Fly Fishing
Summit County’s many fishing holes hide in the Gold Medal waters of the Blue River.
Drunella grandis grandis, whose common name is the Western green drake, is a large mayfly with a long, upturned body, big sailboat wings, and cartoonishly large biceps on its forelegs, like an oversized bodybuilder. The fly spends the better part of its life, which lasts about a year, as a nymph clinging to the beds of fast-moving rivers and streams in the Rockies. Then, each summer, usually in the first weeks of July, the nymph rises to the surface of the water, sheds its shuck, and attempts to dry its body and wings for the first time, as to take flight.
For a trout, the clumsy mass on the surface is one of the easiest meals it’ll snatch all season. The river comes to life with showy flashes from its biggest fish, many of which rarely rise (they typically feast on nymphs in the riverbed instead). This activity makes the green drake hatch the year’s highlight event for many local fishermen, and for those from farther afield, as well. As trout writers Caucci and Nastasi once put it, “To many afflicted Eastern fishermen, the ‘Green Drake Hatch’ is as irresistible and habit-forming as black jack, whiskey, or easy women.”
Summit County is the wellspring of four of Colorado’s largest rivers. The Arkansas, the Eagle, the South Platte, and the Blue all form in the county, or on its periphery. As such, it offers fishermen access to an array of settings, from gentle alpine streams and lakes to formidable rivers too swift to cross. A fisherman can be casting into the still water of a beaver pond south of Breckenridge one day, and floating the mighty rapids of the Colorado River the next. 
In mid-July, however, the focal point of Summit’s fly fishing narrows to the Lower Blue, the only stretch of river in the county to produce the coveted green drake hatch. The Blue forms near Breckenridge and heads north to Lake Dillon, onto the Green Mountain Reservoir, and ends at its confluence with the Colorado near Kremmling. Local fishermen call the stretch from Breckenridge to Lake Dillon the Upper Blue, and that from the base of the Dillon Dam to the Colorado, the Lower. Thanks to the reservoir, the headwaters of the Lower Blue are a consistent temperature, which means the often fickle green drake hatch usually comes off at a predictable time: between 10 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon — though one guide will nod his head at this, and the next will disagree.
What is for certain is that when the green drake hatch gets going, the Blue surrenders its strongest trout of the season.
“What makes the hatch so exciting is that you really get the largest fish in the river coming up and taking flies on the surface, and they’re big flies that you can see,” says Jackson Streit, the owner and head guide at Mountain Angler in Breckenridge. “These aren’t just ten to 12 inch trout we’re talking about. They’re the big ones—the fish you didn’t even know were in the river.”
Streit says other signature hatches generate excitement among local fishermen, like the salmon fly hatch on the Colorado in June and the blue-wing olive baetis hatch on the Arkansas in late March and April.
“They’re nothing like the green drake, though,” he concedes.
During hatch weeks, stories of trophy trout abound. Last summer in the second week of July, I met a father and son from Iowa who had driven 11 hours west to Summit just for the hatch. It was near dark when we crossed paths; the father and son, Tom and Cody Miller, had been fishing a mile upriver from me, near the Blue River Campground along Highway 9. I asked the two how they had made out.
“Amazing,” said Cody, who was no more then 10 and spoke quickly and excitedly. He told me that he and his father had been fishing with small dry flies when, in early evening, the river began to pop with the rising of big trout — “like cannonballs hitting the water,” Cody said. Soon he and his father could see green drakes emerging and awkwardly trying to take flight from the river’s surface. Tom rummaged through his box of flies for a crippled green drake pattern (an imitation of the fly as it struggles to get off the water) and tied one on for himself, and another one for his son. They caught four trout in five minutes, the last of which “had to be twenty-three inches at least,” Cody said proudly.
It was a story that, while perhaps exaggerated, I was inclined to believe. There had been no hatch where I’d been fishing, just a few minutes downstream. Then again, drakes are notorious for hatching for some and leaving others empty-ended. They’re also known for hatching in near darkness, or after the sky has gone pitch black (This behavior is typical of the Roaring Fork and the Frying Pan Rivers, both renowned for their green drake hatches). Says Chris Hall, a manager and guide at Cutthroat Anglers in Silverthorne,
“For some of the best green drake fishing, I’ll row down the river in the dead of night and shine my headlamp towards the bank where I want my clients to cast. They can 
barely make out the flies in the light, but the fish just come up and slam them. That’s rarely on the Blue, but there are always exceptions.”
