Five of our FATC members met in Beaver Creek, Colorado to fish the rivers of Colorado, enjoy each other’s friendship and live for a week in luxury. Kenny Klimes (St Louis), Greg Krochta (Denver Fellowship Lead), Ron Fiala (Chicago FATC member), Tim Graham (Colorado FATC member) and Jim Craig (Illinois across from St, Louis FATC member) joined forces to fish along the I-70 corridor in Colorado. The guys all met up on Sunday, October 21st at the Park Hyatt, a beautiful luxury hotel up in the Beaver Creek valley. But their goal was not to live in luxury but to fish the rivers of Colorado.
Saturday – Kenny and Jim met up with Ron Fiala, who drove down from Chicago (via Estes Park where he was visiting his daughter), at the Denver airport. We checked into our luxury accommodations and made our plan for the next day.
Sunday – The gang of five all met up on this day and fished the Eagle river in about three locations and were very successful. Most of the rivers in Colorado are very low right now (they need water bad), but we were able to find some nice runs that led to beautiful rainbows and browns. We had the chance to throw nymphs, dries and streamers.
Monday – We drove a little further and fished the Colorado river near the “Pump House”. The decision was to start with streamers since the Colorado river is a little more open and wider than most of the rivers we fish. The morning had us walking a fair distance upstream to the Little Gore canyon but with little luck. We returned to the pump house and did a little better when we switched to nymphs (euro nymphing did well). An early cold rain chased us off the river around 4pm
Tuesday – We headed up towards Aspen and fished the famous Frying Pan river. This river is noted for some awesome dry fly fishing. We fished below the dam about a mile in the Gold Medal area (just below the bridge). The browns were rising and taking small stuff in the surface film. We caught quite a few browns on top with dries, soft hackles and tiny emergers. Kenny saw a huge rainbow trout that he estimated at 24 inches. He called her “Lulu” and wasted most of the day chasing her up and down the river. But, oh if he caught her, the guys would never hear the end of that story. He got her to look twice at his fly but no luck. The colors of the rainbows and browns were awesome here since they eat a lot of Mysis shrimp that give them the protein to make their colors vibrant.
Wednesday – We headed to the Dream Stream. This area is in the Charlie Meyers Recreation area on the South Platte river between Spinney and Eleven Mile reservoirs. We caught some nice fish here also. The browns were moving up to spawn and the rainbows were happy to pick off any eggs that the browns laid. A young lad that we met on the water hooked into a huge brown over 25 inches. See the picture below to see the kind of pigs the Dream Stream holds. Tim had to leave us on this day to head back home for work.
Thursday – This would be Greg’s last day with us, so we fished the Eagle river again (I think it’s his favorite river). Here we fished two locations with great luck at the “middle school” location. We caught some nice rainbow and browns on beads. We had the pleasure of meeting European champion, Charles-Andre Hanin, from the Belgium fly fishing team. He was on vacation and had fished the Eagle river before during the 2016 world championships. He won the Eagle river portion of the 2016 World’s and had to come back. He was a very nice guy and we talked techniques with him.
Friday – Ron, Jim and Kenny added one more river to the list – the Roaring Fork river near Aspen. We fished several locations. Again, with the water so low in most of the Colorado rivers the guys had to find the best pocket water to fish. The Roaring River produced some very nice rainbows and browns.
Saturday – was travel day home.
Numerous flies were used on this trip and each river called for different techniques. The five built some long-lasting friendships that will last for years to come. The food, accommodations and fly shops visited were top notch. Take a view of the many pictures from this trip.
There are TWO sets of pictures below so make sure you take the time to view both.
PART ONE PICTURES:
PART TWO PICTURES
Great photos! Looks like you guys had a wonderful trip.