: #22 TMC 2488H
• Thread: 1 white + 1 black 70 UTC UltraThread spooled together (or red + black)
  
• Body: thread body coated with Sally Hansen's Hard As Nails
  
• Thorax: Adams Grey superfine (or Trico, dark brown-maroon, superfine)
  
• Wing: emerging wing of lavender ice dub

First, spin onto an old thread spool 1 white and 1 black 70 UTC thread simultaneously.

Then secure a #22 TMC 2488H hook in the vise and bind on the threads half-way down the hook bend with just 2 overlapping turns and wrap the thread body forward taking care to lay the threads side-by-side and not twist them.

Trim the rear thread tag close and burn it with a lighter to ensure no thread fuzz is back there. Then, paint the entire thread body with coating ensuring to cover the back end.

Dub a small noodle of Adams Grey superfine onto the threads (it won't behave exactly as expected given the pair of threads but it will ultimately bind well).

Wrap the thorax on from the eye to the thread base.

Dub a tiny bit of lavender ice dub onto the thread and lift the thread above the hook.

Squish the dubbing down to the hook and thorax with fingernail; take care not to bump the thread body as it is likely still drying.

Pull the thread straight over the thorax and eye and bind onto the hook with a wrap right behind the eye. Whip finish. Fluff the ice dubbing a smidge with a pick and trim it to be a wing no higher than 1/2 hook gap. The Pop Top slays 'em.

I also tie this with a red + black thread body where the thorax is trico-colored (dark brown-maroon) superfine. All else is the same.

This is a killer Colorado tailwater midge in winter and early spring. I've not had to go to the #24 in this tie, but it'd be fine down there. It is absolutely a "guide tie" as it is very simple and fast to tie, and with the Hard As Nails coating it's gotten much more rugged. There is no intellectual property protection in fly tying but this one is unique ~ if you tie it, and please do, just call it Coffin's Pop Top.