The River Is Perfect!

To All My Fishing Friends,

   Its been an up and down couple of months, but I'm happy to report that the Upper Colorado River  is finally in great shape! The level has dropped and the clarity is really good, and watching the trout eagerly chasing streamers is great fun, even when they don't quite catch them.  (Sometimes I'd almost rather just miss a fish on a streamer than catch one on a nymph).

  So anyway, it looks like its going to be a condensed fishing season here on the Upper C.  Since August, it seems as though we never got more than a couple of days in a row without rain.  The river would just start to clear, and it would rain a little and turn it red again.  Since the ground got so saturated it wouldn't take much to do the trick.  Late in the year, I even lost my ability to check out the river clarity in the backyard, since the irrigation headgate on Red Dirt Creek blew out for the second time, and now it's crimson waters run directly into the river about mile above my house. So to check on what the river is looking like through the canyon, I have to go a mile upstream (above Red Dirt) to look. Right now, both above and below Red Dirt it looks great.

  Due to all the off-color water we've had, the trout have had trouble getting good meals and look a  little skinny.  They don't seem too interested in nymphs, and there haven't been many mayflies or caddis rising, but they sure seem to want a nice big meal in the form of a small baitfish.  Autumn Splendors, Zonkers, and Woolly Buggers (purple or white) do well.  Since the trout are both horny and hungry, I like to toss a two streamer with one brown and yellow rig for the hormonal fish and a smaller, unweighted white fly trailing that for the hungry ones.  Either way you're covered!

  Last night we got our first little bit of the white stuff on the ground, and before you know it the lifts at A-Basin will be running again.  But things are supposed to warm up this week again, and here at the relatively low elevation of 6,200' we should have another month or so of great fishing before its time to break out the old Volants and head for the slopes. If any of you reading this want to get in some good fishing before than happens let me know.  The leaves have just started to change this week and so there should be two more weeks of that to help dress up an already colorful float.