Colorado Day 1

   Day 1 in Colorado was interesting to say the least. It was a definite change from the normal driftless streams I am used to fishing. Not to mention this was the first time I had  gotten my fly line wet this year. I defiantly had to work out the kinks in my casting and line mending. It was a rough start in the morning making out to be a great day by the end of it all.

 We started out the morning at what is referred to as the Parshall Hole. It is tucked away right off the road side on the edge of the small town Parshall. The Parshall Hole is located on the Colorado river just downstream of the confluence with the Williams Fork. Here is a shot of the Parshall Hole.

 Just below the riffles lies a deep pool where fish where stacked up in numbers just waiting for food to come by. There where a few large boulders at the tail end of the riffles that where loaded with fish. Our main focus was drifting flies right on the edges of the boulders.

  My good friend Scott hooked up with this nice Brown for the first fish of the day. The fish was attracted to the size 20 red zebra midge topped with a red glass bead head. The size 20 was key during the whole week for being the hot fly in either red or black.

 Shortly after Scott caught his fish, I finally hooked up with my first Colorado Trout.

 It was a nice and healthy 16" fish. Not a bad way to pop my cherry for a Colorado Brown. 

 We fished the Parshall Hole till about 1p.m. and then moved on up stream to Byers Canyon on the Colorado River which is right outside of Hot Sulphur Springs. When we arrived we soon noticed that the water levels where low and there was lots of snow and ice on the banks.

 We fished these stretches even past the bridge up into the canyon and had no luck. We didn't even spook a fish, which seemed fairly odd to me. Either way it was a nice scenic adventure, and a ton of fun exploring some new water that my friend Scott had never fished. 

 We wrapped up the day at about 4p.m. as the temps never got above 32 degrees on Tuesday, but there was a warm up in the predicted forecast which made for an excellent week. So starting off on day 1 the fish count was at Scott-2 Brian-1 . I didn't get a pic of Scott's second fish. I was happy to only get one fish as it was my first big water trout. By the end of the week I was putting on a clinic compared to my good friend. Stay tuned the next few days to see how the rest of the trip turned out.