Fishing The Peak

                                                                 

                                                                Fishing The Peak
Its June 7th 2015, and river flows (and the snowpack that create them) are looking good on the Upper Colorado
River Basin.  The river is at or near its peak right now, flowing at about 7,500 cfs past (and into) my backyard right now. The flows this spring are much higher than I would have expected only a few weeks ago, but that's what five weeks of almost daily moisture will do for a watershed.  In my last email, I promised to let everyone know when I thought we were at peak, and when that peak might start to drop.  I think that moment is nigh at hand.  The fishing still isn't great, but the river looks good and it should be fishing great very soon. 

   One thing that's different with this email than past ones I've sent is that I'm going start putting in links to stories that might be of interest.  There's a blog I read by a sportswriter who does a lot of that, and I've noticed that I really like to take those internet side trips sometimes.  For example, the day I ran across a story about Arctic Char being stocked in Dillon Reservoir, and instead of just telling you about it I can just do this....http://www.summitdaily.com/news/16658384-113/free-fishing-weekend-comes-to-rivers-and-lakes .  How fun is that?

  More good news is that the clarity of the river is better than you expect for this time of year and for this high a flow, its much clearer.  Although the visibility is still under a foot, it looks like water and not coffee.  The main reason for this is that upstream reservoir operators are coordinating dam releases to provide flushing flows for endangered fish near Grand Junction.  These impoundments include Green Mountain, Williams Fork, Lake Granby and Wolford Mountain.  (To learn more about that, check this link at " http://www.vaildaily.com/news/16665578-113/colorado-reservoirs-coordinate-to-provide-peak-flows-for  ). Since the water that's flowing my way is coming out of the bottom of these reservoirs and not from surface runoff, its colder and clearer that we typically see in June.  These releases are supposed to end during the middle of the next week, which means that the river should drop quite a bit, clear, and warm up.  This is turn should also increase bug hatches, and the metabolism of the trout.  By next weekend, the fishing here on the Lower Upper should be ON.

  I've done three floats this week, two of them just to enjoy the whitewater with friends and one to fish.  The fishing trip was one we scheduled over a month ago, when the timing of the runoff was more uncertain.  As our date drew nearer, I let my client know via email that it was looking like the river would still be high, and the fishing poor.  But then on my second whitewater float we saw rising fish and decent caddis hatches, and I realized that it might be possible to catch a trout in this big water after all. My customer still wanted to come despite sub-par conditions, for he had heard about my stretch of river from a good friend and wanted to experience it himself, good fishing or bad. I priced the float as if we were doing a scenic float instead of a fishing one, and in our email exchanges I kept downplaying the likelihood of catching anything.  Even worse, in the three days between my second whitewater float and the day of the fishing trip on Friday, the river kept on inching up even more.  On my last email to him, I wrote him that I couldn't promise him great fishing on Friday, but that I could promise him a great time.

  My customer showed up on Friday morning eager to go, and after a quick primer on fly casting we set off up the river.  Along the way, I showed him some of the big wave holes you can see from the road.  We stopped at Pinball Rapid so I could show him the line we'd be taking, which would be to the right of the bridge pylon.  In normal flows, going left of the bridge is the only feasible option in a raft, but above 3,500 cfs or so the right side is in play.  The slot is fairly narrow going right, but the reward is a nice set of big waves to run through that can make a raft feel like a cantering horse.  When we got up to Derby Junction, I took him to the top of the mesa to check out the overlook on top.  Its only a mile from the road and river below, but you gain almost a thousand feet in elevation and its one of my favorite views in Colorado.  From that vantage point, you can see downriver for five miles, or the entire first half of the float we do. 

  When we got back to the river, instead of going to my put in which is just across the River Road at the mouth of Derby Creek, I drove him up to Rodeo Rapid, aka Burns Hole.  Rodeo was formed by a rock slide almost thirty years ago that created a Class III  feature in the river.  At most fishing levels, its a nasty piece of work, for at the bottom of the rapid is a shark tooth-like snag that the fast current tries to push anything in the water up into. The first time I ran it twelve years ago, I got stuck on that rock for over an hour, until some campers downriver saw me and walked up to see if they could be of assistance.  I ended up throwing them my bow line, and the four of them pulled and pulled until my big cataraft finally came free. Over the next few years, I got the rapid pretty dialed in to where I could get through it without any other issues, but I never enjoyed it. I've witnessed several boats flip in it, including one rowed by a guide working for me who put two eighty year-olds into the river.  Now my river access is below Rodeo and I don't miss having to deal with it, but when the river rises it gets easier to run, since the rocks that might otherwise cause difficulties are well under water.  At the 7,300 cfs level or so it was running Friday, it becomes almost easy, and so I showed my customer what it looked like to give him the option of whether he wanted to run it or not.  Being a former Marine, he was not only up to the challenge but looking forward to it. 

  We launched from Burns, rowed through the flat water above the Rapid, and then ran it just left of center without incident.  The waves were huge and rolling but my big cataraft just bombed right on through.  As we made our way past Derby Junction, we began to focus on fishing, and how to "read" water to determine where the fish were.  My client had done mostly still water fishing on lakes and oceans, where fish are on the prowl looking for food. I explained that in a river, the fish like to hold in feeding lies and let the food come to them, a very different scenario.  These feeding lies can often be located by determining where the seams between the moving and still water are, and those are usually delineated by bubble lines. During this whole description to him of what we were looking for, I kept interjecting that given our current high water conditions, it might be difficult to actually catch anything, but in theory at least this was where we would try to locate feeding trout.  I was trying to keep his expectations low, but in our first big eddy, Echo Hole, he caught a fine fifteen inch rainbow right out of a spot I told him to cast into!  Over the next hour, he caught two more rainbows as well, and it looked as though we would have to start raising our expectations a little!

