Leroy's Army and the Carolina Four

Fresh snow on two fourteeners.  Shavano to the left and Antero to the right.

If anyone looked in my car on Sunday, April 25 they would have found a slim suit, a box of My Little Ponies, two whips, notes for a wedding ceremony, a few copies of The Drake, Old Testament commentaries, overalls, and a small arsenal of fly fishing gear. I even think I'm weird with that laundry list of randomness. "My life be like ewww-ahhh." When they weighed my bag at the ticket counter of the airport, it was three pounds overweight. I stuffed my waders in my computer bag and carried my wading boots by hand through the airport and connecting flights.  As I walked amongst the kaleidoscope of humanity that noisley fills the terminals of our nations airports, I could still hear bad, bad, Leroy Brown softly beckoning me 1600 miles away.

A continuing education class on the Old Testament lead me to the banks of the Arkansas near Buena Vista, Colorado. It was in this very class that I learned the true nature of the Song of Songs. It turns out it's not about fishing.  The Hebrew poetry is actually about intimate human love.  Who knew? All this time I thought it was scripture concerning the Beloved trout and the ever pursuant Lover, A.K.A. the fly angler. As I was educated throughout the week, my fishing hopes rested in a class-free Wednesday afternoon we had been afforded off.

Sloan-dog-millionaire

Braden works at ArkAnglers in BV. He's a heck of a guy. He helped me understand the bi-polar formula of the Arkansas river in Spring through my countless pre-trip phone calls to the shop.  It's a formula of run-off, plus snowpack, minus sunlight, divided by fly choice, multiplied by the square root of caddis larva, over fluorocarbon tippet squared.  Pretty straight forward stuff really.  After we arrived, Braden proved to be even more flippin' awesome than previously expected. He pointed us 1,000 vertical feet down stream for our Wednesday afternoon assault, hoping for warmer water and blue winged olives to boot.

As we pulled off the highway and parked riverside, we looked fiercely intimidating. If birds could talk, and fish spoke fowl, the ravens would have cried out to the trout "Swim, swim for your lives!," as soon as our tires touched stream side gravel. Nothing is more intimidating than four men ridin' dirty in a mini-van and a Hyundai Senata.  That's Mad Max kind of scary.  A modern day cast of the 3 Amigos scrambled down the bank of the river with a firm grip on the cork, and the realization that this version of the 3 Amigo's had a fourth.  Eric, Matt, Brian, and myself. The Carolina 4. Famous no where. Feared by rental cars everywhere.

The water was up three times what is desired and a little stained. The plan was to focus on the seams of the soft water and stay close to the banks with a cocktail of golden stones and mayfly nymphs to start. Lines hit water, indicators bounced, and soon the turbulent Ark rendered up some of the wild browns she is infamous for.  The fishing was never lights out, but it felt like fishing. Real fishing.  Not the repeatedly-casting-over-educated-tail-water-trout, or the trying-to-figure-out-where-they-put-the-last-truck-load-of-stockers, kind of fishing. Rather, it was the working-fishy-looking-water-and-feeding-wild-trout-imitations-of-not-so-tiny-aquatic-bugs kind of fishing. Every cast felt as if it could produce a fish, and the anticipation of an over 20 inch brown never seemed far from the realm of possibility. Real. Wild. Trout. All of this in a setting fit for epic adventure and beauty...or the set of the 4 Amigos. The two settings are synonymous really.

Leroy has saucers for pec fins

The fishing didn't come easy, and that was part of what made it feel so right.  The BWO's never blanketed the water, and I nary saw a rise all afternoon.  The stomachs I pumped showed a small variety of midges, caddis, and mayfly nymphs, and confirmed that fish weren't gorging themselves on BWO emergers. Or gorging on anything for that matter. Sadly, we did have to call in a search party after fishing. The search party was for my phone. Found it. #merica

A short drive to K's produced a greasy burger to-go before another class on the Kitubim wisdom literature. My belly was full on burger, and my mind was content knowing we could have filled our bellies on trout that night if we needed the sustenance. The 4 Amigo's practice catch-and -release... for the most part.  Ole!

hashtag no filter

A free stone stream, a nymph box, and a little Blue Winged Olive

Leroy

Sunrise over an elk herd

Arkansas River, CO

Ark River Brown

I know.  A two month hiatus from the blog. I have been on a two month trek into the wilderness, fishing everyday, with no internet access.  Not exactly.  However, I was in Colorado three weeks with work, and did manage to get two quick trips to the Arkansas River near Buena Vista, Colorado in.  Here are the goods.

I was able to fish a private section of the Arkansas near Nathrop twice during my 3 weeks at Young Life's Frontier Ranch.  This section was full of cookie cutter 14" wild brown trout.  The flows were lower this June (typical run off season) than they were in August 8 years ago due to the non-existant snow pack this winter. By lower flows, I mean it was running at 350 cfs as opposed to the 4000 cfs it was running last June. It made fro great wading in this typically big water.

Double stone fly rigs were the ticket. A big foam dry with a bead head stone dropper in the evening, or a double stonefly nymph rig in the heat of the day.

