The Blue and Colorado

After literally months of anticipation I finally made it to Colorado. My friends and I fished two rivers that are renowned for big fish.
On our first day we drove straight from the airport to the Blue River below Dillon Dam. The river goes right through a bunch of strip malls so the setting isn't perfect but if you ever get the chance, definitely fish this stretch of river. With the low flows you have to use small flies and tippet but there are really big fish here. We landed a bunch of really nice fish, a couple over 20 inches. Most were getting ready to spawn so they had a really nice red color. They weren't on their beds yet.

On day two we fished the Colorado River near Kremmling. The report was that it was fishing really good. I guess everyone took the day off on Wednesday because even though it was the middle of the week it was pretty crowded with drift boats, rafts etc. Luckily we were able to walk up river and get some nice big stretches to ourselves. 

I had heard that whirling disease had killed off most of the rainbows and that there were a lot of browns here. I also heard that streamers were picking up a bunch of fish so that's what I used all day. I caught some really nice fish on a big sculpin pattern. No pics of the biggest fish which was probably over 20 inches. My friends caught some nice fish also but overall it was a little slow. It had snowed the day before up river and I think that added some pretty heavy color to the river which you can see in these pics.