  Unfortunately, those three fish would be the only ones we'd catch all day.  After those three he did fish less, and we just enjoyed the brisk float.  The nice part about fishing high water is that you don't have to fish every foot of the river the whole way down.  That's because there's not much holding water along the banks, and so the fish tend to stack up in the big eddies to wait out the high water.  This causes the fish populations to be concentrated into very small areas, making finding them easier to find.  So a trip this time of year tends to be short sections of very fun whitewater, interspersed by pulling out of the current to fish the eddies along the way.  The only caveat is that with the water clarity under a foot, you need to get your fly or lure within a small visual window close to a trout's eyeballs.  The upside to that poor clarity is that the fish aren't too spooky, and you can get the boat pretty close to them. 

  As we made our way down the river that day, the clarity seemed to worsen.  We also saw plenty of floating wood in the water, another sure sign that the water level is increasing. So whether it was due to that, or from our halfhearted attempts to catch more, we got skunked the rest of the day.  But my client didn't seem to mind, for the fun waves and the always-spectacular setting more than made up for it.  We did get several bumps and chasers, some right up to the boat, but didn't land any more of them.

  So the snowpack is looking good, and the Front Range is even wetter so their reservoirs are even fuller than ours.  If you were on top of A Basin right now, you might think that it was the middle of February.  The Snotel number for the Upper Colorado River basin is at 95% as of this morning, (http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/reports/UpdateReport.html?report=Colorado .  This means that all that beautiful water is coming west, where it belongs.  There is one place I like to look to get a feel for what the snowpack is doing melt-wise, and that's the gauge on the Piney.  The Piney River is a great window into what the snowpack is doing. (This gauge can be found at http://waterdata.usgs.gov/co/nwis/uv?site_no=09058500 ).  The Piney begins above Vail at Piney Lake, nestled up in the Gore Range.  It has a short steep run flowing northwest to its confluence with the Colorado River at State Bridge.   Denver Water owns most of it's water rights, and if the proposed Wolcott Reservoir ever gets built, water would be pumped uphill south over the divide into the Eagle River watershed.  That water would then be stored in a reservoir for late summer releases into the Eagle, which would satisfy downstream water commitments. In low water years this would be bad news for the Colorado River, since water that currently flows past this stretch in the summer could be substituted by that Eagle water, which might mean less here and more of it going east through the Roberts Tunnel.  The only irrigation taken out of it now is at Magnus Lindholm's ranch down near the bottom, but its not that significant of a diversion.  The resulting flow number at the Piney gauge is a good real-time look at what the snowpack is doing from day to day, without the variabilities that reservoir storage or ranch diversions add to the picture. The Piney peaked on Tuesday and has begun to drop a little since, so I feel pretty confident that once the dams start releasing less water come the middle of this week, we'll see the levels begin to drop.  As you might remember from previous emails, or from personal experience, the period immediately after the peak flow when the river begins to clear can have some great fishing, and right now that looks like next weekend.  Of course weather and other variables can have a big impact on that, but for now somewhere around June 12th should be the time to get your fishing rods back out. 

  Of course, the neat thing about getting out this time of year is that river is so much damn fun at this level, and really at anything above 3,000 cfs.  The waves trains just seem to roll on and on, caused by the sheer volume of water being squeezed between canyon walls.  Whirlpool Canyon has some really big waves, whereas normally there are none at all.  Rodeo Rapid goes from being a dangerous rapid to avoid, to being a fun play spot to seek out.  The Twin Bridges can be safely run by going right down the middle, and there's a good half mile of fun, fast water below. One difficulty we did have on Friday was finding a place to stop for lunch.  All of the usual sand bars and eddies we usually stop at were under deep moving water.  We ended up at the Pinball boat ramp, which was perfect.  It's mostly under water right now, and so you can float right up to the spot you are usually maneuvering your truck, and hang out there out of the wind and current. 

  If you live on the Front Range, you've had such a wet and cold past few weeks that its probably hard to even think about doing any wet outdoor recreation.  You've probably had enough of that just walking to and from your front door each day. But out here, its a different story.  I lived in or around Denver for seventeen years, and never appreciated how much nicer and dryer it is over here on the western slope. We get way less rain and snow here at 6,200 feet of elevation on the river, as opposed to what we see often see on the Denver TV newscasts.  So the water is just where we like it - watering pastures, flowing past our wader-clad ankles, or in a frozen state crunching under our skis.  (Yes, A Basin is still open and will be until at least the 14th, maybe longer. Find out more at http://arapahoebasin.com/ABasin/snow-conditions/summer-season/default.aspx ).

  So if you want to experience Colorado at its best, and ski / whitewater float / fish / golf all in the same weekend, this is the time to come up and do it!  (I can help you out with two out of the three).

                                                              Jack

Jack Bombardier

www.confluencecasting.com13403 Colorado River Road
Eagle County, CO 81637
970-524-2775 - shop
303-378-2149 - cell
http://jackbombardier.blogspot.com/

A Cure For The Runoff Blues

                  A Cure For The Runoff Blues

  It’s May 26th, and we are officially into the Spring 2015 Runoff. What was looking to be a below-average flow year only six weeks ago has changed dramatically since then.  In mid-April the rain and snow began to fall, and has been falling almost every day since then.  Last week I went up to A-Basin, and since that time it’s only kept on snowing up there.  Their original closing day of June 7^th may be getting pushed back, since their base has been growing this spring when it should be melting off.  This is of course a very good thing, because what’s good for Summit County is good for the Blue River, and what’s good for the Blue is good for the Colorado River.  Last time I checked, there was 1500 cfs coming out of the Dillon Reservoir, and eleven hundred coming out of Green Mountain.  By the time this is over, all of the Colorado River reservoirs (and those on Front Range) should be brimming full.

