Anthracite Creek and the Upper Crystal
8/21: A long time fishing friend from Connecticut who has a second home here in Cordillera invited me to take a day fishing with him while looking at a couple of fishing properties he potentially might purchase on the upper Crystal River near Marble and on Anthracite Creek over in Gunnison County. It was a fun and interesting experience.
Anthracite Creek: This is a tributary of the North Fork of the Gunnison and enters that river just below the outflow of Paonia Reservoir. It's a freestone stream roughly the size of Gore Creek in flow, although much wider and generally shallower than the Gore.
We arrived on the property in early morning and after talking to the broker, set up our equipment and started wading and casting up the stream at the bottom end of the property. This is a healthy stream with lots of airborne midge, caddis, and dun activity. Streambed examination confirmed that fact with midge and mayfly larva present along with several varieties of caddis. Stonefly cases were also in abundance along the shore.
To test different tactics my partner chose to surface fish while I went with a double nymph rig of small golden stone and trailing OS-1 semblance fly. The water proved very productive and we caught nothing but rainbows in the two hours we fished this property. Nymphing was more effective overall and in some of the deeper holes and eddies I would have five-seven fish on. The shallower, swifter runs are mostly devoid of trout, but any kind of true holding water - holds fish. Fish size ranges were 7-14 inches and I hooked, but lost a couple of larger ones.
It's a fine stream, mostly private throughout its reaches and would be fun to fish on a weekly basis throughout the summer months. So had I the financial wherewithal, it would be my choice for a getaway vacation home.
Crystal River: After a quick lunch at a local resort restaurant we headed back over McClure Pass and turned up the highway to the backwater community of Marble. Here the property in question only encompassed one side of the stream so it was accessible by the public on one shore and inevitably less desirable from a fishing standpoint.
We again started at the bottom of the property in question working our way upstream for roughly a half mile. The Crystal carries more flow than does Anthracite Creek, but examination of the local entomological resources suggest that it is not as rich a stream. We found some indication of midge and mayfly larva and a few caddis cases on the rocks but there was no sign of hatches occurring.
As before my partner started using surface flies and I again nymphed. We had some success early on for small brook trout in quiet pools and swift runs. Shortly I changed to a rig of a small black stone up front and #20 buckskin midge trailing and my action picked up immediately. While a few fish came to the stone (despite there being no sign of that insect form streamside), it apparently acted as an attractor and the buckskin proved to be a real killer. In one small disturbed eddy I landed seven fish - four whitefish, two brooks, and a small brown.
Overall this water was not as productive as that on Anthracite and the presence of mostly brook trout suggests that there is some fouling, etc. by mining. We caught no rainbows here, although they are abundant further downstream near Redstone.