Arkansas River (Pueblo) 2/11/12

Another great day of fishing on the Ark. Marty and I left CO Springs at 6 and got to the speed limit parking lot around 7. The wind was blowing, the snow was flying and we were the only ones in the parking lot. We may be a little off but we had the river to ourselves. We threw the layers on and headed downstream for Valco Bridge. It was strange seeing the bridge hole without it being stuffed with bubbas. Marty walked across the bridge to fish the far side of the run and I stayed on the near side. We started hooking fish almost immediately. I landed one or two descent fish on a Jujubee Midge. Marty and I had doubles going at one point which is always fun. I waded up towards the bridge a little and took a cast up under the bridge and hooked a nice bow. This 18" rainbow (shown above) has to be one of the darker rainbows I've caught on the Arkansas and maybe anywhere. The red on his sides seemed to just keep going all the way around his belly. His mouth was a little messed up from being caught before but he was a healthy fish.

Around this time Mike Greene showed up sporting brand new waders. He had stated that the next time we went fishing he'd have a pair. Mike only had a few hours to fish before he had to be somewhere but he did wind up landing 3 or 4 nice trout. I was able to get an action shot of him netting a fish.


The next nice fish I caught and landed was this fat rainbow which was 19" (below top). I kept fishing just under the bridge and wound up hooking 10 more to include this 20.5" bow (below bottom). I decided to offer up the hole I was fishing to Marty or Mike and Marty took me up on the offer. He got to my side of the river and went to clear the ice out of his rod eye and the tip of his rod broke! Bummer! It's an Orvis rod so it's covered but it still didn't help the situation. He had to walk back to the other side of the river to grab his spinning rod. He got to that side of the river and started fishing only to have a birds nest on his reel after a few casts. Not Marty's day! Marty decided to come back over to my side of the river and watch me fish for a little while.

We were both watching my indicator when it shot upstream like a torpedo. A fish had just hit my fly like a freight train! It took several nice long runs upstream. I was eventually able to bring it back down towards us and we were able to get a good look at him. It was at least a 22" bow and it may have gone 23-24". It was fat as a football and red as a brick. Nice fish! I knew this was going to be a long fight. He started running downstream and I mentioned to Marty that I'd probably need help netting this one. We had to follow this fish downstream run after run. The bank we were on was full of snow covered rocks. The bank was pretty much just a steep slope that kept going once it hit the water. We couldn't take a step off the bank really without being in water that was WAY too deep to wade. The fish had come up to the surface several times at this point and we both had several really good looks at him. I wanted to land this one BAD! I had followed the fish downstream and knew there were some obstacles in the water about 40' down from where I was at. Just as I was thinking to myself that I needed to keep him from going downstream any further he took a HUGE run downstream. There was NO stopping this fish. I realized what he had saw that he wanted to get to so bad. A tree that had fallen into the water. He had run under the tree with my line and was about 10' downstream from the tree. I had to put serious side pressure on this fish now or he would be gone. I somehow worked him out from under the log. As soon as he was on my side of the log I lifted straight up on him and he came up and over the log. Marty was on the downstream side of the log and went for the net. The fish came up broadside across the net and flopped a few times before diving back into the water. Ahhhhhh!!!!! Back to the chase! I had to pretty much run downstream at this point because the fish was in building current. I crossed the river and steered him through several submerged boulders. I finally got to a nice shallow riffle with him and he was ready to come in! I went to grab my net and....... NO NET!!!!! My net had fallen off somewhere upstream. Marty was too far upstream and couldn't make it downstream any further. I was on my own. I tried to beach him and got  him in about 6 inches of water. Just then the hook pulled out and there he was sitting with his back out of the water. I threw my rod on the bank and pounced like a cat. I grabbed him with both hands and he bucked hard and hit the water swimming. He was gone................................. What a bummer! It would have been great to land this fish but the experience of this fight was EPIC! On the way back upstream I took a picture of the tree that he had swam under. The chances of getting any fish out of this thing was slim to none. I can't believe he came out from under it.

It was an awesome half day of fishing but we were both pretty shot at this point. We called it a day and headed back to the jeep. It's always the big ones that get away....