Ice off...

We got a tip off last week that a small portion of Antero Reservoir had iced off, and fish were cruising the shallows. So we had to follow that lead and sure enough fish were cruising alone or in pods, and were taking scuds, small leech patterns or eggs in a variety of colors.


We made the trip two days later and found the fish to be far less cooperative (lots of looks but few takes), and that bait casters had taken up residence and were picking off trout to fill their coolers.

So we moved onto the Dream Stream and being a Friday found an overcrowded, fairly muddy river, full of anglers with no respect or common sense for each other...so we moved to the "Resi," Elevenmile Reservoir that is and found thousands of large carp. Many looked to be spawning, or having spawning like behavior (porpoising like whales, and circling around in pods) but we found many willing carp that were taking scuds under an indicator, or slowly stripped black streamers. The carp would hit hard and were difficult to stay hooked.

28 incher that hit a small black bunny leech

Smiling Angler, Frowning Carp

We came back the following day to chase the carp, and found them to be so involved in the mating activity that we had very few hook ups and decided to spend the afternoon fishing the lower stretches of the dream stream. 

We had some success on meat whistles in the slow deep regions of the lower few bends of the river, and then came upon a riffle with some surrounding redds. YES we stayed away from the redds, but found some rainbows in the faster, deeper run. All the rainbows were hooked on the pink flexifloss worm, or a red chirono-cone midge.

I felt bad for these trout since each one I caught had jewelry, obviously being previously fouled hooked. These migratory trout really go through a gauntlet. Thats why in shallower water it is important to cast short of the fish, use less weight and don't lift to recast until your rig is far past the fish of interest.

Again the key to finding these fish is looking for shades of red.