HARTSEL — On a day custom-made for a daydream, only one thing was missing.
Water releases from Spinney Mountain Reservoir had been steady for days, about 135 cubic feet per second, creating a near-perfect volume of flow in the South Platte River below. The sun was bright, maybe too bright, but the notorious South Park wind was calm. Though a number of cars were in the parking area, by “Dream Stream” standards the river was not crowded. Finding an unoccupied river bend or pool would not be difficult.
Best of all, a cloud of tiny insects billowed above the water. Tricos! . . . By all appearances, the midmorning mating swarm was underway. Soon enough, the short-lived, black-and-white mayflies would be returning to the river and dying. Rafts of spent tricos would carpet the surface, and trout would gorge on the spinner fall.
Or would they?
Though best known for the spring and fall spawning runs of trout from Elevenmile Reservoir, which offer anglers an opportunity to catch and release exceptionally large fish, the stretch of river between the reservoirs also supports a substantial population of largely resident fish. The trico hatch is the signature event of the summer, and over the years, fishing the tricos on the Dream Stream has become almost legendary.
“When I started fishing there, about 20 years ago, I thought the Dream Stream had the best trico fishing you could find anywhere,” said Gary Almeida, owner of Ghillies Hackle & Tackle in Colorado Springs. “But this year I wouldn’t send anybody up there. From all the reports I’ve been getting, the tricos have been coming off as usual, but the fish aren’t on them. It’s just not happening.”
Similar observations are voiced by other Dream Stream veterans.
“I talk to our guides regularly, and they’re having a tough time of it up there,” said Dick Rock of the Peak Fly Shop in Colorado Springs. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it just hasn’t been fishing well. That might be part of the reason Elevenmile Canyon’s been so crowded this year.”
Indeed, such trends held true on this day. Though the trico hatch ran its course right on schedule, only a handful of seemingly small trout appeared at all interested. Fellow fishermen returning to the parking area generally reported the same experience. While a few trout had been taken on midges and small caddis early in the morning, the trico hatch had largely been ignored.
Theories abound about what’s going on. They begin with fewer trout being in the river. Sight fishing to visibly feeding trout is a common practice on the river, and most anglers say they simply aren’t seeing the usual numbers of fish.
That premise might be supported by some observations of Jeff Spohn, the Colorado Division of Wildlife fisheries biologist for the upper South Platte drainage. He believes that while some trout spend their entire lives in the river, a significant number are on the move throughout the season. As an example, he cites a tagged fish caught and released at the upper edge of the public water that was caught again five hours later below County Road 59.
“That’s reflected in some of the ups and downs we’ve seen in our annual sampling, and it’s why it’s hard to get a solid handle on the population,” Spohn said last spring.
Trout that normally move into the river, therefore, might be finding little reason to leave Elevenmile Reservoir this year.
Another school of thought suggests that with an abundance of aquatic vegetation along the river bottom, fish might literally be lurking in the weeds, out of the view of fishermen. With a wealth of other feed in the river, they have no need to come up for the tricos.
In a similar vein, brown trout, which make up much of the resident population, have been known to become largely nocturnal in heavily fished waters. That explanation might be supported by reports of occasional good surface activity during heavily overcast days.
A lack of fish? Changing feeding patterns? Some quirk of behavior best known to the trout?
Whatever the reason, fishing tricos in the Dream Stream has been largely unproductive this year.
At the end of the day, anglers are left to ponder why, perchance to dream.
