Fun Weekend at the East Portal

Mike, Ben, and I had an awesome two and a half days on the Gunnison last weekend. We finally planned a camping trip with Mike who has a pop-up camper. Talk about camping in style. Can sleep six, has a heater, fridge, stove, lights.... We must be living right! Still took a day for me to figure out that I could put my waders on in the camper instead of doing a balancing act on my raincoat though.....

We took off early Friday and when we pulled in we had our choice of camping spot. I think there was only one other car in the parking lot. Sweet! First thing I noticed is that they fixed the spillway that was damaged last summer. I preferred fishing that spot before it was damaged so it was good to see it fixed.

Mike backed the camper in to our chosen space like a boss and we got to setting things up. Everything went off without a hitch, minus having to make a foil fuse for our creature comforts, and we were fishing in an hour.

We started off at the spillway and it took us a bit to figure out what was going on. I had stoneflys on my brain and even though it was later in the afternoon and only mid May, that's what I started throwing. I think the trout laughed a little when they saw that. Wait till June and wake up early if you want to toss big bugs.

Ben and I did a quick seine and it was more than apparent what we should be throwing. Size 20-22 dark baetis nymphs and scuds! There were a TON of dark (almost black) beatis nymphs and a few large dark olive scuds in each sample. Time to re-rig. That's what you get for assuming you'll show up and start slaying them in the middle of the afternoon on huge stone patterns! Hey, stranger things have happened......

At about that time I started noticing BWOs coming off. This was going to be good. We switched to pheasant tails and RS2s and started hooking up pretty quickly. We landed some nice bows but the action switched off pretty quickly. It did seem that the concentration of fish was not as heavy in this section as it had been on previous trips. Or should I say concentration of fish we could catch. We decided to call it an evening.

We got back to our camp site and Ben started cooking up some chicken that he had marinating. It was good. Damn good! We really went all out on food this trip. First camping trip of the season, first time taking Mike's camper out. We did it up right. So much so that Mike had to take a few pics! Chicken, steak, bacon, eggs, cowboy crepes.... And I think we may have actually LOST weight on this trip. Not the easiest river to wade.

We decided that we would head downstream in the morning to see what we could find. I've been to the East Portal a handful of times and we had always fished the spillway up. We've always done well so we didn't really have a reason to go downstream but we thought we might be able to find some good water to fish so we decided to go exploring.

Downstream is way better.... Just a ton of good water. It was fairly crowded though so we had to pass up a lot of it. I decided to just walk a while and get past the bulk of the crowd. I'm glad I did because when I finally stopped it was on one of the prettiest sections of river I've fished. I could stand in one spot and hit three different runs. It wasn't just a pretty spot either. It was chalk full of brick red 16-20" rainbows that were willing to hit a fly hard. No subtle takes for the next two hours.

These fish were amazing. Absolutley beautiful rainbows and browns that hit like a freight train and fought just as hard. One of the runs I was fishing from my sandbar perch was the inside seam of the main river channel. When fish would hit in this area they would take a quick turn to the current and torpedo downstream. Line peelers for sure. I kept thinking, "get your arses down here Mike and Ben"! For the next hour or so I had this little slice of
heaven all to myself. I must have landed a dozen fish by the time Mike made it down.

I had been watching a very large brown rising at the head of the pool I was fishing. He was out of reach from where I was standing and I didn't want to move so I just watched him steadily rise to BWOs... Mike FINALLY made it and I knew he had a dry fly rig so I pointed out where I had seen the rises. Mike took one cast and got a bite! I think it surprised him a little and he set a little too fast. He didn't make the same mistake when the brown rose again on his second cast! Unreal.... It wasn't to be though and the weight of the first few head shakes snapped the line.

The disappointment didn't last long though. I gave Mike a few RS2s and he was dialed in quick. He landed some absolutely stunning rainbows over the next hour or so. Some of the best fishing in recent memory.

We had to walk away from catching fish...... Ughhh.... Ben hadn't made it down and we hadn't eaten lunch. We figured it was at least noon so we walked away and decided to go find Ben. He was upstream a ways and had spend the morning catching some nice fish on dry flies. We made it back to camp and started getting lunch together. I asked if anyone had the time and Ben looked down at his watch in amazement. Four PM!!! LOL.... Time traveling on the river. We would have to treat our shock with a huge steaks.

We headed downstream on our final morning and hit the same spot we had found the previous day only from the other side. Unfortunately it wasn't nearly as good from this side so we worked our way back upstream. Mike was soon dialed in and hooking up on RS2s. Ben was killing it on dries just upstream from Mike. I hooked a few but was really just enjoying being in such a beautiful place watching my buddies land river gems.

It was a great weekend and I wish I could do it over again. Time absolutely flew by. Our only worries were how long to leave the baked potatoes on the fire and how many RS2s we had left. Small first world problems. So lucky to have the opportunity to decompress in the mountains of Colorado. It's an addiction but a good one. Already looking forward to our next trip to this amazing canyon.