Flows - ~550 cfs
I left Eagle early knowing that with the crazy amount of runoff the state is experiencing, The Pan would be busy. Even upon arriving around 8am, I was definitely not the first and was greeted by about 10-12 cars and about double the amount of people. I still rigged up quickly, fighting the “shakes” as I was tying on my flies. I didn’t know if I was shaking from the above average intake of coffee, the possibility for some large, mysis fed trout, or the combo of it all.
Once I made it down on the water, the weather was perfect, hovering around 60 degrees with no wind. I made my way out to the middle of the riffle section just below what is known as the “toilet bowl,” or the giant frothy plunge pool spilling from the bottom of Ruedi Reservoir. I was fishing about a 14 foot leader tapered down to 6X with the smallest white thing-a-ma-bobber strike indicator. I set my depth to about 6 feet to my lead fly, a small mysis shrimp pattern, followed by a small red-thread midge larva. Within five minutes I had a nice rainbow take the mysis and I knew the day was going to be amazing.
I continued to work the riffles, sight fishing where I could, and landed about 5 more while missing a few strikes in the process. In the process, I also had something that has never happened to me before. I experienced my own personal double up! While I had a nice 15” rainbow in the net, I released the flies back into the current below me. As they drifted down, I was looking at the nice colors of the fish in the net. In the corner of my eye, I notice my fly line moving out into the current instead of straight down and I quickly lifted the tip to find another eager fish on the end of it. I stood there for a quick moment laughing to myself before I let the first fish out of the net and brought in the next. I wish I had a friend there with me to document the event as it was a first for me.
After working the riffles for about an hour and a half, I moved up to the right side of the toilet bowl. I adjusted my tactics and lengthened my depth to about 10-12 feet and added some weight to try and get those flies down in the swift current. Once again, almost immediately, I was into fish, and big fish at that. I was told by my manager that many times with the higher than normal flows coming out of the dam, the fish go crazy and will eat more than normal with reckless abandon. In the next five hours, I managed to hook into and land many very nice powerful fish and land a good number of 20”+ fish. I did indeed hook into and play a wise old timer who tore downstream, through the rapids and into the riffles before the pool. I tried my best to keep up with him, thinking of the 6X tippet in the process. He simply teased me by jumping three times while gaining line on me before shaking the #24 midge larva free. They are always bigger when they get away, but he had to have been 26”.
I will be back when I manage a day off here in the near future to try and fool some large trout once again. The flows have since gone up over the last few days to about 850 cfs. I am not sure if this means more mysis action or simply more water.
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