Hayden Ranch on the Arkansas

Lucas with his first fish on a fly!

My buddy Lucas Wilson was in town for a few days for a Soundgarden concert at Red Rocks and I wanted to get a fly fishing trip in while he was here. I had recently been over Tennessee Pass and was impressed with the looks of the Arkansas headwaters. Usually I peel off of 24 before I get up that far on the river. To me it looked like a lot of water and not a lot of people.  I didn't want Lucas to have to use 6x tippet and microscopic flies, and the normal crew was in the mood for new water so we decided to give it a shot.

Lucas, Mike, Ben and I dropped by ArkAnglers in Buena Vista on the way up to
grab some advice and a few flies. We didn't really know where we wanted to start fishing and we were told that the crowd thinned out a bit up in the Hayden Ranch area. We decided to drive out of town for a while and hit whatever looked good on our way up to Hayden Ranch. We saw plenty of good water but it seemed that the further we drove, the busier it got. When we got to the overpass the parking lot was packed! We were pretty bummed out but decided to give it a shot anyway.

Mike with a nice brown

We jumped out and rigged up and headed for the water. As soon as we got over the first hill we found the crowd and they weren't fishing the Ark! There was a pond just over the hill from the parking lot and it was completely surrounded by bubbas. Sweet! Looked like we were going to have some room on the river.

The river looked great. Reminded me a bit of the Tomahawk area of the South Platte. It was COLD too! Lucas made us all aware of just how cold it was. I probably should have let him jump in a pair of waders since he isn't used to cold water but he's a former Marine and I figured he'd get over it.

The fishing got better the further upstream we moved. Not much of a hatch when we first started fishing so I was fishing a two nymph rig. Chartreuse Copper Johns #16 worked best early. Caddis started hatching about an hour after we got there and we switched to a two dry rig consisting of a Yellow Sally and Caddis.  The Caddis worked pretty consistantly but the Yellow Sally brought up the bigger of the fish we caught that day. Didn't just bring them up either, it made them go crazy on the take. REALLY aggressive/splashy takes! Good times :-)

We all caught fish and had a great time. Next time we head up this way we are going to walk in a little further before fishing. I would have liked to have kept fishing upstream another mile or so but the weather didn't allow that. Definitely some water I plan on fishing again.