The days are getting longer, but there is still that small window of opportunity which is really quite handy. Mornings are too cold, so why not work on your taxes for a while. Rig up a midge rod, and or a blue wing olive rod in your house. Thus, tying good knots in your 6X, with warm fingers. I usually wader up indoors, too. By the time I reach the water, everything is toasty warm. Find a spot at 12:30, it’s not very busy until the Mother’s Day caddis hatch in late April, and that’s only a weekend at best. The next three hours is a crap shoot.
Depending on the temperature, wind and who knows what else, it could be a dry fly phenomenon, or another zebra midge to the rescue day. Either way, between cold and wind and runoff, there are a lot of trout to be caught. Browns and rainbows, for the most part, are finished spawning and are back in seams, big rocks and they are chowing down. I find the 1:00pm to 3:30pm session just perfect. Too much of a hassle to float, and when good things happen, an angler only needs 100 yards of river. My fingers are gone by 3:00 anyway.
Perfect timing to meet friends at a nearby pub or pizza joint. We talk about seeing our first skwala, March brown, or bwo. It’s the same conversation, email or text, every spring, but it’s exciting. Springtime Out West is more suited to the local angler. Predictably good fly fishing begins in late May, and June onwards can be a mob scene in places. I’ll take white fingertips and short days, light tippets and small flies, that’s my spring break, three months long.
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Contributed By
Brian O’Keefe
I hope your spring had a lot of memorable events. I agree that spring skiing can be amazing, and my buddies swear that turkey hunting is very fun, and who doesn’t like a tropical flat after the gloomy weather in December, January, and February. What I love about spring fly fishing in the Rockies, is that I can drive my little gas saver car to the river ($6 a day), no boat needed, be challenged every day, and get home early enough to meet friends for dinner. It’s a simple season, on paper! But for some reason, I have 300 midge pupa fly patterns in my midge box, and they almost all look the same.