  The exception is Wolford Mountain Reservoir, whose impoundment has shifted more than its original designers foresaw.  Since it was finished in 1995, its moved two feet downward, and eight inches out.  The Colorado River District is keeping a very close eye on it, and has installed sensors on it to monitor movement, so at least if my world disappears under a furious wall of water someday we’ll get enough notice to get to safety.  (Unless I’m already on the river fishing, and twenty blissful miles away from a cell phone signal, that will be some memorable whitewater!) If the dam ever had a catastrophic failure, it would easily be the biggest natural disaster to ever strike Colorado. One estimate I saw guessed that if it ever went all at once, there would be 600K cfs roaring down Muddy Creek into the Colorado just above Gore Canyon.  At 12K, the river runs alongside my house and sump pumps run continually to keep it out. I’ve tried to visualize what 600K would look like, and even my fertile imagination is left wanting.  Such a flood would take out everything along the Colorado River Road, and I-70 from Dotsero to…Utah?  Forget the Union Pacific rail line, and a big chunk of Glenwood Springs, and anything near the river down to Grand Junction.  Sounds like a great premise for a Michael Bay movie. 

  But back to happier thoughts.  All this rain we’re getting should be good for the fish for later this summer.  It has ended what was some pretty decent spring fishing, but I’ll take the short-term hit in exchange for happy trout in August. However, instead of letting everyone know what they can’t do for the next few weeks, I thought I’d mention somewhere that you can go.  My friend and partner Ryan Herbert of Yampa River Anglers tells me the fishing up in the headwaters of the Yampa has been on fire. 

  That area, also known as the Bear River or Stillwater, has become one of my favorite places to fish anywhere in the state. I had heard about it for a long time, but had been living up here for about seven years before I finally ventured up there.  Once I did, I was kicking myself for not getting there sooner.  For years, I’d wondered where the headwaters of the Yampa were, for on any map you don’t see any little blue lines labeled “Yampa” until the town of Yampa itself.  Turns out that “Yampa” is the Ute word for “Bear”, or at least that’s what I read somewhere.  (If there are any native Ute readers who would like to contradict that, please do!).  Stillwater (the name I use for the area) consists of three fairly large man-made reservoirs, the upper two of which feel more like natural lakes.  You are surrounded on three sides by the escarpment of the Flat Tops, including Flat Top Mountain, the highest point around.  In addition, there are some high mountain lakes you can hike to with brookies and cutthroats in them, but if you don’t want to work that hard the lakes below are frequently stocked.  It’s also worth noting that, although impoundments are not high enough to create true tailwater fisheries, with low and stable river temperatures and mysis shrimp, they do provide a clear water refuge during times of runoff in the bigger rivers below.  Of course, there are lots of lakes this time of year that have that, but how many pieces of moving water can you find that do?  Especially ones that are relatively easy to get to, with accessible campsites, facilities and boat ramps.  If you are anything like me, lakes can be kind of boring compared to rivers and creeks.    But the neat thing about this area is the diversity of the water you can fish. Bank fishing on a lake or pond, check.  Want to fish for the big ones from a boat, and cover more water? Check.  Fishing your three weight (or Tenkara) on a small stream, check.  Want to cook a guilt-free put and take stocker rainbow on a grill only a short walk from where you caught it?, check. For those of you who have seen the powerpoint presentation I give, and have been interested in Derby Creek but don’t want to make the 4WD trip up to it, the Stillwater area is very similar but with far easier access.  Of course, with good access comes more people, especially in the summer, but this time of year the crowds are still somewhere else (and so are the mosquitoes).   

  Oh, one other thing that’s memorable about the Stillwater area is wildflowers.  If you’ve ever been to the Bear in June, you would wonder why the columbine (Colorado’s state flower) is protected.  If never seen a place with more columbines, they’re like dandelions in the front yard of a repossessed house.  If you have a spouse that’s not so much into fish abuse but likes them so amazing flower displays, take them to Stillwater in June.  They might be so distracted by the flowers, that they might not notice the fact you’ve been fishing for the last seven hours (works with my wife, but your results may vary).

  So if you want to check it out with a guy who knows it better than anyone else, give Ryan at Yampa Valley Anglers a call at 970-819-4376, or email at yampavalleyanglers@gmail.com .   If you go up there and see an old 4Runner with a huge rocket box up there, stop by and say “hi”, that’ll be me getting in my licks before I start taking all of you out onto the Colorado River.  If you have beer I might even tell you about a good spot or two. (Ryan knows way more good spots than I do, but he prefers cash or credit card).

   There’s one nice thing about having a decent runoff – the longer it lasts, the hungrier the fish are once its starts to come down and the water clears.  That’s when you’ll get your next email from me, right after the peak of the flow.  Until then you’ll find me either at A-Basin or Stillwater with a big smile (that rocketbox holds a lot of fun gear!)

                                      Jack Bombardier

  

 

Early Runoff This Year

                             Early Runoff This Year

  The spring runoff on the Upper Colorado River began on May first, a couple of weeks early.  Considering that the river ice melted off five weeks earlier than I’d ever seen it, a slightly premature runoff probably made sense. 

  But oh what a great few weeks it’s been for the snowpack and river systems of Colorado!  A month ago, the snowpack was looking pretty low and having much of a runoff at all was in doubt.  In mid-April, I attended the Colorado Trout Unlimited Rendezvous in Redstone, and that was the week if finally started to snow and rain again.  Some of the attendees had some difficult driving conditions to get there.  But after a dry month, seeing all that beautiful white snow on the ground was nice.  Unfortunately, it came too late for late-season skiing, as most areas including Vail and Aspen closed that very weekend.

  There were several talks and presentations given that day in Redstone, given in the local chapel.  It was a strange juxtaposition between what words were passing through my ears, and the images my that my brain processed.   Experts were talking about how dire the current and future water situation is, while the view outside the soaring chapel windows were filled by quarter-sized flakes of snow slowly wafting down.  An 1815-type Currier and Ives scene, during an April day in Colorado, circa 2015.

