Arkansas River (Pueblo) 3/31/12

We had a crew out on the Arkansas today. Marty, my Dad, and I met Ben Lewis in town and we headed down to Pueblo. We met up with David Fitch and his sons Michael and Steven. We had every inch of water covered around Valco Bridge.

Clockwise from upper left - Marty, Steven, Michael, David, Ben, Dad

This area must have been stocked recently because we could not keep little stockers off our lines. Ben was hooking up almost every cast! We couldn't catch anything over 12"-14". Don't get me wrong it was a lot of fun. I like catching trout no matter the size but it's always nice to catch at least a few that are a little bigger. We fished this area till lunch and probably caught 50 fish all together. It didn't seem to matter what fly we were using. Anything was good for one or two but the main flies were the standard fare. San Juan Worms, Copper Johns, Tungteasers, etc.

 Ben and I made our way upstream and fished every nice run along the way. We had definitely made our way away from the stacked up stockers. The fishing was a lot tougher up stream. We fished about halfway back to the car when I hooked a nice rainbow. Ben grabbed the net and I was able to bring the trout's head up long enough for Ben to get the net on him. I thought he would go 20" but I couldn't quite stretch him that long. He was a nice 19" rainbow with a nice red stripe down his side. This guy wound up being the best fish of the day. Really enjoyed catching this one. This was the first descent fish I landed on my new Sage One 4WT 9' / Ross Evolution LT 1.5. What an awesome setup. Less than 7 ounces for the whole thing. Casts like a dream and the reel is smooth as silk.

We fished the next hole around the bend for a while but didn't hook up. We were in a perfect run but things sorta turned off around noon. Dad met up with us and started to cross the river downstream from us when he took a dive. It was a rerun of Marty's swim last week! He was able to grab on to a rock and save his net and rod. He was stuck in some pretty strong current  but was up on his feet before Ben and I got down to him.

I worked my way up to the head of the run and was high sticking the far side of the main channel. After a few casts at the head of the pool I had a HARD hit and set the hook. I knew this was a nicer fish. He took a nice run across the stream and I was giddy listening to my new Ross sing. Dad took a quick snap just as I was netting this guy. He wound up being about a 15"-16" rainbow. Was going to get a picture of him but he had other ideas.

We all ate lunch together at the parking lot which was nice and headed back down to the river for another hour or so of fishing. I had a good time fishing with Michael. He is quite a fisherman. I have a feeling I'll be reading one of his fly fishing books down the road. Really had a blast with everyone today. It's awesome to be able to fish on such a sweet river with such good people. Life is good!

Arkansas River (Canyon City)

 Summer has come early this year and Marty and I took full advantage yesterday. We drove up to the Arkansas River around Texas Creek about 15 miles outside of Canyon City. We scouted the water on the way up and then turned around at Texas Creek and headed back downstream to hit the spots that looked good on the way up. We started at mile marker 254 (I feel safe posting this since I have about 10 blog readers). There were several really nice runs here. The first was a long deep run that butted up agains a steep rock bank on the far side.

 I hooked up after a few minutes but something felt strange. It felt like a huge fish but I could see him and he was only about a 12" brown. Turns out this poor little guy had soemones bait rig in his gut that was hung up on the bottom of the river. I had to wade out to him to cut the line. I could see the eye someone's size 2 bait hook in this guy's throat. The rest of the hook was burried in the trout's stomach. I cut the line up to the eye of the hook and noticed that he was bleeding terribly. He swam off but I doubt he survived. Really pisses me off the way people treat wildlife. If you are going to bait fish, fish where it is legal and where you can keep the fish you hook in the stomach.

Marty releasing a brown

Marty and I hooked up several more times in this first run and in the run below the first run which was a nice hole that slowed up a deep center channel that ran 40 yards or so. We only hooked brown trout and they were all around 12" - 14". They were really keying in on stone flies. A size 12 tungstone was hot for about an hour.

Looked good to me but the fish
wanted a copper john instead

After things slowed down we headed downstream and stopped at a really nice hole that we had spotted earlier. There was a guy fishing upstream from it in a pretty horrible spot. I couldn't figure out why he wasn't fishing where Marty and I were about to but I wasn't going to complain about a pristine run free from fishermen. We hit the near side of the run first and hooked up almost immediatly. We hooked several browns on the near side of the run before wading accross to the far side where we could fish more of the slack water. We hooked more browns of the same size mostly on chartruse copper johns. We seined the water and found a TON of free swimming caddis larva. I had some size 16 bar caddis that were a pretty close match but the fish prefered the copper john. Go figure. We hooked and landed 8-10 more fish before the run died down.



16" Rainbow



The next spot we fished looked VERY fishy. Nice slack water all along the main cut with back eddies and film. The head of the hole was comprised of two huge white water plunges that created a huge white water pillow directly behind a big boulder. This was rainbow water! On about the second cast I hooked and landed this nice rainbow which wound up being the only rainbow of the day. No doubt rainbows prefer oxygenated white water.

We headed down stream and spotted a really nice run. The problem was that it would take scaling down a pretty steep rocky bank to get to it. We made our way down to the river without incident and I waded across to the far side. This was no easy task. This river is SLICK and the current was STRONG. I turned around to see Marty lose his footing and go face down into the water. He regained his footing and stood up only to have the rock he was standing on roll under his foot. He went down and was getting pushed downstream into a very turbulent and deep hole. I was getting worried at this point. At the last minute he made it to the bank and grabbed onto a rock. Phew!!!! Any further down and he would be in trouble! Marty was safe but his net and water bottle were gone. I took a few casts and landed a nice brown but we decided to move downstream to find some water that was a little more easily accessable.

We decided to make one more stop at the Salt Lick boat ramp. We landed one more small brown and decided to call it a day. All in all we probably landed 20 fish. The weather was absolutely perfect and as always we had an adventure.