Fish with Hayden – Fly Fishing Lifestyle in Salida, Colorado

After the Flood

Despite the overnight dousing, next morning the river still ran clear. We breakfasted, broke camp and I volunteered to row while the others fished, the morning cool, the canyon still in shadow. Churning whitewater interspersed languid banks overhung with tall grasses dipping into the current, where a patient drift would sometimes yield a fish rising to a dry fly.

“The tail-out of this next rapid is a great one to nymph,” said Mort. “Pull over below. You should fish it.

I eased the raft onto a narrow strip of sand backed up against a cliff face that angled out towards the river. While the others sat on the sand and opened beer, I rigged a rod for nymphing then walked upstream toward the run. A broad fan of whitewater narrowed toward the far bank, creating a trench with several distinct seams of current, slower and more shallow in close, faster and deeper further out.

I started first with lighter weight, adding more as I worked into the faster water. I quickly became absorbed in my task, my sole focus the indicator and mending the line to prevent it being dragged by the several current seams of differing speed and direction. Several times I set the hook to what I imagined a strike, only to pull up flies encased in river weed.

Beyond where I felt safe wading a large flat boulder sat subsurface. Had the river been lower, it would have provided an ideal platform on which to wade out to in order to access the deeper, faster seams toward the far bank where the larger fish no doubt lurked. Instead I targeted multiple drifts around the boulder and twice hooked into fish that darted deep then leaped, thrashing and silvery in the daylight, and twice slipped the hook.

So entranced by the river and its nuances, I hadn’t noticed the dark clouds rolling in until a rumble of thunder caused me to look skyward. Soon a light rain began to fall and I retreated to the beach where, in the lee of the overhanging cliff face a lunch table had been set up. I built a hearty sandwich then stood and ate as curtains of rain played swirling patterns upon the river’s surface. After half an hour the rain eased but then a change came over the water, at first turning a chalky green before tea-colored then chocolate milk with heavy slicks of debris – pine needles and cones, juniper berries, sticks and twigs and anything washed down out of side canyons upstream that had borne the brunt of the cloud burst.

From the river, now thick and turbid, rose the scent of mud and juniper. Small trees bobbed in the current and the beach on which we stood began to shrink as the water level rose.

“Must have hit hard in one of the side canyons,” someone opined. “We only caught the edge of it, I guess.”

“Well, that’s fishing done for today,” I observed, and began the process of breaking down my rod. I reached into the drag bag tethered to the raft and withdrew a beer, blowing the muddy water from the rim of the can before opening it. Creation at work, I thought, as I looked out across the river to the cliffs of the far bank where slender waterfalls had begun tracing familiar paths stained with the watermarks of previous downpours dating back who knew how far.

We reached camp early, pitched tents then lined our chairs along the river bank and watched the desert flow by.

November in the High Country

Following a fifteen degree night in a twenty degree sleeping bag, I wake to a frozen five- gallon water jug, and the realization that I may have chosen the coldest place to camp in the entire valley. Kicking the jug frees up enough water to brew a cup of tea, then, like my dog on the living room rug on a winter’s day, I position myself in anticipation of where the sun will first reach.

After breakfast I take to the trail downstream. The creek bears all the hallmarks of a low water year—sparse save for the occasional deeper pool, a layer of reddish silt covers the bed, swept clean only where seams of current are concentrated. The water flows gin-clear, and I stop from time to time as I hike to spot fish, for reassurance. They seem few and far between, but seeing even one or two gives me hope that my day may be fruitful. Thin ice shelves have formed overnight, and the fish I do see hold station beneath these, watching the open water. My hope is that, as the sun rises higher and the day warms, the ice will disappear.

The canyon narrows the further down I hike, and trees grow heavy to the water’s edge. Although the trail shows ample sign of having been well used—ATV and bike tracks, boot and hoof prints—I encounter nobody. From the south a small stream, little more than a trickle, is frozen in place, the boulders over which it flows cased in ice. Many places down here will not see direct sunlight for the next several months.

