September, 2002
9/3: Mom's been visiting for the past week which gives us a convenient excuse to not get any fishing on our local streams which aren't fishable anyway. But today I took her on the loop trip from Copper Mountain to Leadville & return by highway 24 and did have a couple of quick chances to get in some casting.
Clinton Reservoir up near the top of Fremont Pass can sometimes be decent cutthroat fishing. Today was an exception as there was no surface activity, nor did any of the few remaining trout in this impoundment show any interest in the wooly bugger I threw at them for a half hour or so.
Over the pass near the headwaters of the Arkansas I did manage to release a handful of the tiny brookies inhabiting the beaver ponds and small riffles in this undersized stream. The fish all took a #18 brown WRS. Suspect walking a longer distance of the creek would have produced a small fish or two in every likely holding area.
There was a bit of good news on the stocking front. Roughly 130 high alpine lakes received doses of small cutthroats in the past week. That means some decent fishing should return to these basically barren lakes for the first time in several years. The trout will be catchable sized by the summer of 2004.
9/4: Dropping mom off at the Amtrak station gave us an opportunity for a quick half hour of casting on the Roaring Fork. While landing one ten inch brown doesn't sound like much action, I was very impressed with the way that river "feels" right now. Flows are strong given continuing releases from Ruedi Reservoir, and surface activity seems to be picking up dramatically. I was breaking in a new pair of Orvis prescription glasses & had some trouble making contact with few if any of the dozen strikes or so I had in this short period of time. The browns definitely are feeding more aggressively and that bodes well for the fall months.
This weekend we drive over for an evening and morning of fishing on the lower Gunnison and then will see how the Crystal is holding up on the way home.
9/6-9: What should have been a decent fishing weekend on the Gunnison & Crystal turned out to be more or less a bust due to truly rotten weather conditions. Actually that's also a bonus since we desperately need the rain. Friday night's walk up the Gunnison above the forks was a dud due to the rain & downstream wind. We caught a handful of smallish rainbows on brown WRS's & could get nothing to take a nymph. The following morning brought relentless rain & more of the same type of fishing. Interestingly with almost all the hoppers gone from the banks that imitation was still the best fly of the day. Between Sue & myself we probably released only a dozen more rainbows & a couple of browns before being driven off the water.
The storm followed us back over McClure Pass and really prevented us from more having more than a few minutes on the Crystal. It's still running at a decent flow and fish were rising, but the casting was ugly & I exited the water after releasing only one rainbow.
Sunday on the Roaring Fork after spending the morning with several other folks cleaning up the river bank on that annual mission, the dog & I tried a usually productive spot above the Sunlight Bridge. There was a modest olive hatch in the morning & a few fish were rising (without any rhythm) to floating insects of some type, but I had only one surface strike on a loop wing BWO. Caught a three pound whitefish & a fourteen inch brown on an olive wire bodied RS-2 type emerger trailing a cone head stone. Several other strikes & a couple more fish on, but that was pretty much it for the weekend.
9/11: Fishing that I can only describe as pretty spectacular on the Middle Colorado near State Bridge today. And that's a real surprise. Flows were 517 at Kremmling and 645 at Dotsero when I checked the state web site on return to the condo this afternoon. Those numbers are fairly crucial given the braids that I found holding all kinds of trout.
This is the first time I've really found great fishing on that part of the stream & the location will have to remain a mystery as not many people - either in drift boats or by hiking - are casting here - and I'd like it to remain that way.
While the dog & I spent most of the day hiking along the bank, in the couple of hours that I was on the water, I must have had a good three dozen strikes and at least two thirds of those were hookups. Most were browns as will always be the case, but there were a handful of feisty rainbows thrown in as well. The fish released ranged from 8-16 inches, and I did have three others snap off tippet which is very unusual.
The flies that worked were also a surprise. With the river slightly off color from recent rains - and a decent olive hatch in evidence most of the day - I started with a leading cone head stone trailed by a CDC winged olive emerger. It worked fairly well. Later I shifted to a double floating rig of small comparadun & trailing emerger and had no success at all. Finally put a bushy # 16 WRS as a trailer and must have awakened every trout in the river. Simply could not believe why so many fish wanted that generic hair wing fly. It must have functioned as an attractor as there was no evidence of either caddis or stones in the air.
