Great Morning TOUGH Afternoon on the Ark

Ben and I headed back up towards Cotapaxi to try to get in some more dry fly action this weekend on the Ark. Plan was good, reality was not so good.

The morning started out very similar to last weekend with stone fly imitations getting hit REALLY hard till about 10:00 AM. One thing that was different though was the water clarity. The water was pretty dirty below Cotapaxi and only marginally clearer up towards Salida. I think that slowed down the nymphing in the morning some but we still managed to get fish in the net pretty regularly. This bow hit a flashback two tone stone (hares ear with peacock Ice Dub thorax really) on my first cast. One of the prettier bows I've caught in this stretch.

We took a break around 1-1:30 and decided to get our dry fly rigs. Around this time a storm started blowing in. Wind picked up and blew a lot of people of the river. Between the dirty water and the front moving in things just stopped all together. It was a very tough afternoon. I finally hooked a brown on a streamer after about three to four hours without a hit. Dirty water + front in this case = humbling afternoon :-) But as they say, just being out on the water beats most anything else.