The New Blue
Midges hatch all year, but during the late fall, winter, and early spring they are the most reliable and important food source for Blue River trout. Most successful anglers fish a two-fly nymph rig and imitate the various stages of the midge hatch. If the fish are holding deep and no hatch is evident, your bottom fly should be a larva imitation like Barr’s Pure Midge Larva (#22). If you see fish suspended in the water column or a midge hatch in progress, use two pupa imitations. Proven patterns on this river include #18-24 Black Beauties, Mercury Midges, Rojo Midges, Jujubee Midges, and South Platte Brassies. [See “Jujubee Midge” by Charlie Craven in the Dec. 2005 issue. The Editor.] During warm spells or in the event of an especially heavy hatch, trout rise to midge adults and can be fooled with imposters such as #22-24 Griffith Gnats, #24 Matt’s Midges, or #26 Parachute Adams.
Blue-winged Olives hatch in April and May and between late August and mid October. Overcast afternoons provide the best dry-fly fishing. Look for rising trout in the slower runs and pools, especially in the reaches above Green Mountain Reservoir. It’s not uncommon to find a pod of a dozen fish or more feeding on these sleek, olive-bodied mayfly duns. Make short, accurate upstream casts of no more than 30 or 40 feet with 6X or 7X tippets and concentrate on making repeated accurate casts to an individual trout until it finds your fly. Parachute Adams, Mathews’ Sparkle Duns, and Cannon’s Bunny Dun (#20-24) all fool trout taking duns from the surface.
Blue-winged Olive (Baetis) nymphs become active an hour before the hatch, creating excellent nymph fishing opportunities in the shallow riffles and along the edges of gravel bars. Use a two-fly rig with small mayfly nymphs such as #20-22 Pheasant-tail Nymphs, Smith’s Baetis Nymphs, Barr Emergers, or Hare’s Ears.
Expect caddis hatches between May and September through most of the drainage, and you can always catch fish during the summer on a pupa imitation such as a #16-18 Beadhead Breadcrust, Mercury Caddis, or LaFontaine Sparkle Pupa.
For dry-fly anglers, it’s hard to beat a #16-18 Elk-hair Caddis, especially when used as the top fly in a dry/dropper setup. It’s rare to find a fish taking caddis with a regular surface feeding rhythm, so covering the water methodically is your best option. The telltale splashy rise lets you know trout are taking either caddis or Yellow Sallies because there is relatively little surface disturbance when trout eat other food items such as mayflies and terrestrials.
Yellow Sallies begin to hatch in June, providing excellent dry-fly fishing in fast, shallow riffles. Anglers sometimes mistake these small yellow or lime-green stoneflies for caddis, but that’s okay, since trout in swift broken water also have a hard time telling the difference. Your caddis rig of an Elk-hair Caddis and a Deep Sparkle Pupa will take trout looking for Yellow Sallies, or you can try something more specific such as a #14-16 Yellow Stimulator with a Gold-bead Pheasant-tail Nymph. The key is to concentrate your effort on the water type that holds the most stoneflies.
Pale Morning Duns (PMDs) emerge daily during July and August and are often on the water at the same time (between 1 and 3 P.M.) as Western Green Drakes. On overcast days, expect a full-blown hatch with pods of trout surface-feeding in shallow flats and deep pools where the current seams gather the most food. My favorite PMD patterns are #16-18 Cannon’s Bunny Dun, Mathews’ Sparkle Dun, and Stalcup’s CDC Biot Compara-dun. On bright days the hatches are sparse and the mayflies fly quickly from the water. On these days, nymphing with #16-18 Pheasant Tails, Barr Emergers, and Mercury Pale Morning Dun Nymphs is the best tactic. Focus on the top of the runs where riffles dump into deeper runs or pools. Fishing behind gravel bars and mid-river shelves is also a good mid-day option.
The Green Drake hatch sometimes provides the best dry-fly fishing of the season. Many Green Drake duns emerge from their nymphal shucks just under the surface of the water. Green Drake emergers such as the Quigley Cripple (#10-12) or Stalcup’s Green Drake Nymph (#10-12) suspended just below the surface will draw crushing strikes from fish looking for a big, easy meal. Drakes don’t blanket the water like a Blue-winged Olive hatch, so you’ll have to cover the water with blind casts, or stand back and watch for several minutes to identify a feeding fish. Use a traditional dun imitation such as a #10 Hen Wing Green Drake or Mathews’ Sparkle Dun as your strike indicator in a two-fly rig.
Red Quills show up in the late afternoons (starting a 4 P.M.) during August and September. While not as dramatic as the mayfly hatches of early summer, the Quills fill an important gap as the PMDs and Green Drakes begin to wind down and fall Blue-winged Olives have yet to begin. Use #16 A. K.’s Red Quill Parachute or Stalcup’s CDC Biot Compara-dun for dun imitations and a thin, sparse #16 Pheasant Tail to imitate Red Quill nymphs.
As the summer season winds down, attractor fishing with a Royal Wulff, Limeade, House and Lot, Renegade, Humpy, or Rubber-legged Stimulator can cause aggressive takes by summer-fat fish. It’s usually best to use these types of flies as strike indicators for your nymphing rig when flows get low and the fish become suspicious of standard nymphing rigs with brightly colored strike indicators.
During higher flows, aquatic worms (earthworm brown and pink), and cranefly imitations (rockworms) work well. Egg patterns also catch fish during higher flows, and they are most effective throughout the spring and fall months when the trout and Kokanee salmon are spawning.
The Blue River in Silverthorne might not be for everyone—matching the hatch behind The Dress Barn or Tommy Hilfiger is a surreal experience—but the varied water up- and downstream of town offers a fine sampling of what the Colorado Rockies are famous for. And with all the conservation efforts going on there, it’s only getting better.
Pat Dorsey is co-owner of the Blue Quill Angler in Evergreen, Colorado. He is author of the book A Fly Fisher’s Guide to the South Platte River (Pruett Publishing Company, 2005).
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