We've had other reports of the Colorado fishing well in the Pumphouse area to Rio and have to admit those reports were definitely accurate. Will try to get back here a few more times before the browns start spawning sometime later this month or in October.
9/13: Short but sweet on the Roaring Fork this afternoon. Having to pick up Sue in Glenwood drove Sky & I to that town at noon & gave us an hour to cast on this freestone stream. It was especially nice to actually have a chance at some trout given the chocolate tapioca color of the Eagle & Colorado we passed today as a result of last night's unrelenting rainstorms.
The dog walked me to the (?) park below the Sunlight Bridge. Rigged with a floating #16 WRS and a short trailer of #20 bead head TMC #2488 with a simple olive dubbed body. Nothing took the floater - all took the trailer.
A half dozen browns foraging near the bank plus a handful of whitefish all took the larva trailer. It was fun. The stream ran clear & close to normal levels. We want to fish the Colorado this weekend at the same spot I hiked on Wednesday but don't know if the water will clear by Sunday morning.
9/15: It's amazing what a difference 80 c.f.s. in reduced flow makes in a river even the size of the Colorado where we fished it a few days earlier. (It was 435 today.) Had a chance to take Sue to that new stretch that was so wildly productive on the 11th, but the lowered flow rate and sunny skies made a dramatic difference in our success rate.
Just that much decline in the flow virtually wiped out a couple of excellent riffles in addition to apparently causing all the fish in one major braid to completely leave the holding area for deeper water. Also a cloudless day caused various hatches to terminate almost as soon as they began. The trico hatch lasted perhaps a half hour around 10:00. There were a few red quills and fall caddis in the air for an hour or so, and a massive olive hatch came & went in the space of what seemed like fifteen minutes.
Despite those issues we still managed to play perhaps 15-18 fish between us this morning. All were browns & they took either a surface attractor or a closely trailed (one foot behind) tiny bead head midge-like larva on a #2488 hook. Size range of the fish was virtually identical to that of the earlier session. We'll have to be selective about returning to this spot if the flow at Kremmling drops below the 517 c.f.s. that seemed to be an ideal level on our first outing.
What was supposed to be an extended vacation in the vanagon turned out to be a series of somewhat disconnected fishing trips instead. This all happened because I made the fatal mistake of taking the van into a local Glenwood Springs dealership called Elk Mountain Motors to have a warning light checked. Instead of the five days they estimated to do some repairs, it turned out to be a sixteen day mess that still isn't resolved. Enough of that.
After waiting around a few days for the van to be fixed we finally
figured out that it was not going to happen so packed up Sue's Subaru, tied the kayak to
the roof & headed out on a trip to Lake Powell. We
put in at the ferry boat landing & paddled out to the general vicinity of our regular
camping spot around the point towards Stanton Creek.
roughly three pounds and I did have one other large fish rip the 1X tippet
completely off the end of the leader. On the
way back to the car I again got lucky & landed our only striper of the trip - a fat 18
incher. Both fish took the silver cone
headed marabou streamer. Overall the trip was not a great one for fishing although
the weather itself was terrific.
Last Logbook Entry � for previous day
9/29: A 45 degree temperature, cloudy skies, & the threat of rain kept Sue from joining the dog & I on another trip to our new "hot" spot on the Colorado today. In truth it really was a bit nasty with intermittent thunderstorms passing over us for the couple of hours we were on the river, but the fishing mostly made up for the unpleasant weather.
Same rig as previously here - a #16 dark WRS up front trailed roughly a foot by a #20 bead head BWO colored nymph. The nymph won the first handful of rounds with every small brown choosing that over the surface fly. But upstream further I couldn't get a strike on anything but the WRS. The cloudy skies kept a nice olive hatch going all day & the fish clearly were taking emergers just in the film. The browns moved closer to the bank & revealed their presence by the sipping circles. I never changed to an olive imitation and kept hoping one or more of the brownies might refuse the outsized WRS, but they invariably came to it anyway.
Didn't release a lot of fish, but probably unhooked a dozen or so browns, a couple of nice rainbows, and one ordinary whitefish while we were here. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon.
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