Gunnison River (East Portal)

Back to the East Portal for the first time this year. We were originally planning on hitting the East Portal this spring when the road first opened but it didn't work out this year. Definitely on the radar for next spring!

The Old Man and I headed up to Montrose Friday afternoon. New Alice in Chains, QOTSA, and Sabbath on the ride up! Great ride.  We checked into the Super 8. $80 to save a 4 hour drive at the butt crack of dawn is a no brainer. Coffee is ready at 4 AM and the turn off for the Black Canyon is 5 minutes up the road.

After checking in we hit the strip to find some grub. MacDonalds , Arbys, a few other small places, and Colorado Boy Pizzeria! I could eat Pizza every day of the week and thrice on Sunday. I'm always down for new Pizza and Colorado Boy didn't disappoint. 11" personal pizzas cooked to order in a brick oven. I went for the Pizza Calda (san marzano, mozzarella, pepperoni, mushrooms, hot olive oil, kalmata olives and fresh arugula). One word, delish. Very reasonably priced too. East Portal = stop at Colorado Boy from here on out. Shown here, the Calda in HDR. What a dork.

Caught up on a few blog entries later on in the room. Seems my fishing is far outpacing my writing. I'm struggling every week to keep up. But I haven't missed a trip yet and I'm not about to start.

We hit the canyon at daylight. Wanted to toss some stones early while the fish were looking for them. We waded out to our honey hole and Dad hooked up on the first or second cast. I hooked up a cast or two after that. Ah yes, good to be back on the Gunny. Fishing was hot and heavy for the first half hour then slowly tapered off. Any sort of stone pattern in 12-14 was good for a bite. Rubber legs in a 12 seemed to be the most consistent fly of the morning. I have to say the Gunny has some of the prettiest bows in the state. The colors really come through in the pictures but they were even more vivid in person.

Crazy event of the day - Dad set the hook and snagged the bottom. He was trying not to retail snap
when I hooked a nice bow, probably 17" or so and he was heading for some faster water. Dad put his rod down, got below me,  and was wading out just above the heavy current in a really rocky run. At this point I notice Dad's indicator dart upstream and a 8" bow jumping like crazy out of the water. This little dude had swam up to Dad's hung up rig and picked his fly off a rock! He was fighting
like crazy on a line with no one on the other end. At this point my bow was just about to enter the fast water. We were both distracted watching Dad's rod catch a fish without him, and Dad took a spill. In the process he had to let go of his net which was now heading fast towards some pretty heavy rapids. Dad dove on his net. Picture bending at the waist and doing a power belly flop without leaving your feet. I was holding the trout just above the heavy current just in front of Dad. He came up with the net and started looking all around for the trout that was right in front of him. LOL, he said, "where's the fish.... oh!" and netted the fish. Hilarious! I'm getting a Go Pro.

We didn't manage to hook the big boy we were after and things really died down around lunch so we decided to grab our lunchables and then hit some new water. Pizza Calda to lunchables? Next trip, Pizza Calda for dinner, Pizza Calda to go, Pizza Calda for lunch on the river.

We headed upstream to some runs we did well in last summer. We fished for a good hour up and down these runs without a hit. Crazy! No hatch to speak of but nothing would touch the standard between hatch go to patterns. I even got crazy with a pegged egg sucking leach on a dead drift. Nothing! Stumped on this one. There were fish but they weren't eating anything we had.

Hoping to see a PMD hatch in the afternoon but I think we were a few weeks to early. Last July there was a massive PMD hatch in the afternoon and a size 16 Barr Emerger would have been killer if I had any. I tied a dozen of them last summer specifically because of that afternoon. Will have to wait till next month to hit the PMD hatch.

Back to the honey hole after lunch. Things were dead. Stone bite was off. No hatch, not much activity. Tough afternoon. If we hadn't had such a good morning it would have been a tough day. I even chucked the Chinese Chicken without a look.

As usual no crowd to speak of. I can't believe more people don't fish here. It can be tough but if you know where to fish you will always hook fish in the morning and the afternoons can be great too if you hit a good hatch. I'm not complaining though. Really becoming one of my favorite places to fish.