I come upon a clearing where a small meadow opens out, and the transition from dark to bright, the reflection of light off one boulder in particular, brings with it the onset of a migraine. The angry amoeba behind my eyeballs grows bigger and brighter and more jagged, morphing its shape and color. I lie down next to the stream. Using my pack as a pillow, I slip into a half doze as the amoeba does its thing. Van Gogh drove himself crazy, not to mention half blind, trying to paint the sun, and I wonder at the effect on my state of mind if I made it my life’s mission to try and accurately paint in words the sound and soothing of gently running water.

The worst of the headache passes, and I begin to fish my way back upstream. I catch a couple of lovely brook trout, including one large for the stream, with a gaping mouth colored black on the inside of its jaws. I work one pool for a good half hour, trying to tempt a couple of sighted fish with a variety of flies. The closest I come is when one half-heartedly follows a hopper for a few feet, then turns back to its station. I wave the white flag after losing two flies into the same overhanging branch in consecutive casts.

Upon my return, I decide to relocate camp to higher ground, further from the sound of the creek, but to a place where I calculate the sun will reach me earlier, and linger longer. The effort is worth it, my fly rod miraculously survives being shut in the tailgate of my truck, and I sit in the last of the day’s light among the watchful eyes of a small glade of aspens, long since stripped bare for the coming winter.

Whiskey warms me, and I reflect that November might mean cold nights and frozen water jugs, but it also means deserted campsites, and solitary streams.

Of Wind and Willows

The stream flowed, a succession of riffles interspersed with oxbow bends, meandering across hayfields green with the last cut of summer. The valley through which it ran narrowed toward its head, beyond which the the terrain rose steeply, covered in pine forest.

A gravel road kept to the east side of the valley and we drove until a sign announced public land. Here nature reasserted herself and the stream’s course was marked by willows that grew thick and tall, crowding the water’s edge.

The wind, having left no obvious imprint on the fresh-mowed hayfields, coursed through the willows, bending and flexing them before it. Fishing in wind, while challenging at the best of times, becomes more so on small water with narrow banks crowded with vegetation.

“Don’t get emotionally attached to your fly,” I warned as we assembled our rods on the tailgate of the truck. “You’ll lose a few in the bushes with this wind, it’s just the way it goes.”

We dropped down an embankment, located a gate in a barbed wire fence, and walked to the stream. True to the season, its riffles ran shallow and bony, the only significant depth to be found where water, flowing into a bend, had carved a channel—the sharper the bend, the deeper the cut. We bushwhacked downstream, staying inland to avoid spooking any fish, negotiating old beaver dams riddled with connector channels, and a dried up portion of creek bed which soon led us back to the stream.

She strung her line through the guides, then I took the rod and tied on a dry fly. We’d fished a couple of lakes earlier in the summer, but this was her first time on moving water in years. Moving water means more demand on an angler’s attention—drift, drag and line control require constant coordination, keeping hand and eye continually occupied. This in turn leaves less time for contemplation of the existential void that can be part of still water fishing, where a fly often sits motionless and unassailed, alone on a vast, featureless plane, for as long as one can stand to look at it.

Her first cast blew into the bushes on the left bank, the second into those on the right. I sensed a narrow window of opportunity to catch a fish before a return to a game of gin rummy back at the camper would garner greater appeal. She cast again.

“I aimed over there, but the wind blew the fly over there.”

“Try and compensate. Aim a few feet from where you want the fly to land, and hopefully the wind will take it there.”

She did so, and the wind dropped, landing the fly in the bushes again. I detected a sag of the shoulders.

“This is some of the most technical fishing you’ll ever do,” I encouraged.

Gradually she got into her groove until perhaps every second cast landed somewhere on the water. I encouraged her to see the drift through those times the fly didn’t land where she intended.

“The fish doesn’t know that wasn’t where you were aiming.”

The wind continued to surge and swirl, and a couple of flies were lost to the overgrowth, yet the fish remained reticent to the good drifts.

