Salmonfly Hatch in Colorado

Below is an email that we received from one of our good fishing buddies, Luke Massaro.  After reading his email and enjoying his pictures, he found a way to make me extremely jealous of his time spent on the headwaters of the Colorado River.  Enjoy and thanks to Luke for the update! 

"Boys,

I had the opportunity to spend two days on the headwaters of the Colorado River fishing the hatch of all hatches, the Salmonfly hatch.  It was truly a sight to see fishing the mouth of Gore Canyon where the Colorado River gets to take a breath after rushing through class IV and V rapids farther up in the canyon. My first thought after hiking up into the canyon and seeing the Salmonfly hatch in action was, "Man these flies are huge!" And for good reason, the flies that I was seeing buzzing around like Chinook helicopters had been maturing for three years and had finally made their migration to the surface.  Fishing dry flies this big at size 4-8 reminded me of the 17 year brood of Cicadas that hatched in PA back in 2011 and the Salmonfly hatch is a similar phenomenon where the entire ecosystem thrives off of one insect for a three week period.  At 2.5 inches long, an adult Salmonfly is quite the meal for a brown trout or bird. Dry-dropper rigs and high stick nymphing the fast water proved to do the trick and bring up sizable brown trout that were keyed in on Salmonflies. While I forgot my camera in the truck on day two as a result of shear excitement, I did manage to snap some pics on day one to capture the hatch.

Cheers,

Luke"

"Howling at the Hatch"