7.22.25
THE UPPER C IS THE PLACE TO BE
As I was navigating where to fly fish recently here in the Eagle Valley, the dog days of summer had me wondering where to go. I had plans to take my good friend of over 30+ years and his son (They are both XXL humans both standing at 6’3” and his son is only 14 years old!) fly fishing and camping and wanted to head out to the Upper Colorado River above or below the historic State Bridge Lodge located less than a ½ hour from Wolcott and the Eagle River. But, as the last report had stated, the Dog Days of Summer were already upon us, and the water temps had me telling him that we were likely not going to fish the first day of our float due to high water temps pushing 65-68 degrees. Then, they began releasing water from Green Mountain Reservoir through the Blue River, and everything changed. What had been flowing around 700 cfs only a week before quickly rose to over 1,000 cfs, and the best part was that the new, fresh water entering the Colorado brought the temperatures down significantly, with the highs staying below 60 degrees, thus allowing us to fish from the very start.
We floated from Pumphouse to Radium on the Upper Colorado for an overnight float, putting on the river at 4:00in the afternoon and drifting into Cottowood camp spot #3 around 7:30.
Fishing was pretty steady with most of our fish caught on a size #16 purple perdigon. Both on the hopper dropper (FLY) with the perdigon a good 2 ½ to 3 feet below the (FLY), and also running nymph rig with Pats Stone Coffee, Perdigon, and (FLY). A few hopper eats but mostly subsurface.
The following day, we got back on the Colorado by 7:00 AM, hoping to get ahead of the day trippers coming to launch at Radium. The slow water above the Yarmony rapid and canyon produced a few dry fly eats on (FLY) and (FLY) but again the purple perdigon worked its magic from right where the oxygenated water began till we entered the lakes portion where we focused our efforts on the group after group of rising pods throughout the lakes portion of the float before reaching Rancho Del Rio. A few eats came on the Pats(FLY LINK), which is nearly mandatory to have on running Pumphouse to Radium or Radium to Rancho for the thigh volume of stonefly nymphs in this section of the river.
We floated past numerous shore anglers above the canyon leading to “Eye of the Needle” and then again along the banks leading to the “Yarmony” rapid, who were mostly targeting the risers in the slower runs. Big smiles and warm welcomes led me to believe that they weren’t having a bad day fishing on the water.