Finally, a break. We came upon a bend in the stream where a portion of beaver dam had blown out. What had previously been a still pond was now a broad pool with a gentle current seam. Standing on the remains of the dam, and with the wind now directly at her back, she laid out a cast to the head of this pool. Several drifts went unanswered before a brief swirl around the fly announced a take. She set the hook, and a short while later we released a brown trout back to its world.

“Finally,” she smiled.

I too felt a weight lift from my shoulders, as guides do when the first fish is landed and released. I congratulated her on her tenacity.

“Your turn,” she said. “I’m going to watch for a while.”

For the next half hour we took turns fishing our way to the truck, all the while the wind showing scant sign of abatement.

“Well,” I said, “we could keep going on further upstream, or head back to the deck of cards,” knowing I’d be happy with whatever her answer might be.

Sixty Times Around the Sun: Part 2

So far, so good—the day had proceeded according to plan. I’d left town early, hiked several miles into the mountains in the cool of morning, had a close encounter with iconic wildlife, and now I sat on a knoll overlooking the lake I’d come to fish, watching several large cutthroat trout cruise the shallows.

I reasoned the hot, uncomfortable feeling emanating from my feet inside my boots as the after effect of the arduous hike. I’d worn these hiking boots for years, without issue. As I sat and rigged my rod, keeping half an eye on the movements of the fish, surely I thought, the discomfort would diminish.

The fish cruised close to the lake’s narrow outlet, where over time the current had stacked a tangle of logs, now bleached by the elements. An occasional zephyr swept down from the mountains, churning the lake’s surface for a minute or two, but when the air settled the fish still maintained their station. Rod rigged, I stood and walked cautiously down towards the water’s edge then, keeping a respectful distance, unfurled a cast toward where two fish swam leisurely, seemingly unaware of my presence.

The instant the fly touched the water, both fish, and two more I hadn’t noticed, turned and darted straight for the center of the lake’s deeper reaches, leaving a trail of stirred sediment in their wake.
Tough audience, I thought. I retreated back to the higher ground and sat, waiting to see if they’d return. A few minutes later I located another, close in, working its way toward me while keeping to a deeper channel next to the bank. I decided to set up an ambush.

I moved down and cast my fly right on the edge of this channel, twenty feet ahead of the fish, and waited. As it approached, I gave a little twitch of the rod tip, imparting a slight motion to the fly. Ignoring my offering, the cutthroat swam past and stopped right in front of me, turning slightly and seeming to stare straight at me, mouth and gill plates working rhythmically as it moved water through its gills. For a few seconds we stared at each other. It was difficult to escape the feeling I was being mocked, or admonished, or both. The fish then turned and retraced its path. I cast once more, landing the fly a few feet ahead of it, and was treated with the same disregard.

Very well, I’d take my talents to the other side of the lake, where hopefully the locals would be a little less cultured. I refastened my pack and headed for the far shore where the trees grew close and snow still lay in their shadows. The water here was deeper, and several fish lay beyond a drop off where a small stream flowed in to the lake. Crouching low, I cast onto the stream where its waters merged with that of the lake. The fly drifted with the current, and one by one each fish moved out of the way as it floated toward them, then resumed its station once past.

I began to pay more attention to the pain in my feet. The extra half mile of hiking to get here from the far shore had set them aflame. I thought of the first aid kit sitting in the back seat of my truck, that I’d told myself I likely wouldn’t need. I consoled myself with the thought that the discomfort was greater when hiking uphill, and the bulk of the return hike would be down.

For the next half hour, I continued my battle of wits with the fish at the stream mouth. Multiple changes in flies, angle of approach, at one stage standing in plain sight a mere rod length from them, dancing a nymph inches from their faces—nothing would induce a take, or even a flicker of interest save the energy expended in moving out of the way.

