I just got back from a family reunion over in breckenridge colorado and managed to find some time to go fishing. i fished the blue river in the town of breckenridge and below dillon reservoir where the big boys thrive. In town and below it i got into some browns but no rainbows. the highlight of the in town trip was whern i took my little cousin fishing and i spotted a nice brown in a back eddie. i threw my flies in there, nymphing, with no results. he then threw them in there and i see him come up, and hit the indicator. so now, i switched it up, threw a big hopper pattern in there and on my cousins first cast, it comes up and slurps it in. the fight was on. we fought him for a few minutes, and landed him and he turned out to be a 16 inch brown.
I managed to get away from teaching everyone and get some alone time below dillon reservoir with my dad where it is one of the great places in the west where fish get big and fat feeding on mysis shrimp. so i get out there, and the first thing i see is a little git of monofilament in a tree. i grab it, and it is a mysis shrimp pattern that has some 6x attached to it, so why not. i threw that one on and hooked up within minutes. the result was a fat healthy 20" rainbow. i knew it was going to be a good day... well it was. next i hook into another big bow and it goes out into the current and takes a few big jumps and pops me off. it was a good fight and i keep fishing. i then check my flies a few minutes later, and i noticed something. that fish snapped the hook in half! so now im back to finding the big boys. i walk up a bit and i find a spot behind a bush in the water and i can vaguley see the shadow of something enormous. so i sneek up within 25 feet behind him, and start making casts. it took a while but finally the strike indicator went down. it turned out to be a smaller one right next to it. that fish came right down stream towards and took a leap 3 feet from me! then it goes out into the current and manhandles me. it then broke me off and i was back to going for the other one. oh ya that smaller one i just lost had to be 24 inches and atleast 6-7 pounds. these fish are HUGE. so i tie on a new rig, throwing my trusty mysis shrimp on the bottom and have another shot at it. took another 15 minutes to get one to hit, butwhen it did i was in trouble. it was the big one i saw and it just ripped upstream took a leap , then ripped back down and just flat out owned me. it had to be a 8-10 pound fish around 27 inches. i didnt get any more down there but it was a blast! if anyone goes into a colordao, i recommend fishing the taylor or blue with mysis shrimp for these big boys.
"There is no place I fit in so well as a stream...Fishing ties me into the world of water and animals it contains, into mystery and something so primitive and valuable inside me."---Seth Norman
Thats a great pic of your cousin with that big brownie. Good fish stories on the ones that got away. Maybe they were just squawfish like on the Pit! I causht several squawfish on the Pit and you couldn't tell until you landed them.