Tag: Salida Real Estate

Isn’t it amazing how quickly summer has flown by? The kids are back at school [ whew ], the mornings are getting chilly, evenings drawing in, and in a week or two up high the leaves will be turning. What better way then, to spend a warm and languid Sunday afternoon than floating down the river through town with a cold beer, a dry fly or two, and some great company. It was great to float through downtown and see so many people out enjoying the river and downtown in different ways – swimming dogs and themselves, kayaking, relaxing etc.

There are many reasons why I like fishing with my friend Ardele. They can be best encapsulated, I think by a brief exchange we had on the river with a couple of passing fishermen. We were eddied out at the side of the river, attending to a fly change or something, and they floated past us looking a little on the glum side. Now generally, when fishermen encounter each other on the river, they tend to put on a bit of a poker face, not wanting to let the other guy know off the bat how good or bad of a day they are having. If you’ve ever watched a couple of dogs greet for the first time, hackles raised and yet tails tentatively wagging, you’ll get the idea.

“How’s it going?” I asked. [ My standard tail wag. ] “We’re doing OK, getting a few” they replied, although by their tone and expression, you could tell they were a little disappointed. “Yeah, us too” I replied, pretty sure that we were doing better than them judging by their hang dog looks. After they were gone, Ardele said ” I know why they’re not doing any good.” “Really?” I replied, thinking she had picked up some major flaw in their rowing or casting technique. “Yep,” she said, “they don’t have any beer.”

And there in lies the secret to success on the river. Now, I am not advocating rampant drunkeness on the river, but rather realizing that if you focus too much on the destination, you can lose your appreciation of the journey. A bit of Buddhist detachment has its place on the river, as elsewhere in life. And it is amazing how the fish seem to come when you adopt this approach. At least they did on Sunday.

The action on dries like stimulators and pmxs was good right off the bat from our launch just above town. We also fished a bead head dropper above town, and it seemed primarily the smaller fish were active on those. Below town we switched to a double dry rig, and all the bigger fish took dries. Ardele also caught the Arkansas River trifecta – a cutthroat, a rainbow and a brown. Since filming this, the river level has dropped significantly as a result of the end of this year’s augmentation program for the rafting industry. In my experience, this generally leads to a few days of patchy fishing as the fish get used to new flows and new holding positions. Once things have settled down, however, it should be back to business as usual as the fish feed and fatten before fall and the spawn.

Long has the debate raged about the effects of different weather patterns on fish and their feeding activities. My favorite fishing adage is: When in doubt, blame the weather. This has served me well in the past, especially when guiding on difficult days. Apart from the obvious effects, like temperature and wind, there are the less tangibles events like the effect of the full moon, and a rising or falling barometer. Having just retuned from a trip to California, I came back to Salida to fishing stories full of doom and gloom – too bright, too hot, too windy, too much moon etc etc etc. So what more can a guy do except get out there and find out for himself.

There is no doubt I dislike fishing in the wind, but it is one of those things that you either have to deal with on a regular basis, or else take up bowling. Bright sunlight too is a bit of a turn off, but then again you need to be careful what you ask for if you start cursing  too much sunshine in your life. Besides, Colorado is definitely not the place to live if you have an aversion to sunny days. The full moon theory is an interesting one. Personally, I don’t subscribe to it too seriously. I’ve had some lousy days fishing around the full moon, but  some spectacular ones also. Barometric pressure is a bit more problematic. The best advice I’ve read on the subject is from a book by Norman Marsh, one of the doyens of New Zealand fly fishing. After discussing all the theories and conjecture about the effects of a rising and falling barometer on fish feeding patterns he concluded by saying “So before you go fishing, always check your barometer. And then go fishing anyway.”

And so I did. I figured that Sunday was a lovely day, the river looks beautiful, so how bad could it be? And I had a lot of fun. To be sure, I wouldn’t call the fishing spectacular, but it was definitely productive. I had to try a number of different patterns before getting the combo right. I started with a hopper, switched to a stimulator, then downsized to an ant. Then I noticed a half decent pmd hatch coming off, and tied on a caddis and an adams. This combo in reality is my default dry fly combo on the Arkansas, so it is no surprise it worked well.

That said, I did cover a lot of ground for relatively few fish landed, but as the video shows, I had plenty of opportunity. And as soon as fishing becomes a numbers game, it’s another pointer to take up bowling. Too much of the slothful life in California had dulled my senses and…… actually, if I am honest, I probably missed about as many fish as I usually do. Anyone who tells you they hook them all has trouble separating fact from fiction.

