Town ~ I hit the HS football stadium (now marked Scheel's) town section first. There were peeps but it wasn't heavily impacted except at my favorite spot there under the footbridge. The guy didn't move so I moved ahead of him to finish my pass with a few small cutbows. I hit a number of better fish on the nose with mayflies and midges but the bite was not 'on.' Flows seem low, slow, and water a bit warmer in town.
It was a windy forecast and flows are only 85cfs below Pueblo Rez on the Ark. Still, I headed down to fish and at 9am the mayflies began to hatch. It was an ok one as it was partly cloudy, the spawn was over with the cutbows hungry, and the wind wasn't too strong. My #18 MHFBPT worked great and even scored a 20"er, others were 18", and one small one. Most took the PT on the PT, heh heh, but #22 Destiny's Child fooled 'em too. I'm seeing 2 sizes of BWOs on this section right now, along with midges. I was only there for the AM and fishing was decent and the weather great. I did run into a pod of suckers too and landed too many; one was fat 19"; they seemed to like the Perdigon most.
Yeah, I got nabbed in Canon City for speeding... it was almost a sheepish stop at just 10 over and he even said, "have a better day." Grrr. Super foggy coming out of COS and even on 115 toward the Arkansas River Valley, but then it cleared OK. Jim & I met GL at Pinnacle Rock for a run at the caddis hatch, which I'd heard had entered lower Big Horn Sheep Canyon. Well, it had... even though Jim & I only saw the leftovers on the banks' brush from the day prior, as we left early, Greg said the canyon was full of 'em by the end of the day on the drive home. Jim & I both used Rodfather 4 weight weaponry. We caught our fill for sure on this ultimately decent day in BHSC. It got windy and cool in the PM however. I had only fished here once per year on the last several feeling it still hadn't recovered from the Hayden fire. It has now, I had a gob of fish on one pass at 400cfs and while none were large, it was fun and encouraging. The weirdest part is that I caught 1/3 rainbows, not Jim though, and GL caught 80% 'bows! I also felt they were the larger and stronger of the catch. Everything we caught was on mayflies as well ~ for me a black ice Perdigon, MHFBPT, or DCEZWD40 and for GL an Anato mayfly. It's good that lower BHSC is back as before this, driving out to the Ark meant a 2 hr one way jaunt. I can fish it again!
The weather flipped to beauteous after the 2 day cold snap so I headed to the PT today. Flows are still low like ~100cfs; usually we are nearer 400cfs at this point. I started at the Nature Center and loaded the RFT5 with an egg and midges and went at it starting at the shallow above the big weir upstream. 2nd cast yielded a cutbow... and there were many more to follow this day. Nothing for me from the farm however. My best spot was the hook weir above the deep carp hole. I was fortunate to get about 3/hour with most of them 18"-21" like these. I did lose a couple too. The egg worked as did a purple 2 wire midge larva, the Purple Reign emerger, the Awesome Midge and others. I saw mayflies at ~2pm but not many; I tied on a MHFBPT early and a purple RS2 later and didn't score yet with mayflies here... soon though. A fun and not too crowded outing in Pueblo.
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