Tons Of Tiny Trout On Blue @ N Breck 10Aug21

Kala had to head to COS and the Nest is being stained so I headed out to fish for the day. I hit the headwaters of the Blue just N of Breck for the first time this year. I caught tons of fish; mostly browns and smaller than I recall for this section. Flows and temps and viz were great but Breckenridge is expanding downstream and less of the stream is unimpacted ~ I think this growth has affected size. I used the Rodfather 3 wt (it was ready in the vault) rigged with a chubby and BHPT dropper, electric caddis larvae and black DCEZWD40. Mid AM fish looked up and hit the cream/UV #18 chubby. I caught them on it or the "set hook snare" resulting from an attempt at the chubby. Later, the other bugs came into play more - everyone played. I basically fished from 4 Mile bridge/open space to "The Steps" in two sections today. Of course I had a day-drinking break for the excellent ColoRAD Bro @ Broken Compass and then "lunch" at ORB/Bird Cafe. Smoke still evident but eyes a bit less reddened... WTF - at least it's not CO this year. Keen poppies were out along the banks of the Blue.

Bluegrass & Beer Festival And More With Yohanans In Summit 07Aug21-09Aug21

Mary & Jim came out to visit us this weekend in Summit. We had a packed weekend and began fast with my new cassis sour and a fine heirloom & burrata salad before hitting the Silverthorne First Friday event atop the new parking deck downtown. We listened to a good band and previewed the food offerings from the soon-to-be vendors in the Blue Bird Market in the 4th Street Crossing project... pizza and epenadas were both good. Rather than queuing for bad beer we closed out across the street at Angry James before continuing music training at the Nest Theater.

We were slow to start our Saturday with a bit of chill and plenty of smoke but got a roll going to Breck mid-morning. Mary was riding the nearly new Cannondale eBike and she set a wicked pace on the ups. We scored some PRs on the ride and enjoyed Daylite Donuts in Breck as well as the fine ColoRAD Bro hazy at Broken Compass and hit Steep (no pic) on the way back to the Nest too (to make it Jim's mini-bikery replacement). We made it to Twist in Breck for a decent but expensive dinner coupled to a cycle of commitment to receive a bottle of wine ~ ultimately a nice Chenin Blanc.

We had Dave's Eggs to kickoff our main event day... we were using public transport to get to the Keystone Bluegrass & Beer festival on Sunday. Eggs were great; transport was uneventfully masked and decently efficient (50min door to door); festival was excellent in tunes & brews. We heard seven fine bluegrass acts on three stages - most of the artists were from Colorado and were friends and all great. We even scored a fun meetup & beers-up with my friend Scott Kaiser and his new(ish) daughter Reid. Reid was darling and Scott was is good spirits from a big weekend with his kid.

Sierra Hull as well as Pixie & The Partygrass Boys were there ~ both excellent, but every band was very good. We noted Apex stage & sound did a great job on the sound systems as well. Here's the lineup starting with Many Mountains on the Montezuma Stage.

We moved to River Run stage and caught Pick & Howl...

Then it was back to Montezuma for House With A Yard. The flatpicking lead guitar on the right was excellent.

Again returning to River Run we enjoyed Woodbelly as we chatted with Dr Kizer. These guys are a classic and very tight 5 piece bluegrass band. A blast to hear.

We lunched with pasta and I caught The People's Key on the Quaking Aspen stage (which was strangely moved from the very cool Quaking Aspen amphitheater) for several songs. Very good - very fun with smaller sound (than even they wanted).

The awesome Sierra Hull (mandolin & voice mainly but she plays guitar too of course) closed out the Montezuma stage.

 

Pixie & The Partygrass Boys closed the River Run stage and they were joined by Hull for the final set. They are very good and fun - the lead singer can belt it but the breakthrough is the lady fiddle player who absolutely scorched us. What a great day of bluegrass and beer. On beer... some teams didn't commit and only brought cans and others didn't cater to my preferred styles. But, as my friend BK agrees, new locals @ Steep served their new Badest of the Bad DIPA and won my "best of beer" chit.