And so I am glad I roused myself from the couch and got out there. The wind makes it difficult at times to get the fly positioned and drifting naturally, but if it were easy it’d be called spin fishing. There is still a decent amount of bug activity on the water, so keep changing things around until you find something that works. And remember, no matter how tough the fishing, a day on the river is always better than living in Houston.

Note: for the full audio visual experience, it is recommended you follow the links where indicated.

Some days stick out in a guys mind. The start of football season, the start of hockey season, the start of baseball season, the day your mother in law leaves to go back to Hades – all these are red letter days in a guy’s calendar. If you happen to be a fisherman, you can add in the first day of the year you start catching fish on hoppers. Such a day was gifted to Caveman and I  this week as we ventured down river to the Texas Creek area to float from Trading Post to Pinnacle Rock.

The last time we were down that way, in the spring, there was an encounter with the State Patrol that delayed our launch time, but this time around things went smoothly. The law was avoided, the correct parks pass purchased, and away we went. The dry fly fishing is particularly good right now. There are some prolific caddis hatches coming off around dusk, and into the night, and this has made the black foam caddis a hard fly for a fish to pass up. But once I’d figured out that it was working as well as ever, I wanted to try something different, and a Daves Hopper turned out out be just the ticket.

There are several reasons why hopper fishing is about as fun as it gets. First, delicate presentation is not a requirement, which for a hack like me is an advantage. Heavy tippet is the order of the day, no messing about with 4x and 5x. Second, you can mix up the dead drifts with some twitching of the rod tip to impart life to the fly. This will often tease the fish out of their lairs to come and investigate, thereby giving you a good idea of where they are holding. And thirdly, when they do decide to take, it is seldom subtle. The fish will often hit hard and aggressively and get extra p****d when you hook them.

Generally the key is to get the hopper right next to the bank, if not landing it in the grass and teasing it out into the water – art imitating life, if you will. This generally precludes using a second fly, as this increases the potential of snagging the bank. Being a simple kind of a guy, a single fly is fine by me.

I would look for the hopper fishing to get better and better as we roll further through summer into fall. For a fish dining on caddis and pmds, there’s a decent amount of protein to be had in a hopper or two. So next time you head to the river, try leaving the bead heads behind, forego a two fly rig, and stick on a hopper and start slapping it around.

Sometimes, missing a fish is as much fun as catching one, at least that is if you still manage to hook a few in the process. And so it turned out to be as Caveman and I set out down the river to try a few different things out. For me, I wanted to catch fish, so I stuck to the tried and true flies this time of the year – small [ size 16 ] stimulators, pmx’s and caddis. Caveman adopted the opposite approach. He has spent enough days guiding on the river being tormented by fish that he decided to torment them back – by throwing a huge rubber legged dry fly pattern. The results were hilarious, at least if you are, like me,  a socially challenged fishing geek – plenty of lookers, wtf’ers, a few fish that took one look and ran away to hide, and several that plucked up the courage and had a go at it.

 We floated from Salida East to Rincon on a river that couldn’t look more perfect if it tried. Finally, after the protracted water releases and runoff, the level has dropped and stabilized, the clarity is great, and the fish are hungry. More than at any other time of the year, the fish have a plethora of bug life to choose from. Yellow Sallies are probably the most prolific hatchers right now, closely followed by PMDs, caddis and golden stones.

The net result is that pretty much any dry fly will work, provided it is cast tight to the bank. At one point we pulled over to the side of the river for a refreshment break, and watched a caddis float down the opposite side of the river, about two and a half feet off the bank. “It’s OK little fella, you’re safe, there’s no fish live that far out” said Cave sarcastically. As if on cue, the caddis started swimming for the shore. “No, don’t go there, its not safe” we both yelled, and sure enough, just as it reached for a rock along the bank – slurp – it was nailed by a fish. So the lesson is: cast to the bank – two feet off it is about eighteen inches too far out.

Bead head nymphs have been working very well also, but this time of the year I find it really hard to tie one on unless I really need to. There is something extra fun, to me anyway, about throwing a single dry. You are putting all your eggs into one basket so to speak, hunting for that fish tucked in hard along the edge. The advantage of one fly is that you can really tuck it into the nooks and crannies in a way you can’t with two flies, especially if one of them is a bead head.

So cast along the edges and the slow water. Fish will be holding in any little pocket along the bank, in some places stacked up like cord wood. Take a break during the heat of the day, especially when there is no cloud cover, as the fish will often lay low during this time. But above all, take a sense of humor, a couple of buddies, and a cold brew or two.