Arkansas River (Pueblo)

Headed up towards the damn today to get familiar with the water upstream from the pump house. I normally don't fish this stretch of water because it pulls a crowd. Today was no exception but Ben and I wanted to get a feel for the stretches of water that we haven't fished before above the Nature Center in order to get ready for the Frost Bite Fish Off in Feb.

We started off just below the bridge just below the damn (Juniper / Pueblo Res Road). There is a nice riffle that drops off into a deep run. The fishing was fantastic right away. Ben and I probably landed closed to 20 fish in a half hour. The bows could not resist a yellow otter egg with a yellow bead yolk. There were some bait fishers directly across from us that looked pretty surprised at the amount of fish we were catching. Hopefully they'll convert....!

We decided to move downstream and cover more water. There were some nice pockets for the next few hundred yards downstream but we weren't able to hook up until the next deep bend pool. This run is NICE!  I would love to fish this run at 70-100 CFS vs the 40 that was running because it would make the riffle before the drop off perfect during a hatch. The fish were hanging in the tail end of the deep water and Ben and I both hooked some descent bows. Yellow (sucker) eggs, and a red tungsten bead head PTs size 18 worked well. The secret to this run is to fish it from the rocky side of the river along the main current. There is too much slack water to cover from the other side and line control becomes an issue. If you come across this run you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. If you are reading this you were probably with me fishing this run today anyway :-)

We made it down to the pump house which I had not fished before. The first thing that came to my mind was the toilet bowl on the Frying Pan. I knew exactly what I wanted to do in this hole but it was packed with bubbas.  No worry my Old Man wants to go fishing tomorrow so I know where we'll be starting out!