  Later that evening, there was an awards ceremony and I got one for The Guide Least Likely To Drown A Client (or something).  I got to say a few words, and started by thanking CTU for all the good things they do for Colorado rivers in general, and the Upper C in specific.  I finished by noting how wonderful it was to see the snow that afternoon falling, and how most normal people would hate the associated hassles with that, like difficult driving.  But I was in a room full of folks who could appreciate how precious each and every flake was, for in a drought every drop of water is important.  And most everyone there also seemed to love that fact that it was snowing, finally. 

  That was a month ago, and how things have changed, and almost all for the good.  I skied the last weekend at Beaver Creek, and then at Vail, and have been to A-Basin twice in that time.  The ski season ended strong, and A-Basin is looking great.  As I write this, it’s Saturday May Ninth, and the mountains and foothills are getting up to 20 inches of snow this weekend!  Down here on the Colorado River at 6,200 feet, its mostly just dark and gloomy, with an occasional drizzle.  But all the good stuff is falling upstream, and will flow past my door sooner or later.

  On Tuesday last week, I had the honor of speaking to the Cheyenne Mountain Chapter of Trout Unlimited.  They are pitching in to help preserve the last remaining native habitat of genetically pure Greenback Cutthroat trout, so cheers to those guys!  On the way home that night, I decided to take I-25 north to I-70, instead of my original plan to go through South Park.  One of the nice things about my 4Runner is the huge rocketbox I have mounted above it, which has gear for fishing, skiing, camping and other assorted tools and conveniences.  Instead of fishing the Dream Stream, I was going to do some hands-on snowpack inspections the next day, otherwise known as alpine skiing, A-Basin style.  Heading west on I-70, I noticed how bright the moon was shining through my glass sunroof. It occurred to me that we were in the middle of some pretty mile weather, but that there had been two feet of snow in the central Rockies over the past week or so. 

  It occurred to me that it had been some time since I had skied in the moonlight at Loveland Pass, and this might be a perfect night to do so. But by the time I would be getting to Loveland Pass, it would be about one am, and who but tanker truck drivers would be going over at that hour? I decided to take Loveland Pass anyway, since I would be sleeping in the back of my 4Runner in the A-Basin parking lot.  Then as I approached the tunnel, a large CDOT message board said, “Rollover Accident in WB Tunnel – use US Highway 6 Loveland Pass As Alternate Route”, and I thought, “This is my lucky night!” Instead of practically no traffic going over Loveland Pass, 100 percent of little traffic there would be would be going that way! 

  I parked at the bottom of the switchback to where all trails off Loveland Pass lead, put on my ski gear, and walked over the outside of the turn. I stuck my skis into the snowbank, looked up into the still night air, and waited for a car.  Within minutes, a pair of headlights was coming up the road, and as they rounded the bend I was caught in their headlights.  The first car started to slow, but the second one closed in on his bumper and they sped back up again. A half-minute later, another set of headlights approached, and this time they pulled up right beside me.  I had been hitchhiking for perhaps a minute and a half.  It was a new Tacoma, and I pantomimed just hopping into the back to its driver, and he nodded.  So climbed in back, knocked on his back window and gave him a thumbs up, and soon we were climbing up into the sky.  On the way up, I was able to scout some good lines from the top of the ridge, and could see several options.  It was a waxing moon, perhaps three or four days shy of being full, and the landscape was as easy to see as it would have been at noon.

  At the top of the Pass, 12,990 feet, I climbed out, thanked him through his driver’s window, and set off for the top of the ridge.  Its possible to simply put your skis on at the road’s edge and ski from there, but that means either doing a long boring traverse or dropping into some trees.  Bright as it was in the open, it was pitch-dark in the trees so that wasn’t an option. If it were the brutal weather that could often be found here on the Continental Divide, on the very spine of the North American continent,  I might have opted for the traverse of to the bottom of the bowl, with a run out back to my truck. 

  But on this night the weather was perfect, with the sky almost cloudless and the air very still.  So I hiked up to the top of the ridge, the night quiet except for the crunching of my feet and the sound my own deep breathing.  I took my time, just putting one foot in front of the other and tried to think of nothing else but that next step, and the one after that, and so on. Sooner than I would have I imagined, I was on top of the divide, able to see forever even at 2:30 in the morning.  I couldn’t have imagined a more beautiful spot to be on earth than where I stood. Not knowing what to expect on top, I had dressed with an extra layer and laid down in the snow on top, warm and snug.  I watched electric white clouds drift past, looking like horses, then poodles, then lizards.  It was so clear that even the stars were very bright, despite the moonlight.  It was so high that there was very little atmosphere for the moon to illuminate. 

  Finally I clicked my boots into my skis, and began to slide down the hill.  I sank a little deeper into the snow than I expected, so I went a little faster to plane up.  Once I did it was effortless, and I glided across the blindingly white plane like a low-flying night bird, an owl swooping down to snag an unlucky mouse.  The endless mountains made me feel both insignificant, and intricately tied to everything else all at once. Even as I was living that moment, I wanted to hold onto the way it made me feel forever. If you are reading this during the second week of May, odds are that you’ll able to so this for at least one more phase of the moon this year.  Go for it!

  Since this is ostensibly a fishing blog, I guess I should mention how the river fished over the pre-runoff period. Actually, it was pretty good, especially if you could catch it running clear.  The warm sunny weather in March did turn some of the tributaries muddy, but once ranchers started irrigating, it captured a lot of that silt and the river looked pretty good. 

  But since there weren’t many bugs hatching that early, fishing consisted mostly of running big stonefly nymphs or tossing streamers.  During the clearer waters, watching trout charging out of a hidey-hole chasing streamers is pretty entertaining! I’ve done if for fun with the hook cut off just to watch them do it.

  So it fished pretty well this year, if inconsistent.  We caught a couple of nice rainbows from the Class of 2012, but one was so vibrant it looked like it might have some from a different planet.  Maybe it was some kind of genetic holdover from the pre-Whirling Disease era, some of which have been found on the Gunnison. Epidemics usually don’t kill all of anything, just most, and if you are one of the survivors then perhaps your genetics are superior in some way. This rainbow sure looked like something special, that’s for sure. This was the Angelina Jolie  / Tom Brady of fish. 

