EAGLE — Talk, as they say, is cheap.
And so it was, after several months of tourist-town hyperbole about rivers “on fire” and fishing-guide chatter over the “best fishing in 20 years,” founder John Knight launched his dory in a light rain, handed a borrowed rod to a visiting angler and calmly looked on as Tucker Horne plucked a wild, 15-inch Colorado River cutthroat from Sylvan Lake with fewer than 10 casts of a basic parachute Adams fly.
“That was awesome,” said Horne, from Charlotte, N.C. “That’s the first cutthroat I’ve ever caught. I wasn’t expecting that at all.”
It was just the sort of reaction Knight is hoping to elicit from those participating in his seventh annual America Cup tournament when it returns to the trout fisheries of Eagle and Summit counties this week. After alternating years of drought and downpours and, frankly, challenging tournament-fishing conditions, the nation’s largest international fly-fishing competition under the meticulous European is looking to make a statement.
The opportunity to showcase Colorado fly-fishing couldn’t come at a better time.
“It’s key, because I go to Bosnia next June to accept the ‘sacred scroll’ as the host for the 2016 World Fly Fishing Championships, sort of like the Olympic torch, and my presentation is going to be about wild trout and the mountains and how clean it is,” Knight said. “Compared to the rest of the world with stocked trout, Colorado and the West may be the epitome of wild trout and fly-fishing. I don’t care where you’re from, it’s like, ‘Oh, I wish I could go to Colorado and fish.’ “
Of course, it never hurts when the fishing actually lives up to the hype. And it would seem that this summer, more than many in recent memory, the hype may actually be trying to keep up with the fishing.
“It’s amazing what a little water does,” said Bob Dye, a guide out of Evergreen’s shop who spends more than 100 days a year on the Colorado River. “It’s still a little high for wade fishing on the lower river, but we never really saw the water temperature warm up in August, and the fishing has been steady all summer.”
The Colorado River upstream of Dotsero is just one of five fishing venues that will host some 180 anglers split among 16 teams from Europe, Canada and the U.S. during competition Friday through Sunday. And despite the stellar season it has seen, it’s pegged as the least consistent of the bunch. The nearby Eagle River and Blue River below Green Mountain Reservoir, both of which feed into the Colorado, tend to be more resilient to weather events and have been producing fish all summer.
“That’s sort of the curse of tournament fishing. It’s like booking a ski trip and hoping you get powder,” said Knight, the sales director for at Camp Hale. “But because of that, I’m on the upper Eagle, which doesn’t get blown out. I’m on the tailwater below Green Mountain, which doesn’t get blown out, and I’ve got two lakes. So four out of five fisheries, I’m good no matter what the conditions are. The Colorado River below Red Creek, that’s 50/50. But you can stick fish on a muddy Colorado, if you know how.”
The anglers who arrived up to two weeks ago to prepare for the America Cup tournament this Friday-Sunday tend to know how. The teams of five anglers traveled from as far as Poland and as close as Denver to ply their technical fishing skills in the catch-and-release World Cup-style tournament that serves as precursor to the 36th annual World Fly Fishing Championship awarded to Vail in September 2016.
“It was a fairy tale to think that we could get the Worlds,” Knight said. “But we got it.”
Leading up to the World Championship tournament, Knight’s organizing committee also landed the 14th Fips-Mouche Youth World Fly Fishing Championships in August 2015 and the U.S. National Fly Fishing Championship in October 2015.
But for now, the focus is on America Cup 2014 and the stellar September fishing conditions around the rivers and lakes of Eagle and Summit counties.
“The water is so great; it’s a perfect year,” Knight said. “And a lot of these guys from Europe never get to see these wild fish. I want them to go back and chatter amongst the pros in Europe and get people further excited.”
The America Cup Fly Fishing Tournament will take place Friday-Sunday on five different venues, including the Blue, Eagle and Colorado rivers along with Dillon Reservoir and Sylvan Lake State Park near Eagle. Volunteers are still needed to measure fish and record scores. Contact Jodi Knight at 970-390-7425 for info.