Fly fishing in Summit is about more than the green drake hatch. Fishermen troll the local waters throughout the year, even in January and February, depending on the degree of the cold. (Interestingly, because of all the dredge mining in Breckenridge a century ago, the Upper Blue has a virtual heating pad set beneath it that keeps the water from freezing). All five of the trout shops in the county —Mountain Anglers, Cutthroat Anglers, Breckenridge Outfitters, Summit Guides, and Blue River Anglers — lead guided outings year-round. Those in Breckenridge spend more of their time over in Park County fishing the Platte and the Arkansas, while those in Frisco and Silverthorne often head north for float trips on the Colorado. But according to Zeke Hersh, owner of Blue River Anglers, “We all go where the fishing is good.”
“In wintertime, we have more pale waters within an hour drive than anywhere in the state,” Hersh continued. (“Pale waters” are stretches of river directly below a dam; they’re comparatively cool during summer and warm during winter). “We’ll fish the Blue below the dam, and the Colorado and the Arkansas, too. Then in the summer, with a good guide, you can head in whatever direction you want.”
Last summer, a few days after I had met the Millers on the trail, I awoke early for a daylong outing with T.R. Resignolo, a longtime fisherman in the county. T.R. is a dead ringer for Hollywood star Adrian Brody, though he’s a less solemn actor and more laidback Summit County dude — he sports a soul patch beneath his lower lip and speaks fondly of his truck’s horsepower. T.R. is a diehard angler, and more or less a prototype for that sort of individual in Summit. He has five fishing rods that he puts into action four or five times a week, often in pursuit of trout in the county’s rivers or large pike and muskie in nearby lakes. He has an affinity for calling fish “hogs,” and for chewing peach blend Skoal as he goes “whacking” for them.
T.R., never one to mince words, wasn’t optimistic about finding a green drake hatch the day we went out.
“We’ll see,” he said. “They haven’t been coming off the last few days. But there are a lot of ways to catch a nice trout in Summit. We’ll get one for you, one way or another.”
The two of us started off on the Lower Blue at a location that is a closely guarded secret amongst local anglers (T.R. said he would take me there on the condition that I dash its name out like a Russian novelist would). To get there we followed a path of wood planks down from Highway 9 on through a dewy marsh, and then crossed the Blue twice to skirt private property. All of this to find a long, gentle pool that ran beneath a bank of heavy brush and spilled into a fork in the river at its bottom. There was no hatch coming off the pool when we got there; T.R. tied on a hopper dropper, I an orange stimulator with a copper john trailing.
“Keep your feet here on the bank until you’re ready to go,” T.R. had warned me. “Trout on the Blue see so much activity, they’re some of the wisest fish you’ll meet.”
Once our flies were fastened on, T.R. and I worked our way cautiously into the pool and tried to place our flies close to the bank beneath the brush. T.R. got a big strike straight off, and I hooked a fish a minute later that surfaced boastfully, then darted down through a runnel of weed, making off with my fly and half my tippet.
“I told you they’re hogs,” T.R. laughed.
I tied on more tippet and a new fly, but no fish rose to meet them. A few minutes later T.R. said it was time to go. We trudged back across the river and over the planks to his truck.
“This is the way people in the know fish the Blue,” he told me as we pulled back onto the highway. “Driving spot to spot, rather than trying to wade it. It’s just too powerful.”
That’s how the two of us fished all day, first between Silverthorne and the Green Mountain Reservoir, then on the more rugged stretch of the river north of Heeney. T.R. picked out good holes and parked his truck as close as he could get to them. Then we hiked to the spots of choice, often through cow gates or, in the north of Summit, up and down steep grades. Indeed, near Heeney the nature of the river had changed dramatically. No longer were there cottonwood and pine trees hemming the riverbed. Now the Blue slashed down through a seemingly ancient landscape, with sheer rock faces towering over each of the banks. The river itself was very deep; rarely was there room to wade it.
The two of us inched along the walls and cast into the pools ahead, most of which held the shadows of big trout flitting back and forth like ghosts on their bottoms. We never found a green drake hatch that day, but T.R. did well for himself fishing with nymphs, and I held my own with a few dry fly patterns.
“You really can’t go wrong in this county,” T.R. said late in the afternoon, after landing a nice-sized rainbow.
Then he led the way back to his truck and roared off toward the next spot on the river.
Andrew Tolve is a former Summit County resident (still a frequent visitor) making a journalistic name for himself in San Francisco. He’s currently taking a few months off to write the obligatory novel while ensconced in a Paris loft.
