On the Fly: Membership has its privileges

Most of you understand how good you have it fishing here in the Roaring Fork Valley, for other transplants like myself, it is still sinking in. Simply not having to drive any real distance to fish is the main advantage. Many people spend hours getting here, whereas we can simply stick our heads out the window and decide if it’s a fishable day. We can spend 10 minutes fishing our spots, or hours on end if we so choose to do so. Membership has its privileges.

This is especially advantageous as we are still taking advantage of the incredible dry fly fishing on the Fryingpan for the next week or so. When you’re local, you can be up there during the “sweet spot” midday hours, versus starting too early and staying too late (and being tired from the drive all day). Noon until three or four o’clock has been dry fly nirvana, to put it simply.

Summer hatches of pale morning duns are still going fairly well up the Pan, and fall blue winged olive abundance is in full swing. Would you believe we are still seeing small caddis on the Fryingpan too? Believe it. For the streamer tossers, big flies are moving fish all over the valley, and we may not be fishing many dries on the lower Roaring Fork and Colorado these days, but the nymph fishing has been very good.

As mentioned last week, this is a transitional time, and the fishing only improves for the next few weeks before the weather starts getting squirrelly. So get out there while you can, for as long as you can get away with. Nothing beats being able to quit early when the fishing sucks or staying late when it doesn’t.

This column is provided by Taylor Creek Fly Shops in Aspen and Basalt. Taylor Creek can be reached at 970-927-4374.