fly fishing real estate colorado – Page 2 – Fly Fishing Lifestyle in Salida, Colorado

May 20, 2014May 20, 2014

Back In The High Life, Again.

A Day In The Life Of A Fishing Guide, Act 1, Scene 327:

*Angler stands at river’s edge, excitedly hops from one foot to the other while the guide ties on what will be the first of fifty flies for the day*

Angler: “Gee, I wish I had your job.”

Guide: “Why’s that?”

Angler: “Well, you get paid to go fishing every day.”

*Guide reaches into boat for large club*

Living The Dream from Hayden Mellsop on Vimeo.

At this point in the conversation, I usually try to change the subject. As a guide, you fulfill many roles – relationship counselor, psychotherapist, babysitter, scapegoat, purveyor of wit, wisdom and one-liners – but rarely does personally catching fish make the job description. Rather you facilitate the interaction, row your ass off against the current for ten or fifteen miles, call strikes, untangle clusters, attempt to decipher Mother Nature and hope that at the end of the day the fish were reading from the same page and the tip fairy is out and about.

But every once in a while, you strike gold.

“Hayden, this is Fred. Fred is going to Alaska this summer, and wants to brush up on his rowing skills. You job is to fish, and fine tune his technique.”

So it was this particular day. My chance to not give a damn about body count, or when and where the hatch was coming off, or what the water temperature was, and do what I like to do – throw a dry fly hard against the bank and see what happens. And get paid for it. If that isn’t worth getting out of bed for, I don’t know what is.

By the end of the day, Fred was one tired puppy. Mind you, so was I. So tired, in fact, I broke down my rod and sat out the last mile or so of the float, content to watch the scenery go by, reflect on some of the fish caught, and look forward to a couple of cans of liquid Advil when I got back home. While my shoulders can handle the strain of pulling on oars for eight hours, casting a fly rod for that long is another matter. Frankly, I don’t know how some guys do it.

April 3, 2014

April Fools

Clouds, sullen and grey, draped the mountains, and a cold wind blew upstream, carrying with it a few flakes of snow and the scent of more to come. The kind of morning made for lingering in bed, rather than standing at the put in questioning your clients’ sanity and cursing your own impoverishment in equal measure. Yet something in the air also held the promise of dry flies in the afternoon for those who persevered, and so it was to prove.

Floating on April Fools from Hayden Mellsop on Vimeo.

Satellite imaging tells us the Arkansas River historically flowed south into the Rio Grande before the uplift that created the Sangres diverted it east to the Mississippi at Big Bend. And this day, as the river turned there, so too did the weather, with the clouds lifting and the wind abating and losing much of its bite.

Woody Allen once opined that success in life is 80% just turning up, and so too it is with fishing. Get out there often enough, stay out there long enough, float enough miles, and sooner or later you’re bound to come across fish with their mouths open. The closer we floated to town, the more blue wings began to hatch to the surface, and the more fish began to rise to them. We were treated to a good three hours of dry fly action, before the clouds rolled in again, the temperature dropped and things shut down. All in all, not bad for a boat load of April fools.

March 17, 2014

March is for midges

The plan had been to find a deep, slow stretch of water to try out a new strike indicator system I’d heard about. Although the days are getting warmer, I figured it was still a little early in the season to expect much of a hatch – that, plus the fact that with the sun high and bright overhead, the fish would likely be lurking deeper anyhow.

March is for midges from Hayden Mellsop on Vimeo.

So much for the theory. After drifting the indicator through a couple of feed lines with nothing to show for my efforts save a couple of snagged sticks ( the indicator worked fine, for that matter ) I spied up ahead a fish working the surface, rising every thirty seconds or so, and then another, a little further up in the run.

That was all I needed. The chance to catch one on top was too good to pass up. Off came the nymphs, on went a couple of dries. I couldn’t see any bugs on the water, so went small with my fly choice. The lead was a bright parachute tied by Salida’s own Fred Rasmussen, the trailer a little dark midge I could only pick out on the water every second or third cast.

I love this type of fishing. The takes are very subtle, often little more than guesswork, the sense of a swirl on the water’s surface in the vicinity of where you think your fly is, a gentle raising of the rod tip and the weight of a fish on the other end. An hour, five fish, and it was time to head home, the promise of more dry fly opportunities to come.

March 7, 2014

That Floating Feeling

The urge could be ignored no longer. The lengthening days, the return of bird song, the first of the year’s weeds greening and pushing through the still brown, dormant lawn. It was time to consign winter to the dustbin and admit that spring is in the air. We each have our own ways of acknowledging the new season. Mine is to get out on the river once more.

That Floating Feeling from Hayden Mellsop on Vimeo.

My raft, having sat dormant over the last few months under a covering of lawn furniture, Christmas decorations and various piles of outdoor gear, began to subtly attract my attention each time I entered the garage. When the text arrived from Pinky – “Bill’s had to pull out, got room for one more” – I hauled out my waders and headed down to Howard.

Some never leave the river, fishing it throughout the depths of winter, but for me come the first snow it is time to give both myself and the fish a break. Consequently, going fishing this time of the year always feels like returning to an old friend. The branches along the banks are still bare, the wind chops the iron grey surface of the water, and you squint as you tie small flies on to fine tippet with fingers already coarse and chapped, but you sense the stirring, the change taking place.

We caught fish, not in huge numbers, but sufficient to keep us entertained all afternoon. We caught them on stoneflies and tiny midges and mayflies and hares ears and muddlers. We hooked most in the mouth, others somewhere near and a few not even close. We caught them deep, we caught them shallow, but more than the fish, it was me, the fisherman, who caught the bug once more.

September 25, 2013November 8, 2017

Heraclitus floats the Upper Colorado

No man, proclaimed Heraclitus twenty five centuries ago, ever steps into the same river twice. He was, of course, referring as much to the person setting foot in the river as the river itself. I thought about this recently as I sat on the banks of the Upper Colorado, my first visit to this stretch of the river for twenty three years.

Back then, I was newly arrived in the States, not yet fully savvy to the ways and foibles of America and Americans. “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”, driving on the wrong side of the road in vehicles the size of a Third World apartment, breakfasts so big they require several plates to contain them, the aridity of the landscape, and the fact that people would pay good money to float for days on flat water, while mile-long coal trains rumbled by and the occasional semi kicked up dust working through the gears hauling hay from a nearby ranch, itself festooned with barbed wire and threats against trespass.

I was looking at the river through the eyes of a whitewater rafter then, not as an angler now. River running in New Zealand tended to be more of a wilderness experience, the rougher, more remote and wilder the better. It took getting deeper into fishing to see another side of a river – long grassy banks with gently swirling current seams and undercuts, subtle shading and drop offs, foamy back eddies that held promise and potential. The pace is more leisurely, the treasures more subtle.

Over the ensuing years my perception of what passes for the color green has changed. I now drive around in my own Third World apartment. I still try to limit my breakfast to a single plate. While train tracks are a distraction, I understand why they are where they are. Dry has as much claim to beauty as lush.

And through it all the river flows with its own timeless dignity that transcends the transient insult of dams, diversions and the folly of claims of ownership.