Arkansas River (Pueblo)

Day two of an epic fishing weekend in Pueblo. Ok... so maybe not epic but fun for sure. Ben and I had seen the pump house hole the day before and wanted to give it a shot so we parked off of Cotton Wood Road and headed straight for the fence line. Dad and Marty had joined us so we had a herd. We weren't the first people on the river but the hole directly under the pump house outlet was open.

Same flies as the day before. Yellow eggs, PTs, FB Mercury Black Beauties. Ben and I hooked up right away while Dad went downstream and Marty rigged up. This run is absolutely jam packed with trout. You could barley run a line through without hooking or foul hooking a trout. These runs are tough because you don't want to foul hook a trout but at the same time the takes are very subtle so you set the hook on any movement. We brought in the foul hooked trout quickly and with barbless hooks the release was very quick.

Ben in some sort of strange sun storm

After things died down I wanted to try a sink tip line with a heavy weight where the pump house outlet enters the river. This is a technique that I use at the toilet bowl that works really well. I was able to get a good "drift" on the bottom but there is a nasty snag (feels like a log) that you cannot avoid fishing this way. Lost two good fish fry patterns that I tie that imitate a small fry with the egg yolk still attached before moving on to other water. Thought that some of these may get discharged from the hatchery (no clue really where this water comes from but it was worth a shot) and if they did I could imagine a few hogs sitting in the white water getting huge on unlucky fish fry. 

Wrong date on the camera on this one

Dad hooked into some nice fish below this run below the first weir downstream. While we were fishing this run. Marty jumped in and started hooking fish as well.

Dad and I worked upstream to the run Ben and I had done well in the day before. This is the riffle into a drop off that runs along a rock pile bend. We fished from the rock pile side but things had slown down in this run from the day before. Not much action except a descent bow on a red tungsten bead head PT.

We worked back downstream to the pump house where Marty had dialed in on the slow side of the drop off. He was killing them with yellow sucker egg patterns. I probably watched him land over half a dozen within 15 minutes. Big smile on Marty's face :-)

By this time the mob had arrived and I felt like I was in a fly fishing zombie apocalypse film. Guys were slowly walking towards us with arms outstretched holding fly rods... Time to move on. We hopped in the car and headed down to Pillars Park. No one was fishing the weirs but there was a guy in the Bud hole that we wanted to fish so back to the car... We hit reservoir road and fished the water treatment plant. The temperature had really dropped and the fishing dropped off with it. We fished a few hours around the water treatment plant and landed a few fish between the 4 of us but it was  slow going. Ben had a nice articulated pumpkin Sex Dungeon on him and I decided to give a few stockers a heart attack with it.

I was slow stripping it in a deep hole when I hooked a massive branch that bumped along the bottom when I set the hook. Oh yeah!!!! Big Fish!!! Get the net!!! The branch came up and rolled on the surface to my dismay. It was super exciting while it lasted but it was a terrible let down.

The good side is that it was an awesome weekend of fishing with family and friends. Everyone caught fish and had a great time. Can't beat that.