Time: 10:30AM – 4:30PM

Location: From 10:30 until 11:30 at Five Points and then the afternoon in the braided area above Pinnacle Rock

Fish Landed: 11

Arkansas River 04/25/2016 Photo Album

It has become an annual ritual that I follow every spring. I did it practically every year since I moved to Colorado in 1990, yet the successful intersection of my regular pursuit and the sought after fishing experience has only occurred three or four times. The event that I am describing is the caddis hatch on the Arkansas River.

A couple times in the 1990’s I stumbled into the leading edge of the fabled brachycentrus emergence, and it was an experience I will never forget. Swarms of caddis skittered across the water and bounced and fluttered, and the trout slashed at them in gluttonous hunger. Poor casting skills and the dreaded drag were the fly fisherman’s best friend, as these presentation attributes best imitated the active skittering emergence of thousands of caddis.

My most recent encounter with the Arkansas River caddis hatch occurred in early May 2010; May 4 and May 14 to be exact. If you read these reports, you will understand my obsession with chasing this elusive hatch. A period of mild weather entered the forecast for Colorado following the heavy wet spring snowstorm during the weekend of April 16 and 17, and I estimated that by Monday most of the low level snow melt on freestone streams had passed. The last report on the caddis emergence indicated that they stalled in the lower canyon before the storm, and the local experts predicted that the progression would resume on Friday April 22 with the advent of warmer temperatures.

Based on this information I planned a fishing/camping venture to the lower Bighorn Sheep Canyon area for Monday and Tuesday. One of the advantages of retirement is the ability to make these sort of spur of the minute decisions. The low temperature for Monday night was projected to be 42 degrees, thus my intention to camp. I camped several times in the fall when temperatures dropped below the freezing mark.

On Monday morning I departed at 7:20, and traffic was reasonable thus allowing me to pull into the parking area at the Arkansas Headwaters Five Points access area by 10AM. This is where I planned to camp, so I made a quick circle to scope out the campsites, and only two of eighteen sites were occupied. Clearly there was not a groundswell of campers on Monday April 25 in lower Bighorn Sheep Canyon. I brought the car to a halt across from the campground and pulled on my waders and assembled my Sage One five weight rod. The weather forecast called for twenty-four mile per hour winds, so I needed a long stiff rod in the event that this prediction was accurate.

I had no idea how far the caddis progressed, and I probably should have stopped at Royal Gorge Anglers for information, but I pressed on in my desire to get back on the river after the snowstorm. When I approached the water I noticed that it was murky, but decent visibility existed along the edges. The weather was partly sunny, and the wind was not a significant factor at 10:30.

I began with a nymph rig that included a bright green caddis pupa and a prince nymph. The caddis prepared me for emergers and the prince covered egg laying adults. Unfortunately shortly after beginning my caddis hunt, I broke off both flies, and I tied on another bright green caddis pupa and then replaced the prince with a second brighter green caddis pupa. The body of the second one was constructed with bright geen diamond braid, and it is named Tak’s Go2 Caddis.

These flies produced a momentary hook up, and I also observed the flash of the side of a brown, as it inspected my drifting flies, but I was unable to begin my fish count. I was disappointed with the lack of interest in my flies so I went through a series of changes that featured a slumpbuster, emerald caddis pupa, and ultra zug bug. At another point roughly halfway through the morning I foul hooked a fish on the green caddis pupa. When I brushed the willows along the stream, a cloud of caddis took flight in an obvious response to my rude interruption of their streamside relaxation.

By 11:30 I decided to get an early start on lunch, and based on the quantity of adult caddis on the vegetation, I assumed that the hatch progressed farther upstream. I drove farther west on route 50 until I was less than a mile below Texas Creek, and here I parked and descended to the river, where I brushed some willows and shrubs. Based on this unscientific experiment I concluded that the caddis were not as thick below Texas Creek, so I turned around and retreated to the section where the river splits into numerous side channels. It was clear that I should have stopped at Royal Gorge Anglers, and I was now shooting in the dark, but I was weary of driving and decided to make my stand.

I grabbed my lunch and found a perch next to the channel closest to the road and observed the river intently for signs of insect activity, and I was rewarded with the vision of two sporadic rises. When I resumed fishing, I fished the southern most channel first, but to no avail. Next I crossed the nearest channels and bushwhacked to the bottom of the northern branch where it entered the main stem of the reunited river. The sky became progressively more cloudy, and as usually is the case in Colorado, this spawned increased wind velocity. Finally at around 2:30 I landed my first fish, and despite its small size, I snapped a photo as I was unsure that any additional fish would find my net.

Normally if an intense caddis hatch is in the offing, it commences by 2PM, so I was fairly convinced that I would not meet my objective on Monday. Fortunately a fine blue winged olive emergence overlaps with the caddis hatch, and these tiny mayflies enjoy cold overcast blustery conditions. Between 2:30 and 3:30 the state of the weather did in fact conspire to create BWO activity, and this development saved my day. I landed eight brown trout during this period after I reconfigured my line with the go2 caddis as the top fly and a size 20 beadhead RS2 as the bottom food imitation.

I worked my way upstream on the northern branch of the river and cast the nymphs to all the likely places. I imparted quite a bit of movement by making downstream mends to accelerate the flies as well as lifting and dropping the flies in a jigging motion. Most of the landed trout chased the RS2 on the swing, but two justified the presence of the go2 caddis on my line. One very nice pool farther up the braid than I normally progress yielded a fifteen inch brown that clobbered the RS2, and this represented my best brown trout on the season so far. Quite a few of the netted fish were chunky twelve and thirteen inch wild specimens, and I was thrilled with the turn of events.

Eventually I reached the point where the north channel split off from the main river. My ability to move back down to the crossing point required some very cautious wading among large round boulders and deep pockets next to the brushy bank, but I endured. I crossed the two intervening channels, and then I hiked back down along the highway until I was next to some large attractive shelf pools below where the river was reunified as one channel. I managed to add a small brown to my fish count to reach nine, but as the sky clouded up again, some very spaced out splashy rises began to appear.

I was near the end of the day, and my success level dropped considerably, so I felt I had little to lose. I converted to a single size 16 gray deer hair caddis, and I began prospecting it tight to the rocks along the bank. Wham! I saw something suck down the caddis in a swirl, and I set the hook instantly. Unfortunately the stabbed trout streaked to the heavy nearby main current and snapped off my caddis in an instant. I was quite disappointed to miss my opportunity to reach double digits, but I persisted and knotted a new size 16 olive brown deer hair caddis to my tippet.

I continued scrambling my way over large boulders and added two more brown trout to my count. Of course this made me second guess whether I should have prospected the edge all day in search of opportunistic feeders that pounced on unaware dapping adult caddis. Fortunately I had another day on Tuesday, and perhaps I could employ this strategy and catch some fish earlier in the day.

In summary it turned out to be a decent day with eleven fish landed, and quite a few were in the 12-15 inch range. On the negative side, I fished for nearly four hours before I landed a fish, and I once again failed to locate the adrenaline producing main emergence of the Arkansas River caddis. I resolved to drive back to Royal Gorge Anglers in the AM to gain some insight on the best chance to meet the elusive leading edge hatch.