Some of the best fly fishing near Boulder, Colorado happens away from the crowds — up in the high mountain lakes above the canyon, where alpine trout rise to the surface and the views are worth the drive alone. When the creeks below blew out ahead of a long-planned day with my friend Tim Romano of Trout Unlimited, we headed uphill instead. Here's how the day unfolded.
I'd been super excited to go fishing with an incredible guy from Trout Unlimited that I've worked with for a number of years, Tim Romano. Tim is an entrepreneur who helps Trout Unlimited with marketing. He's also a very talented professional photographer, and if that wasn't enough, an owner of Angler Trade Magazine. Tim and I had been trying to find time to fish together for a couple of years, and this was our day. The only issue was that all of the streams near Boulder, Colorado blew out the day before we were going to fish. Tim was watching stream reports and notified me we might have a problem. He searched for options and ended up calling in a favor to get us access to some high mountain lakes up the canyon from Boulder.
We met up at a killer bakery for breakfast called Shamane's Bakery. If you're ever in Boulder, I strongly suggest you check this place out — I had the best breakfast burrito I've had in years. We headed up the canyon to a neighborhood at the top of the mountain. When we pulled in, we could see trout eating on the surface. I don't know about you, but isn't it harder to rig up your rod while fish are rising all around you? I rigged up my 5 weight El Jefe combo. We knew some of these fish were looking pretty large, but we were up to the challenge.
At first, I threw on a Parachute Adams with a Zebra Midge dropper. After getting a few strikes and hookups, I decided to add a more buoyant Chubby Chernobyl in olive as my dry, and for some odd reason chose a size 18 blue midge I'd tied up as my dropper. I'm glad I went with blue — the fish were oddly crazy for it. At one point I lost my blue midge to a rude tree behind me and tried four or five different colors with zero success. I went back to blue and hooked up almost immediately. There were actual hatches coming off the water, and the Chubby was producing solid strikes about equal to the blue midge dropper.
The fish we were catching were chunky rainbows in the 16–18 inch range with some pretty incredible colors. These fish were hot, fighting incredibly well and jumping like crazy during the fights.
After a couple hours of constant action, one of the locals told us there were some huge fish in this lake, in the 24–36 inch range. When I hear things like that, I immediately start thinking about throwing streamers — larger fish in a lake like this feed primarily on trout. Unfortunately I didn't have my main streamer boxes with me, but Tim and I had a few. I was hooking up on the streamers, but the action slowed. We didn't find any of the big ones, but that's the way it goes sometimes.
I'm not sure how many fish we hooked up with, but it had to be 20–30 in a few hours of fishing. Then it was time to find my way to the Denver airport to fly home. What an incredible little adventure — it's always great to have success on new water.
The right rod for high mountain lakes
Alpine lakes mean hiking, and hiking means you want a rod that disappears into your pack. That's exactly what the El Rey G6 is built for — a six-section travel rod that breaks down to about 20 inches and rides inside your daypack, so it's never in the way on the trail. A 5 weight covers almost everything you'll find up high, from rising trout on a dry to a small streamer for the bigger fish. Prefer a classic four-piece? Our El Jefe v2 5 weight is a superb all-around trout rod, too.
Until next time, my friends — tight lines!
Jeff
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