July in the High Country: Part II
Again, Carol and I rolled into our campground at dusk. Again, we chose the last campground in the headwaters of another famous Colorado river known for large trout and lots of flyfishers. This year we had a short window of about 4 days to spend together before she had to head back. Of course, I didn’t want to go back so soon so I planned on a couple of weeks fishing and planned to meet Randy later in the week.
About 6 years ago, we had camped at this campground and found the fishing to be great right in the campground itself and on the 4th of July weekend to boot. Wasn’t sure what to expect this time around but I was surprised to find so many filling up the available sites. Fortunately, it turns out that most were not fishing. I have no idea what they were doing but they weren’t fishing the stream.
The first morning I fished the pocket water, hard and had a fine time.
(Except for the fact that I stupidly decided to wade in my Chacos and no wading socks. Pocket water is a serious meat grinder for ankles and toes and Chacos are slippery on rocks) Browns and rainbows were in every place you’d expect them if you could get an EHC or a parachute adams in their line of sight.
I spent 3 hours crawling and climbing upstream right through the heart of the campground---saw no other flyfishers and caught a couple dozen trout. This worked well because Carol could stay in camp, reading but I wouldn’t be too far away.
I found another orchid and cool woodland wildflowers.
The campground emptied out Sunday night and we only had to share the loop with one other party. We decided to stay for three nights despite the fact it was cold at night and no fires were allowed.
One of my goals was to explore the still water upstream from the campground. Beautiful water. On the first evening I headed upstream.
Promptly fell in and caught no fish. Only saw two rises. I was thinking about heading further upstream to find fish when I heard an automatic Panic Horn going off on some truck, back in camp. I was pretty sure there was no problem but how could I be sure? There was a 50/50 chance that it wasn’t even Carol but I had to be sure…..I headed back, cutting the evening short. You know the answer---it was the other party, it was an accident and Carol wondered why I came back. So it goes.
Still the first day on the river was a success.
I fished the pocket water again the next day violating my own flyfishing guidelines for not fishing water that was fished the day before. The maxim proved itself once again. I caught fish but not nearly in the numbers I had the day before.
Decided to head over to, Hunter Thompson’s home town, do the tourista thing before heading into Denver for Carol’s flight home. On the way into town a scrawny fox tried to cross the road in front of us carrying a dead trout that looked bigger than he was. I know—without photos it didn’t happen but if you are familiar with this canyon’s traffic you’d understand why we didn’t dally. Still I imagine he ate well that night and his catch was bigger than anything I’ve caught this year. True ignominy.
