Lake Powell and Southern Colorado in October, 1999

With several days of apparently wonderful weather in front of us we packed the Subaru, loaded on the wash deck kayak and headed to Utah for a planned five night paddle/camp/fishing trip to Lake Powell.  The camping was great as always, but unfortunately our usual good fall trolling and shore casting with wooly buggers produced little success on the bass that live here.

It appears the periodic disappearance of the threadfin shad that feed so many of this lake's predator species has once again occurred.   We saw none of the schools of baitfish that are normally plentiful in the bays and channels.  No stripers were evident and the largemouths and smallmouths we landed were all immature with a just a few exceptions.  Some of the shallow back water areas provided a bit of fun with small dry flies, but after a couple of days of beating our brains out trying everything in the book, we threw in the towel and broke camp early.

Given a variety of options to pursue on the way home we chose to head back through Southern Utah and then through the lower part of Colorado.   It proved to be good decision.  Arriving in Durango we hit the Animas River at a perfect wading level (400 c.f.s) and immediately had fine afternoon casting for rainbows and cutthroat right in the middle of town.  The river bed was rich with caddis cases so a dry/wet rig of a yellowish surface terrestrial trailed three feet by a small bead head caddis emerger proved extremely effective.  Given the lower late season flows the fish were concentrated in more aerated riffle water where both flies worked very well.

The following morning we repeated the experience in the same spot with the same success.  Attempts on the Animas downstream were less productive, but on balance, I'd call this a terrific gold medal trout stream easily the equal to anything near where we live.

Our efforts to find access on the nearby Florida and Los Pinos Rivers proved fruitless as most of the river bottom is privately held.   Local knowledge would be needed to get on these visually appealing streams.   On the way to Pagosa Springs we did enjoy some more excellent rainbow fishing on the Piedras River, and we'd probably have had even more success had we taken the time to get away from the heavily fished portions of this river.  But from what we saw, this part of Colorado appears to be generally superior in quantity and quality of trout waters to every other place we've visited in the state.

The last day we again fished our favorite spots near Buena Vista on the Arkansas and had modest success using the same rig as noted above.   But the browns are getting more wary now that the stream flows are falling, and it was more work than earlier trips through that region.

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