  Then things changed in a hurry.  Between last Friday and Sunday, the river went from 1100 cfs to 2200 cfs. Over the course of the last week, it’s risen to well over 3000 cfs, and looks like its not going to go down anytime soon.  In addition to the increasing snowpack, Front Range drainages are already saturated and on the verge of flood, so none of this western water will be needed in their inventory. 

   A river is a very dynamic ecosystem, and one ever-changing variable on the Upper C is clarity, and how it’s affected by river levels. Generally, as the river goes up, it gets cloudier and more opaque.  When it stays at a fairly constant level for a while, it will clear.  If the level drops, it clears much faster.  That’s usually a good time to be on the river!  The worst time is when the level goes up dramatically.  By those metrics, that would make last Saturday the lousiest time to be on the water all year, right in the middle of its doubling in size.  And of course, that’s when I would host a famous fishing writer, during the worse fishing weather of the year.  I’d loved his prose for many years, and was pretty honored to be able to show him my little slice of paradise.  But then the fishing sucked.  He only caught three, though  they were at least spaced out, into an early one, one during the middle of the day, and finally one late.  But still, when two people who know what they’re doing only land three fish all day? We did get really close up to some bighorns, and the weather was OK.  But usually when the river fishes slow, its because its been sunny, and the canyon is so spectacularly colored that you don’t mind not catching that many fish.  When its bright, the canyon scenery and wildlife are reasons enough to be there. Or if the canyon is a bit dull, its because it overcast and its probably fishing great.  But last Saturday was neither, and I could only wish that this person whom I admired could have seen it all in a better light.

  The last time I had a fishing writer on my boat, the day could not have better choreographed by Robert Redford or Izaak Walton.  The weather was great, the canyons colorful, the browns aggressive, and we caught fish on nymphs, dries, streamers, grasshoppers, and a tenkara rod. Just the kind of day you want to have with someone who writes about fishing, to experience in your boat.  Last Saturday was kind of a worse-case scenario from both a fishing and a visual perspective. 

  In addition to all of the precipitation lately,  the news has also been good on the insect front.  Before the water level rose, the temperature had been stuck around 35-38 degrees, and other than some midges and BWOs there weren’t many bugs around.  But few days before the river went up, the temperature rose to 52 degrees. That kicked off caddis hatches that have continued ever since, in the most copious numbers since the pre-2011 high water.  The BWOs numbers also went up, to the point where their dorsal fins could be seen slicing through the foamy eddies where their spinners would finish their watery journey. Once the river starts to come down in a month or so, the grasshoppers will be in play and thus will commence the meat of the fishing season, Hopper/Dropper Time. 

  So that’s the time that Upper Colorado River appreciators need to start thinking about, just after the runoff has peaked, and begins to drop. It should clear quickly as long as it’s not too rainy, and the fish will be aggressive once its clear because they can become efficient predators again.  Hoppers will be out, and fish will be onto the hoppers.  And best of all, at flows above 2,500 the Lower Upper can be a pretty fun stretch to run, with waves you don’t see at lower levels.  If you are a watcher of river gauges, keep an eye on the Dotsero gauge, sometimes listed in places as the Shoshone number.  If you subtract the gauge number for the lower Eagle, from the Shoshone one, it’ll give you a pretty good idea of what’s flowing through the “Lower Upper”, Burns to Dotsero. (The Kremmling gauge upriver is also a good resource, but is so far upriver that it usually under-reports the flows between Burns and Dotsero).

  The main message is, we’ve got more water and snow now than we had a month ago. If the Front Range gets through it without any flooding, than that’s a very good thing.  Things are looking rosy for the summer of 2016!

    I’ll be watching those gauges very closely, and when they start to drop you will get another one of these, (unless you choose to Unsubscribe at the bottom). I’ll try to keep the next one shorter, at least to where you can read it in one bathroom visit).

                              Tight lines,

                                   Jack Bombardier

                                   2015 CTU Award Winner;

                                       Guide Most Likely To Not Kill You

www.confluencecasting.com

14503 Colorado River Road

Gypsum, CO 81637

303-378-2149

jack@confluencecasting.com

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Just Wait Five Minutes (Or Why I Live Here)

                     Just Wait Five Minutes (or, Why I Live Here)

  Yesterday was a good example of why I live here in the mountains, despite the expensive cost of living, the lack of good year-round jobs, and other hassles both minor and major that are associated with being up here.

  It takes having three jobs to be able to (barely) afford to live here.  I drive a propane truck, run a small float fishing business, and work for a limo company driving buses and SUVs.  Yesterday I was doing Occupation Number Three, and had to pick up a couple of families from Columbia at the Eagle airport to bring to Vail in a bus.  There was a snowstorm moving in this later, but I was hoping to get them delivered to their hotel before it did, and to be able to get in a few skis runs in on the mountain before the lifts stopped running.  Since their flight was an arrival, I was not going to get my hopes up too high. Flight delays or other monkey wrenches that you have no control over can happen when you are trying to get things done in a timely fashion. 

  I picked up the bus in Avon, right across from the Beaver Creek ski area where I hoped to ski later.  The sun was shining but there was a fresh inch of snow on the ground, and looking up at the mountain I tried to guess how much snow fell there the night before.  If there was an inch in the valley, then there were probably three or four up at higher altitudes.  Usually three inches of snow isn’t enough to too excited about, but its been a somewhat lean year for snow so that sounded pretty good. 