Arriving safely back at the Nest via Summit Stage again I invented a new cocktail inspired by the excellent Palisade peaches this summer. We all really like the Summit Sunset (as I named it)... in so many ways. The only bummer of the weekend was that our friends the Brantley's were missing due to ticketing snafus.

Greg's Got Stones 09Aug21

Greg's been killing it on the first fly this year on the Ark and it rewarded Rick and him on the Gunny. The second best fly is almost the same but with a CDC soft hackle collar and PT tail vs the hot spot and KF tail. He's fished both all summer he doesn't think he's ever not had one of the two on the line.

It's Greg's version of Egan's Frenchie and a super simple tie. He went to the barbless hooks and loves them, he cant tell he's losing any more fish and it's a breeze to get the fish off the hook; to get the hook out of me; and it might hang up less on debris in the river. Warning, the fly comes off as soon as you get the fish in the net. He's not fishing these Euro style, just the regular indicator style.

#16 Fulling Mill FM50 45 Jig hook in Black Nickel, 2.5mm Tung gold bead (bigger could be an option also); lead free .015 wire ~ about 8 wraps. Black Krystal Flash for the tail, normal pheasant tail body with gold wire counterwrap, and finished with fire orange for hotspot. He uses superglue under the PT wrap that seems to keep it together when the Ark Browns go to chewing on it.

Back On The Gore 06Aug21

I let the rains runoff one day but headed back over Vail Pass to the Gore again today. I just hit the mouth to I70 section as a squall came through with lightning and I left ~ got drenched on the way back tot he car. I had a decent day there with a number of fish including some nicer 18" rainbows ~ unfortunately I don't have those pics due to camera state failed understanding. Anyway I only caught one on the chubby with most taken on the DCEZWD40 today. I now find the lower part doesn't fish as well as the upper; this is due to heavy construction at the mouth area and over the Eagle. Just a double today and the browns were smaller 14"ers. I saw some midges midges early and caddis later. On the way I saw a strange sight - a fairly recently dead moose. I think he was coming down from I70 and slipped into a mud spot and then broke or caught his leg on the fence.

Last Day With S&A (#4) and Browns For Now 02Aug21

In lieu of the Brewery Bikery, S&A,  S&D and Kala & I rode the 30+ miles to Breck for evil pastries and a coffee. Brown and I did a side trip to Broken Compass to make it official. We enjoyed the stellar hazy DDH, cleverly named for us the ColoRAD Bro. Very good.

Sharon Silva 01Aug21

I am a big fan of The Wild Reeds ~ known. My preferred writer & lead in their repertoire is Sharon Silva ~ known. SSS has written solo work ~ less known. There's a YellowSessions.com segment debuting her recent writing ~ less known. Below's the link ~ now known. This is very great work coming from darker spots - I'd love to hear her bigger band arrangements of these but this intro to the new work is strong...

S&A Vist CO #3, And Jim & Mary Join, For Stuff In Summit 30Jul21-01Aug21

Despite cancellation of the Brewery Biker '21 due to rain forecasts, Yohanans and Browns came to Summit to party. We dined Thu on halibut with red curry and spicy bok choy. And we popped the magnum of Edgar's 2013 El Chunker - all tasty.

My killer golf buddy Yoho showed for some game in the thin air. I'm injured, Jim crushed it and Steve was consistent; Breck was awesome again.

Steve & Donna showed up and threw an awesome brunch on the deck. We all decided to bail on activities (like the Bikery or other) due to weather but did party all day with games (Code Names & 500/Euchre) and totties in the PM at the Nest, and some fine paella. With cabin fever jitters we all did get out on a hike from Ute Pass the next day - followed by an abbreviated brew tour at Pug Ryans & Steep. Awesome.