The fish below took me to my backing.  I think it was the first time that's ever happened to me on a trout.

Leroy made a run

This brown below was maybe the prettiest brown I have ever landed.  It was on fire with red fins and spots.

A total of 3.5 hours, 45 minutes one night at dusk and 2 hours and fifteen minutes in the heat of the afternoon, yielded about 10-12 fish.  3 rainbows, and the rest wild browns, most of which were 14 plus inches, but none bigger than 16".

Back in the winter, I didn't even think I would bother fishing during my three weeks in Colorado due to the traditional run off that would occur.  Turns out, run off was a non-event this year.  Fish have been fattening up and feeding like crazy with low flows and warmer water temps.  It will be a banner Spring and Summer on the Arkansas. Wish I had more the 3.5 hours to fish it.

Later Leroy

Colorado Quickie (part 2)

View from the rappel site at Frontier Ranch

We had less that 12 hours to fish on our Colorado trip before our meetings started, and 3 of those hours (6am-9am) were expected to be cold and slow.  We opted for more sleep Tuesday morning, visited the local fly and coffee shops in BV, and drove 45 minutes downstream to access some warmer water on the Arkansas River that promised more bug life.

riggin up

We were armed with BWO emergers, caddis larvae, and other bed head nymphs, but we were surprised with about 2 hours of dry fly fishing.  We fished for about 5 hours and never moved more than 100 yards upstream.  At first, the emergers where the ticket, but when fish started rising, we tied on dries and fished a slow and steady hatch. Caddis and BWO's where in the air, and the BWO (baetis) seemed to be the snack of choice.

cookie cutter 14" wild brown

The hatch would come in waves, and risers were everywhere on the left side of the river.  Wild browns tearing up the surface is flippin' awesome. A size 18 parachute olive produced the most fish for me, and a number 20 barr's emerger after that.  I never picked up a fish on the emerger when they where feeding on the surface.  I thought I had some cdc comparadun olives, but I didn't.  I think that would have been money. Ward caught exclusively rainbows, one over 16 inches.  I caught more browns, but did have a few rainbows in the mix.

Ark river bow

I enjoyed fishing the Arkansas more than the Dream Stream simply because it was clear, big water, and fish acted like fish.  You also had views of white capped fourteeners in the background. All the browns in the Ark are wild, and all the bows were stocked 10 inchers at one time. You can see how quickly they begin to look (and act) wild in the above picture. Note the white tips on the fins. I even did a stream side survey for a biologist who filled me in on the colorado river strain, whirling disease resistant, rainbows they stock.

Dry fly fishing pre-runoff was great.  Can't wait to get back. That river is loaded with fish.

A bazzillion caddis larva waiting for the Mother's Day Hatch.

Colorado Quickie

S. Platte at Dusk

After research, tying flies, and nearly drunk with anticipation, I stepped on a plane in North Carolina Monday morning with a rod tube and a couple of friends.  We left the Denver airport with the rental car at 11:30 mountain time, and we were standing in the Dream Stream by 3:30pm.

In the middle of a massive valley, the S. Platte winds through an endless grassland of wandering cows offering 4 miles of tailwater between two reservoirs, and holding giant lake run rainbows and cutthroat beneath its rolling waters. Two fellas packing up their truck to leave shared they'd only found one fish over 18", which was a great contrast to the previous week where big fish on spawning runs where easy to spot and cast to. It seemed the early Spring meant an early end to the run.

Ward and I walking to the water

My fourth cast on the water had me hooked into a meaty fish that seemed to fight different than any other trout I had ever caught.  The Dream Stream was living up to its name, and I was stoked. Soon into the fight however, I noticed I hadn't hooked a rainbow, or a cutty, or a cutbow. I hooked a carp.  Four carp outings in NC have left me empty handed, but 1,500 miles away, on a famous trout stream in Colorado, my first fish of the trip is my first carp on the fly. I didn't anticipate being totally bummed about my first carp to hand on the long rod, but I was.

stinkin' carp

Four hours on the water yielded about 12 trout to hand, mostly landed on a size 20 rojo midge, but never did I see nor hook into a lake run giant. Compared to fishing the Davidson River here in NC, the fish weren't nearly as finicky and the pressure was light.  The water was dingy, and the silt heavy at times. It was a tailwater, and not a crystalline stream of the rockies. But the setting was amazing and the fishing was pretty good. I landed my first cutthroat, about a 16 incher, and I caught rainbows, browns, cutthroat, and that dang carp. We hit the the car at dark and made our way to stay at Frontier Ranch in Buena Vista, Colorado for the night before we ventured onto the Arkansas river for final outing on the water the next day.

Oh yeah, we heard the following morning that a fifteen minute walk further downstream would have have lead us to stacks of the fatty lake runners. Guys had caught 20 fish over 18 inches the same evening we were on the water...just at the mouth of the stream.  What if we had walked a little further...

Here are some pics of the S. Platte, with a report on the Arkansas to follow in the next day or so.

Ward on the water

My first cutthroat