  I drove the bus west to Eagle, and since it was so sunny out decided to wash it before their flight came in.  There were dark clouds visible all around the edges of the valley, but overhead was blue sky.  The passengers arrived a little early, but there were four other commercial flights all arriving at more or less the same time, and so it took quite a while for all of their luggage to turn up.  By the time I went out to start warming the bus up, the clouds had closed in.  Then when we began heading back upvalley to Vail, the snow had begun to fall.  Halfway to Vail is a narrow redrock canyon which is a magnet for snow and traffic accidents, and sure enough there were whiteout conditions in there.  The snow eased somewhat as we passed through Edwards and Avon, but once we got past Dowd Junction and into Vail it was snowing very heavily again.  Once the Columbians and their luggage were unloaded, I raced back to the yard to park the bus. I was hoping to get up the mountain and to squeeze in as many runs in as possible. 

  I parked near Beaver Creek in a spot that only locals know about. Its only on weekends you are allowed to part there, and the few spots get snapped up quickly, but after one pm people usually leave to go to their jobs and families, and spots open up. Not only is it a short walk to the lift, but at then end of the day you can ski across the golf course almost all the way back to your car.  I quickly changed into my ski gear and hurried to the lift, only realizing now just how hard it was snowing.  Going up the lift towards Bachelor’s Gulch, the snow was coming down sideways right into my face, so I pulled my hood down low to try to keep it out. Halfway up, I noticed that a huge amount of windblown snow had piled up in my crotch, so I had to keep my knees together the rest of the way to keep it from forming there.  The next lift ride to the top was just the same, going uphill on an exposed chairlift into the teeth of the storm.  Suddenly, rushing around just to put myself into this position seemed like less of a great idea, but it was almost three pm already so I wouldn’t be out there long enough to get hypothermic.  On my previous ski outing a couple of days earlier, I had used a GoPro camera to take some footage, and it occurred to me that a GoPro would have been pretty useless on a day like today.

  My first run was in near white-out conditions, so I stuck to a tree run to have some depth perception.  On my next lift ride up, I was ready to batten down all my hatches again, but noticed that the snow had eased up a bit.  And not only was it snowing less, but the ski to the west seemed a bit brighter.  By the top, the sun was actually beginning to show through the clouds, and by the time I tightened my boots and turned on my music, I could see all the way to the Flat Top Mountains in the west, and blue sky was starting to appear overhead! 

  Now I’ve often heard the expression used to describe the weather in Colorado,  “If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes”.  Of course, in my travels I’ve also heard that same thing said about other places, too. But by the time I was halfway down the hill, I was skiing in complete sunshine on five fresh inches of the most wonderful powder I’d ever skied.  The snow had a soft, slippery quality to it that made turns completely effortless.  It wasn’t heavy wet spring snow, or dry powdery fluff, but something in between that was just perfect. I did a couple of lift rides up with other people who were also astounded at how quickly the day turned great. It had apparently been just miserable being up there all day, and everyone was just trying to suffer through it.  The bad weather had driven away most of the Saturday crowd by the time I got there, and so the runs were mostly empty.  The few that were left felt like the luckiest people on earth to just be there in that moment. 

  I only had time to do a half-dozen runs myself, but not only was each run perfect but so was each turn I made. Days like this were why I worked so hard all the time just to barely squeak by.  It didn’t require traveling from halfway around the world and spending thousands of dollars to do this, this is in my backyard, and so is the Colorado River.  My bank account may not be impressive, but I get to ski and fish fifty times a year, and that kind of compensation is hard to put a price tag on. 

Jack Bombardier 2/22/15

 

Turn Off Your Effing Driving Lights!

                           Turn Off Your Effing Driving Lights!

If you stop to think about it, one of the most profound examples of the trust and interconnectedness that we humans share with each other every day involves driving down two-lane roads.  Or more specifically, driving down a small road and passing another motorist traveling in the opposite direction. Its something that happens thousands or even million times of day all over the world.  Yet think of how narrow the gap between a non-event and a life-changing one can be, and it’s truly astounding that there are not more accidents.  Just think of the physics involved with two 5,000 pound objects going 45 mph towards each other, separated by only a few feet and maybe a yellow stripe painted down the middle of the asphalt.  All it would take is a moment of driver distraction (and there are plenty of those in modern automobiles), or an icy patch, or a tire blowout, or road debris, or a bee flying around in the cabin, or any number of things and BAM!, one car crosses over that ephemeral line and catastrophe ensues.

  What an amazing amount of trust we place in strangers we’ll never meet, hoping that they’ll operate their vehicles competently.  We enter into an unspoken, short-lived contract with every car or truck we pass on the road.  The main point of that contract being, I’ll stay on my side of the road, and you stay on yours, and we’ll both go on our way safely.  Basically, its taking the Golden Rule (Do Unto Others…) out for a spin.  But there are also colloraries to this rule, which involve not doing things to hinder other drivers, in the hopes that they’ll do the same for you.  One obvious example of that is the use of high beams, which make things much safer for the high beam-er, but not so good for the high beam-ee.  By and large, most people don’t seem to have much of a problem with dimming their high beams when they see an approaching vehicle.  If they forget, the other driver usually just briefly turns theirs on, and the offender will typically turn their high beams off right away.  This system has worked fairly well for as long as cars have had high-beam headlights, since all of us occasionally forget that our high-beams are on (myself included).

  But over the past few years, a new public nuisance has begun to proliferate on our public thoroughfares, called “driving lights”.  These purport to making our roads safer at night by better illuminating our path, and in the hands of responsible drivers that can be the case. The problem is that some driving lights can be as blinding as high beams are, but drivers who would be quick to turn their high beams off at the sight of an approaching car at don’t feel the same obligation when their driving lights are on.  How this is legal is beyond me.  I suppose that the brightness of the driving lights don’t exceed that of the low beams, at least in theory, but in practice having four bright lights shining at your eyeballs does seem to be twice as bright as having only two.  Perhaps the lumens are the same, but the bottom line is that driving at night towards an oncoming vehicle with driving lights on can be much more difficult than it is without.  Of course not all driving lights are created equal, some vehicle makes are worse than others.  And aftermarket lights can be aimed all over the place, depending on how well they’re mounted. 

