Arkansas River (Pueblo) - Alicia's First Fish!

Alicia with her first fish ever. And she caught it on a fly rod!

The Girls are in Grand Junction with the Grandparents this weekend and Alicia and I were sitting around eating breakfast at Uncle Sam's Pancake House thinking of what we were going to do when I decided to offer up teaching her how to fly fish. She looked at me and said, "yeah that sounds fun". What! Oh Yeah!!!! 15 years of persistent prodding on how fun and relaxing it is finally paid off! Alicia had never caught a fish before so fishing to her was just staring at a lake or a hole in the ice waiting for something to happen.

I decided we should take a short trip down to Pueblo. There are some nice runs that can easily be fished without wading when the flow is low. We hit the water around 11. I seined the water and showed Alicia some BWO nymphs and "San Juan Worms" so she could get an idea of what she was imitating. We went over the three Cs of reading water (current, cuisine, cover) and I pointed out a nice run that provided all three. I showed her how to rig up a two nymph rig and we talked about the approach, casting, line control, detecting a strike, and what to do once you have a fish on. She picked it up really quickly! 

She was getting good drifts within 10 minutes and she hooked up within 20. The only mistake she made was to look down at her hands to get the line on the reel and when she did the rod tip dropped and the barbless hook pulled out. No worries there were more where that came from. She hooked up again 5 minutes or so later and got a good hook set. This fish was a little nicer and went on two nice runs. I really enjoyed the look on Alicia's face when the fish ran. During the first run Alicia yelled, "what do I do!!". It was pure excitement! Once the fish settled down a bit I said, "OK now slowly reel him in and keep your rod tip up". I immediately saw the rod straighten out and the line go limp. I looked over at Alicia just in time to see her reeling backwards sending line shooting out of the reel! LOL!!! I grabbed the rod and stripped line in and got her on the reel and she was able to bring in a nice bow! Fist fish ever and it was on a fly rod! Very cool! In the video she is trying to tell me that it's cool but I have to hear it twice before I admit that it was in fact cool :-)

She wound up hooking and landing another small bow and a sucker. She knows what it feels like now to think you have a nice trout on only to see a big sucker mouth staring at you. She did have a 16-18" bow on for a few seconds but the hook pulled out.

We had a great time on the river and I really enjoyed spending some time on the river with my best friend. Now we need to gear her up!