Upper Arkansas and others-August 15-18, 1997
With my friend Sue enrolled in a "Reel Women's" fly fishing weekend at a B & B in Salida I drove her down there to get in some casting in a part of Colorado I have not visited in many years. We stopped a couple places on the Arkansas near Buena Vista and also later near Salida on the way to the clinic.
The fishing was a mildly interesting but somewhat uninspired due to high river flows - partially from recent storms and partially from the draw down of the Clear Creek Reservoir - the latter of which is dropping much sediment into the river. So it was mostly streamer/nymph casting in off color water which is not the world's most fun experience but definitely better than nothing. In the Buena Vista area we landed several browns on both a black pearl streamer and then a combo nymph rig of stone and prince. Fish were not large, but were scrappy and of course, were all browns, that species being ninety-nine percent of the population of this river. At a rafting take-out area near Salida we did no good at all.
After dropping my friend off I did some sight seeing around Mt. Princeton and camped in the hills near the hot springs that night. Following day I had breakfast at Buena Vista and drove over Cottonwood Pass to the Taylor Park area. Planned to fish the upper feeder streams entering the lake and started on the Taylor River inflow. It's a pretty stream, roughly the size of Gore Creek, but has little cover as it flows through the meadows that stretch endlessly above the lake. Caught one rainbow (12") and several modest browns and was pushed out of several stretches by visiting tourists who don't seem bothered at all by fishing an arm's length away from another caster.
So left the masses, considered trying Willow Creek (another inflow to the lake), but was driven out of that idea by a group of tubers floating where I had intended to fish. Then left the area completely and drove down the Taylor River below the dam all the way to Gunnison. What a madhouse in the tailwater below the dam! Fly casters side by side throughout this entire stretch. Can they really consider that fun fishing? Below the tailwater comes miles of private property, so I drove at least ten miles before finding a place to cast. Did some drive & cast fishing for the next fifteen miles or so and probably averaged 2-3 fish at each stop - all browns and all in the 10-13" range.
At Gunnison I headed back to Salida and camped again on the Arkansas at the raft take-out noted earlier. The following morning the river had cleared somewhat and dropped modestly and the fishing became super! Used #18 and #20 comparaduns in green or brown tones and really nailed some nice browns in an eddy and a long flat above the islands. While I missed as many as I landed, probably touched 18-20 fish in this water, mostly in a range of 10-15 inches, and I did miss a number of strikes by larger fish.
Drove back to the B & B to pick up Sue and as their group had not returned from the morning session, I walked down to the river and caught another 6-8 nice fish by the banks, again using the small comparaduns.
After we left Salida, we did a bit more fishing by Buena Vista - with only slight success - and then headed up past Twin Lakes and camped on the stream flowing off Independence Pass. It was unfishable but we did have a nice camp dinner & enjoyed the sound of the water through the night. The following day we drove down through Aspen and headed up the Crystal all the way to Redstone. Like the Arkansas this normally bright stream was also running high and off color, but we found a few places to drop tiny nymphs and did have some success with small rainbows.
A short stop on the Roaring Fork above Glenwood proved only moderately productive as we got into some nice sized whitefish, but managed to lose them several times as quickly as we hooked them. And that's about it for this trip.