  The worst offenders seem to be pickup trucks and SUVs, possibly because they are higher.  Trucks also tend to be more likely to have a heavy load in the back or towing a trailer, which greatly compounds the problem.  A pickup truck going down the road with its rear end down low and driving lights on, can be worse than that same truck running empty using its high beams, yet somehow that is legal.

  It all comes down that very basic social contract we enter into whenever we get behind the wheel.  I won’t mess you with if you don’t mess with me, and we’ll both get to where we want to be without any fuss.  In my opinion, driving around with your driving lights on all the time violates that social contract, especially if they are a really bright pair, which most of the newer ones seem to be. 

  The crazy thing about most driving lights is that they really don’t add that much to the actual ability of the driver to see things at night, at least not in proportion to the amount of visual distress they can cause to the poor bastard coming the other way.  The cost-benefit relationship is severely skewed one way, for it “costs” one driver’s ability to see more than it “benefits” the other.  But the “cost” can be far greater to the blinded, than any benefit the blinder is gaining. The only benefit that additional driving lights seem to have on busy roads is to neutralize the other lights that are blinding you. 

  Personally I own three vehicles, a Saab and two Toyota trucks.  The Saab and the Landcruiser have aftermarket driving lights.  I live fourteen miles up a rural two lane road, and often make the drive up at night or early in the morning without even encountering another vehicle.  One is far more likely to encounter a deer, elk, or fog on the drive than another driver, and so I use my driving lights, very carefully aimed, to hopefully see those dangers better. But if I have them on, and see oncoming headlights, the high beams go off and so do the driving lights.  It would make me feel like a completely selfish bastard to project either one of those towards a fellow motorist and human being.  Once I get to town, the driving lights stay off, period.  Why is it so difficult for people to show other drivers some basic respect?

  When I see a vehicle with especially egregious lights heading in my direction at night, sometimes I’ll flash my driving lights at them.  I’ve yet to have anyone turn theirs off in response, probably because in a pinch people probably can’t remember where the switch is located (since they never turn it off).  Once I rented a Hyundai which had its driving lights already turned on, and had to scour the owner’s manual to find out how to turn them off.  It made me feel like a complete A - Hole driving around with them that first night, except for when I encountered others coming in the opposite direction who were doing the same.

  So what can be done to make people aware of what they’re doing, and get them to stop?  My only solution, other than to try and increase public awareness, is to turn my driving lights back on when someone is shining theirs at me.  It’s a lousy response, but what other tools are there in my toolbox?  If enough people start doing the same, maybe people will start thinking of their driving lights in the same manner that they do their high beams, and the roads can become safer for everyone. 

Until then, if you driver down the road at night with your driving lights on, and some dickhead flashes his back at you for doing it, its probably me!

Squeezing In Some Fishing

                                     

                                    Squeezing In Some Fall Fishing

Living and working in Colorado has many benefits, and one of those is that I’m usually not too far from a spot to fish, even in the winter.  People assume that because I’m a fishing guide that I must get to go fishing all the time, but that’s only technically true. What I really do is spends lots of time watching other people fish.

Since I live fifty feet from the Colorado River, getting a line into the water can be as quick as grabbing the little rod that hangs next to the gate on the way out to the back yard. From the end of my dock, I can usually fool one of the small browns that feed in the slow current out there just before dark.

  Of course, some times I look for a bit more of a challenge, and there are productive places to wade all along the river.  I’ll use my bike to reach the closer spots, which has the added benefit of helping to get my legs in shape for ice hockey.  But living so close to good fishing spots means that all I need is an hour or two to be able to fish, so its not a huge time commitment to do so.  Last Sunday was an example of that.  I spent most of the day getting caught up with office stuff and yard chores, and by three was done doing the things that I absolutely needed to do.  So I hopped in my truck and drove up the river to the canyon, where I used the railroad bridge below Pinball Rapid to get over to the other side.  On river left is a small boulder garden, one that I can’t reach from my boat when I take clients through. (The spots that I usually like to wade are the ones that I can’t reach from the boat). 

  Wading across the lower end of the hole, I sloshed up through the current to a large rock that offers a perfect perch to cast from.  Although trout can be found behind some of the rocks, the most reliable feeding lie is where the current runs back along the bank.  After a couple of short casts to get my distance set, I peeled off a couple more feet of line and dropped my two dry flies right on the bubble line a foot or two off the bank.  The flies, and Elk Hair Caddis and small PMD, drifted perfectly and I held my rod tightly ready to set the hook.  The flies went through unmolested however, as they did on my next presentation.  On their third trip, the flies were at the end of their drift, and as I took my eyes off them to scan upriver for my next cast I felt a tug in my hand, and noticed that I had a fish on. I landed a thirteen inch trout on the mayfly, and felt a bit guilty about it since I never saw the take.  After releasing the fish, I made more casts further up into the hole and soon caught a much nicer brown, and felt better about this one since I put the fly right where I wanted it and saw the take this time.

  Now that I had caught two out of this hole I was ready to move on, and so I went back to my truck and drove towards home, to another spot that’s hard to reach from a boat.  When I got there I realized that the water was still running faster and higher than I expected it to be, and spot I was going to try was still a bit blown out.  So I went a little further down to a sizeable eddy below, and cast from there.  This hole was deep, and had a nice bubble line below where the river ran past a big rock on the bank.  I watched for a moment to see if there were any surface action, and I saw a rise, and then another.  From the bank I began casting to areas where the current would bring my fly into the swirling bubbles.  After one such pass, instead of pulling the flies out after they went under, I stripped them back to me like a pair of streamers.  Soon a felt a strong tug, and landed a small rainbow.  I kept tossing the dries into the eddy line, and soon caught a much better rainbow than the first, this one was about fifteen inches.  I didn’t think that I’d better that fish, but kept casting in the bubbles and had to do lots of mending to keep my flies on top. Then I saw a fish rise to my fly and he was on, fighting much harder than the other two.  Once I got him close I saw why, he was foul-hooked.  It was another rainbow, bigger than the first and smaller than the second.  After releasing that third fish, I decided that it was time to go, three fish out of the same hole was plenty, what would I prove by continuing to pull fish out of it? 

