Arkansas River in Colorado Part 1

After finishing Step 1 of the USMLE (the licensing exam to become a doc in the U.S.), I needed a big change after sitting in the library for 3 months. This was the perfect opportunity to take the road trip my dad and I had been talking about for years. Randy and Richie’s excellent adventure rolled out from Virginia on April 7th and returned April 20th. We saw incredible countryside, met interesting and very welcoming people, and experienced some of the wildest tourist traps this truly amazing country has to offer. I’ll limit these next few blog posts to the fishing highlights in Colorado, but as I hinted before, the journey was just as fun as the fishing.

Dad and I stopped in Oklahoma City to pick up our friend Terry Weber. Terry is a great fishing buddy and he took a bunch of the pics you’ll see in the next few posts, so hats off to him for adding to the blog. After picking up Terry, we drove through the panhandle of Texas and northwest New Mexico en route to Colorado. It was breathtaking standing on Mount Capulin in New Mexico and watching the Great Plains sweep up into the Sangre de Cristo range of the Rockies. If you can’t tell yet, I fell completely in love with the West on this trip.

After a drive full of gawking at the still snow capped peaks of the Rockies, we pulled into Salida, CO and met up with the staff at Ark Anglers. Stefan was our point man for the entire trip, and he did an amazing job of both putting us on the fish and getting us oriented in town. I highly recommend booking guided trips through the shop; they are first class outfitters and very friendly people. I want to make sure y’all make no mistake about pronunciation when you call the shop in Salida. I automatically went for the Spanish pronunciation, but I quickly discovered that the local folks call it “Suhl-eye-duh and town just up the road is called “Boona-vista” (Buena Vista). I guess that’s about the same as us calling Staunton here in Virginia “Stan-tin”, but these things never cease to amuse me.

On the morning of the 12th, Terry and I headed out with Will, a fellow Okie and our first guide from Ark Anglers, for a 14-mile float trip on the Arkansas River from Salida to the boat ramp at Rincon. I had never floated for trout before, and fishing with Terry and Will made for an awesome trip. We started out fishing right in town and had early success on some white articulated streamers that Will ties. I looked for some in shops during the rest of the trip, but was unable to find any like them. Will, if you’re out there reading, post me the name of those flies or please tell me where I can score some. They were money! One fish chased a Will-tied streamer for a solid 10 feet. Just as an aside for Chuck Kraft, the Kreelex also worked beautifully in Colorado throughout the trip, and we handed them out like candy at every fly shop we visited.

Will also taught us a new streamer fishing technique that definitely adds more life than simply stripping in line. You can really make a streamer dance by using the rod tip to jerk the fly erratically toward you, making it seem like a distressed and enticing meal for a trout. Another thing I didn’t expect was the success we had fishing our streamers just under the surface. The fish really went wild after using the rod-jerk technique to make the fly skip the surface a little. Terry and I both agree that the best part about having a guide is LEARNING. Being put on fish is obviously fun, but learning new techniques and about the way fish feed and what they eat really adds to your repertoire as an angler. Thank you again for an awesome float, Will.

We ended up catching about half browns and half rainbows that first day. Most of the rainbows came after we switched to a two fly nymph rig with an indicator. I am a new believer in using indicators after this trip. Waiting for that thing-a-ma-bobber stop dead in its tracks or jump a few feet really puts you on edge. It also doesn’t hurt when it results in a tail dance by a fat rainbow covered in spots and stripes. That reminds me, we didn’t catch a fish under 10 inches the entire trip, and an average brown in the Arkansas from what I can tell is probably 14 inches. Every single fish we caught had vibrant color and they were all much harder fighters than the fish back East. I think that’s about enough for now.

Check back soon to read about more adventures in Colorado and some other very helpful techniques I learned out West.