The angle of the mid-afternoon sun told me it was time to leave. I broke down my rod and began what turned out to be a two hour hobble back to my truck, all the while imagining the twin delights of slipping off my boots and sipping the cold birthday beer I’d left under the back seat….or had I? I now remembered the beer, sitting in the fridge at home, left behind in my haste to make an early start to the day. Through the pain, I laughed. I’d wanted a memorable experience to celebrate my 60th, and been given exactly what I’d asked for.

Another Day, Another Season

Fire had swept through the landscape several years past, and the stream’s course was a tangle of deadfall that regularly turned navigating its banks into an exercise in precarious balance, scrambling, and contortion. Other times required leaving the stream altogether for higher, flatter ground where stepping around and over the fallen trees became easier, before again dropping down to fish a conducive spot.

I didn’t mind these interruptions to the day’s flow, reveling instead in the challenge of such close-quarter fishing and the feeling of solitude, of being alone in the high country on a day when air and sky sounded a note of caution, of a season drawing to its close and, more urgently, a storm on its way.

Terrain and gradient conspired to create long stretches where the stream flowed fast and straight, forcing me to cherry pick where I fished, looking for places where beavers had slowed its course, their dams creating ox-bow bends interspersed with clear, silent pools. In this quieter water cutthroats would lie like ghost zeppelins against the finely silted pebbles of the bed, while along the margins of the stream smaller brook trout would hover, never straying far from the security of undercut banks, overhanging vegetation, or submerged tangles of logs and branches.

Casting accurately to these latter lies required luck and delicacy, combined with the mindset to not get emotionally attached to my fly. Multiple were lost to any combination of branches, snags, and poor technique, sometimes on successive casts. Interspersed with these frustrations came several fish, including one memorable brookie, its vibrant orange belly contrasting against mottled topsides of dark, smokey grey, and the inside of its mouth revealed black as night as I drew it to me and slipped the hook from its jaw.

Further upstream a log fallen lengthwise across the water had created a uniform, steady pour-over with a small pool below, heavily overhung with willows. Kneeling amongst the undergrowth, I rolled a cast out into the center of the pool, and a cutthroat, long and fat, rose guilelessly from the depths to sip it from below. My two weight bent nearly double as I brought it to shore, released it then rolled out another cast. Five times in the next six drifts, other fish rose to take the fly, pulling briefly against the hook before swimming away.

Surely that first cutthroat, large as it was, couldn’t have bent out the hook? I reeled in the line to discover that, in the process of releasing the first fish, I’d twisted the body of the fly one hundred and eighty degrees. Not only was the hook floating wrong side up, the tail of the fly covered the point, enabling the fish to slip off. One side of me regretted the lost opportunities, yet another acknowledged I’d still enjoyed the best part—watching the rise, watching the take, and feeling the fish on the end of the line. Fly corrected, I cast several more times, only to learn I’d outlived my welcome at this particular pool, as no further fish were tempted.

Shortly beyond this place, the terrain steepened, the stream flowing through a steep-sided cut dense with trees that had escaped the fire’s reach. I sat against a fallen log and took a late lunch, deciding upon my next move. Somewhere above this gorge sat the lake feeding the stream. If the day yielded nothing further, I’d like to set eyes on it. I knew a trail loosely followed the stream in the same general direction.

Judging sufficient daylight remaining, I found and took to the trail as it switchbacked into steeper country, away from the stream. These higher elevations had also escaped the fire’s reach, and the trail led through stands of pine, the ground they shaded muddy from recent snow. To my left a waterfall cascaded several hundred feet down the near vertical aspect of a granite cliff, a thin white veil against the hard grey of the rock. Gradually the gradient of the terrain lessened and the trail worked its way back in the direction of the stream, still flowing through the same steep-sided ravine.

Cresting one last rise, I at last looked down upon the lake. Long and narrow, its distant shore curved from sight against a backdrop of fir and snow-dusted granite. Drifts of ice pockmarked its surface, and a scattering of bleached logs clogged its outflow. The trail continued along the southern shore, the promise of more stream beyond to fish. I looked at the lowering sky, now darker and more threatening, and decided against continuing. Snow was on the way, and what lay beyond the lake would have to wait for another day, another season.