  Making my way out along the bank, and saw the rise of a nice fish not far away. I didn’t really want to catch another fish in the same spot, but the siren’s call of a feeding trout is hard to resist.  The caddis pattern I was using was pretty beat up, and would be getting retired anyway, so I cut off the hook and the second fly and cast that towards the unsuspecting trout.  The fly drifted towards the intermittently appearing olive nose, and as the fly drifted over it the nose came up and gulped down the fly.  Since I had no hook I didn’t want to pull it out of his mouth, but did get to feel a good solid pull on the line before the trout opened his mouth back up and spat it out.  Fishing without hooks isn’t something that I do a lot, but every now and then its fun to do everything involved with trying to catch fish, except for the sticking-a-sharp-hook-into-a-trout’s-mouth part. 

  Of course not all of my fishing occurs along the river I live.  My other main working gig is driving a propane truck, and that takes me all over the back roads of Eagle and Garfield counties.  Usually I have my tenkara rod and a couple of flies on hand, just in case I end up on some private property I can fish during work.  But last week I knew that I would be making a delivery to Piney Lake above Vail, and so I made sure I had my other travel rod as well, an old telescoping Trimarc.  After delivering the propane, I drove about a mile downstream from the lake to a spot I’d been eyeing on previous trips. There were spots closer to the resort that I’d already fished in past, but since I already knew that fish were there I was ready to find some others.

  The Piney was much lower than it had been three weeks ago.  The water wasn’t more that a few inches deep in most places, but I did see a little riffle that looked a bit deeper than that which would have made for a good feeding lie.  I extended the Trimarc to its full length, and added a second mayfly to the caddis already tied on.  On my very first cast, a small brookie inhaled the mayfly and I quickly pulled him out of the hole so that he wouldn’t spook the others.  It was only about six inches long, but beautiful in a way that only a brook trout in spawning colors can be. 

  I released that, and on my second cast a fish came up for the caddis.  My hook set was too quick though, and I pulled it out of his mouth.  After a couple false casts to dry my fly, I gently dropped my flies down into the bubble line once more, and the moment my caddis hit the water a nice brook trout was waiting with its mouth open to eat it.  This one gave me a better fight than the first, and when I worked it in over to the shallow water by the bank I saw that it was a foot long beauty, in colors that no oil painting or mere photograph could ever do justice to.  After pulling the hook out of its mouth and watching it swim away, I raised my rod to try another cast.  Before I could I noticed my line was still animated, and realized that there was still another fish on the end of my tippet.  This was a three inch rainbow fry that had eaten my mayfly at some point, without my even realizing it!

  I was going to keep casting, but remembered that I was supposed to be working, not fishing. I had only made three casts, had three strikes, and caught three fish.  Not a bad way to kill a few minutes at work. 

 The following week I was asked to speak at a lunchtime Denver Angling Society event, and after giving my presentation was talking with some folks there.  One of them mentioned a body of water I’d never heard of before, the Old Dillon Reservoir. This was a little lake that the town of Dillon used for its water supply when the town was in its original location, before the creation of Lake Dillon.  He said that he had hiked up to it recently, and that after being recently expanded it had been stocked with Golden Trout.  Goldens are native to California, not Colorado, and I’ve heard of them being stocked in places but have never seen one.  So on my way home from Denver, instead of fishing Clear Creek or the Blue as I often do I decided to check out this spot I’d never seen or even heard of. 

  The trailhead to the Old Dillon Reservoir is located off the dam road between Frisco and Dillon.  I’ve noticed cars parked there in the past, but never given it much notice.  Before hiking up the hill, I grabbed my rod and fanny pack of gear.  After a short hike, I came over a rise and saw a small round lake perched at the top of the hill with a commanding view of the “new” Dillon Reservoir, Buffalo Mountain, the Williams Fork Mountains, and Keystone off to the east.  Traffic from I-70 could be heard just to the west and downhill, but not seen. 

  The little reservoir itself was not very impressive, and my first thought was that I was an idiot for even carrying my rod up there.  It covered perhaps ten acres, and was surrounded by rock, cement and gravel, with no vegetative cover whatsoever.  I left my Fenwick broken down in two pieces, and decided that instead of fishing that I’d just go for a hike around the “lake”. 

 When I got down closer to the water’s surface though, I noticed something that I didn’t expect to see, riseforms from feeding trout.  I usually associate trout with living in beautiful places, in fact it’s a big reason that I am a trout fisherman to begin with.  Though there was a nice view from here above the little lake, I can’t imagine that the trout would appreciate that much. 

  So I put the rod together and strung it up, and made my way down to the water’s edge.  Now that I was closer, I could see plenty of dimples in the water, created by what looked to be very small fish.  On my first cast the a trout rose to my fly almost immediately, but when I set the hook I pulled it away from it.  The same thing happened on my next cast, and my next, and my next, for maybe twenty casts.  I stopped setting the hook altogether, but still when I’d raise the rod tip there would be nothing there.  It was frustrating but amusing too.  I considered replacing my mayfly with one that had a barbed hook, for I was curious to see at least one of these “Golden Trout”.

  Finally on about my twenty-first cast or so I was able to get the hook to stick, and brought a very small to hand.  It was not a Golden Trout, but an immature rainbow with golden color and deep parr marks.  I put him back into the water and watched him shoot off to rejoin his clan, with a great story to tell about the abusive giant he had just encountered. 

  Curiosity satisfied, I broke the Fenwick back down and resumed my trek around the little reservoir’s circumference. It was a beautiful fall day and the colors on the hillsides rivaled those on the baby trout.  The lake itself was not beautiful, but the setting was and it was yet another pretty spot that the pursuit of trout had taken me to. One of hundreds of such places that I’ve found in Colorado, with hundreds more yet unexplored. So many places, so little time…