June, 2026

Last Logbook Entry  é for previous day

6/4-6:  This turned out to be a completely indifferent trip to what used to be our favorite trout destination in Colorado - the White River upstream from Meeker.  Ignoring the primary reasons the river is no longer is remotely close to what it was when we first starting coming there, it's now become even more of a crap shoot due to the unfortunate elimination of the old stream gauging station known as the one near Elk Creek close to Sleepy Cat.

The problem that causes is that it's no longer possible to know how wadable and consequently fishable the river is near the confluence of the North and South Forks.  Here's why.  If you were to look at the nearest gauging station above Meeker today, it would read the river running roughly 129 cfs. near Coal Creek, and that's a tiny fraction of what it would normally read if this were not a drought year.  That's not the bad part.

The White is heavy dewatered for irrigation from the town of Meeker upstream to shortly below Sleepy Cat.  The river above the main irrigation region was probably running close to 500 cfs. while we were there and frankly, I cannot wade across it to my favorite stretch of stream when the water's running that hot.  So the good fish holding spots that I know were not accessible.  Enough of my whining.

There are still fish to be caught and released.  What I did find out about the conditions is that this early in the summer, despite the stream having good color, the water is too cold in the early morning hours to be moderately productive.  The late afternoon brought warmer stream conditions and somewhat more active fish, but in neither time frame was there anything available in the form of surface insect activity.  Euro nymphing and ordinary deep nymphing wasn't great either.  Strikes were tentative and elusive, but the sun shone, and the air temps were nice.

The one afternoon we ventured up to check out Trapper's Lake, I had no hookups in a normally decent pool at the lake's outlet.  Fish were spooky and had been cast over a bunch already.  Lunch at the lake lodge was fun, but the burgers were so large, we gave up on even thinking about dinner that night.  Camping was great at the overlook of still mostly unfilled Lake Avery.  Nobody anywhere near us, and the dogs could roam about freely!

So while the camping was fun, the fishing was not.  Hopefully better wherever we go in the next couple of weeks.  Here's a couple of handfuls of clips - basically useless viewing I'm sorry to say:

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