Roaring River was pretty packed when we arrived, with people in nearly every hole in Section 1. The weather has warmed up into the 60’s, after a couple of days of colder weather and 4-5 inches of snow. We headed down to the “flyfish only” section and had the first couple of pools to ourselves. We could see the fish holding the pools, so it was just a matter of finding a fly they would take. There were a couple of fish in the 18-20 inch range and it didn’t take long before I was finally hooked up with one of them. After a short fight I brought the fish over to my feet and the hook popped out. I switched flies from a San Juan to an egg pattern and hooked into another fish, again to only have my hook pop out. I spent the rest of the day rotating between different colored San Juan’s and eggs, and continued to hook up with an occasional fish. Matt hollered from the pool below that he was hooked up and I netted a nice fish in the 18 inch range. I hooked up with and landed another 18 inch bow before we decided to head further downriver.

We walked along the bank and could see a lot of the larger fish had moved downstream since the last time we were down in the fall. We checked under the bridge for a large brown that had been spotted earlier in the catch-n-release season, but he never showed himself. We found a couple of nice fish a little ways down below the bridge, but they started to thin out as we went further downstream. We hooked up with a couple of fish below the bridge before deciding to head back upriver. I picked up a couple more fish as we worked upriver in Section 1 before finally settling at the pool below the dam. Again, we threw the San Juan’s and eggs, but on the surface with no weight, and surprisingly caught a lot of fish. The trout grew accustomed to our flies after catching a couple, so I switched over to Trout Crack with no weight. They loved the Crack and would agressively take it on the fall. Between the two of us, we probably caught around 30-40 fish in just the afternoon.