September, 2015

 

 

9/8-15:  Another repeat of one of our favorite fall fishing trips.  This time the best part was the great weather we had - something not common on past ventures North to these states.  We made a big loop stopping first on the Smith Fork of the Bear River and finishing up on the Popo Agie near Lander.

With a couple of minor hiccups most of the fishing was decent.  Our shortfalls were on the Hoback, the Yellowstone, and the Boulder Rivers.  I'd guess we most enjoyed the Smith Fork, Greys, and especially the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone, despite the overwhelming numbers of whitefish that inhabit the latter stream.

  This Bonneville on the Smith Fork was released the first night of our expedition.  We were pleasantly surprised to catch only this specific species on that stream, given that we normally run into all kinds of whiteys, browns, and even rainbows there.

   Before exiting Wyoming we did spend a good half day working the Snake up from Jackson Hole.  This beautiful finespotted was released on the Gros Ventre just before we started on the Snake near Schwabackers (sp?). 

 

A highlight was spending another night at the Jackson Lake Lodge and enjoying a wonderful meal at the Mural room before driving all the way North through Yellowstone Park the next day.

  That drive was somewhat complicated by the unusually large numbers of Bison we encountered along the highway.  The animals weren't the issue - it was the drivers that for whatever reason always had to stop the line of traffic to take relentless numbers of pictures.

Don't know when we'll repeat this trip again.  Here's a somewhat overlong video of the various places we visited:

 

9/21-22:  Sad as it is to say, we're nearing the end of another fishing season.  Weather conditions made this year less than the best, but it's hard not to enjoy lots of time outside in the fair air over the fine water we have here in Colorado and our surrounding states. 

Our early morning trip to the main forks of the lower Gunnison was heavily impacted by an unmarked and unexpected closing of highway 133 for some rock scaling - with dynamite.  When we arrived at the area just above the Paonia Reservoir Dam, we were notified by the flagger that it was going to be a six hour delay to reopen the road.

We backtracked towards McClure Pass and tried the forest roads towards Collbran and hopefully thence to Paonia.  Unfortunately the roads were poorly marked and we lost a good four hours (and countless gallons of gas) trying to find our way back to the valley floor.  Eventually we made the passage, but by the time we arrived at Pleasure Park, the day was mostly over.  We did a couple mile hike upstream and fished as quickly as we could.  Not a lot of success.  Had one nice release and played a couple of browns that were in the low twenty inch range.  Rest of the fish were tykes.

Nice camp out above the river.  Good breakfast in Paonia.  Then over the pass, turned off towards Marble, and had some nice fishing for smaller rainbows up there and on the lower Crystal.  So not a bad trip.  Maybe one more outing before we head to Dubai and beyond on the 30th.  Here's the short vid. of the trip:

 

9/24-25:  Fun fishing on Gore Creek, but no grand slam this day.  The next day's outing on the Eagle was close to a disaster.  I fished poorly to start with and then took a heavy fall into the stream that soaked everything on me up to my sunglasses - including the video camera - which happily came back to life after a good 48 hours of drying out.  Here's the short video of both trips.  The dog & I have one more overnight trip planned next Monday to the upper Arkansas and Platte.  Then we're off on an overseas vacation followed by the fall return to Arizona.

 

Last Logbook Entry  � for previous day

9/28:  OK.  We're done for 2015.  Hoped to have a two day trip to the upper Platte tributaries and possibly some time on the "Dream Stream", but all was for naught as the highway from Johnson Village to Hartsell was shut down for some kind of construction issue.  We tried the Arkansas at Granite with modest success and then the same river just below Salida with similar results.  Camped overnight on the Kobi SWA of that same river, but given the bitterly cold temperatures the next morning, decided it would take the river too long to warm up and didn't want to sit around waiting for that to happen.

Here's a still of one of the few fish released yesterday - not bad, but not great.

And of course, the short video of the trip:

 

 

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