Time: 12:00PM – 4:00PM

Location: First pullout west of Fremont – Chafee County line and upstream

Fish Landed: 9

Arkansas River 07/24/2015 Photo Album

Friday was get away day, and I was not thrilled to leave behind the wonderful Conejos River and the productive fishing that it provided on Tuesday through Thursday. But life moves on, so I woke up early on Friday morning and took all the necessary steps to break camp by 7:30. I was fortunate that the clear dry air of the upper Conejos did not produce any dew on the tent, so I was able to quickly stuff it in the sack without any concerns about moisture during storage.

My plan included a stop over on the Arkansas River to break up the return trip. When I checked the flows prior to departing for the Conejos River on Monday, the river remained at 1,000 CFS, so I hoped to experience some hot action from edge fishing before the fish spread out. Google maps indicated that the drive from Lake Fork Campground to Salida was 3.5 hours, and this proved to be very accurate. I stopped at ArkAnglers on route 50 to replace my nipper retractor that  broke on Tuesday, and while there I purchase several attractor flies for dry/dropper fishing and asked the salesperson about local stream conditions. He informed me that the flows remained at 1,000 CFS, but the river was clear until the Vallie Bridge area. I planned to fish below Salida and above Vallie Bridge, so this news did not impact me.

Armed with some new flies and stream information, I departed for the pullout at the Fremont – Chafee line, but a car with Ohio plates was parked there. I jumped out of my car to scout the river, and a single fisherman was upstream, so I executed a U-turn and drove to the next pullout when traveling west. It was overcast and cool with temperatures in the low 70’s as I donned my waders and boots. Since the Arkansas River is much larger than the Conejos, and flows were high at 1,000 CFS, I chose my Sage One five weight rod.

Near My Starting Point. Water Swamped the Willows.

I descended the steep path and then fought my way through the willows to the edge of the river. Indeed I quickly discovered the flows were high with water deluging the streamside willows a bit. I walked upstream until I reached a slower riffle of moderate depth and rigged my line with a Chernobyl ant, salvation nymph, and iron sally. The salesperson at ArkAnglers told me iron sallies were working well. On the second or third cast I landed a small brown on the salvation and then a second small brown near the top of the riffle. I was actually startled to experience such sudden success as I tossed one more cast in the middle of the riffles. In an instant the Chernobyl disappeared, and I landed a quite nice brown on the iron sally.

Best Fish of the Day Was This Brown Trout

What a start! I moved upstream and fished all the likely spots along the bank and picked up two more browns before I decided to stop for lunch. A second brown of around 12 inches grabbed the iron sally and the other brown took the salvation. It was around 1PM when I stopped for lunch, and the sun burned off the clouds, and it actually became quite warm. Before lunch I noticed several refusals to the Chernobyl, and it seemed to be distracting fish from the nymphs somewhat, so I decided to try a yellow Letort hopper. I observed the occasional golden stonefly, so I thought that perhaps the yellow body hopper with a slim profile would imitate an adult golden. It is difficult to support two relatively heavy nymphs such as the salvation and iron sally with the dubbed body Letort hopper, so I added only the salvation as a dropper.

On the first two casts I experienced refusals to the hopper, and on the second one I foul hooked the fish with the trailing salvation. The fish shot downstream, and after a few seconds the flies became disengaged and shot back above me and landed in a tree branch. I could see the hopper and salvation dangling from a dead limb, and then I bungled the situation even more when I wrapped the tapered leader around another dead tree branch separate from the first.

I put down my rod so as not to endanger it and climbed through some dense streamside willows until I reached the larger branch that held the tapered leader just below the tip of the rod. I rocked the branch a couple times and suddenly it broke free from the stump, and I was able to unwrap the first snag. Unfortunately the two flies continued to dangle high above me. I was not about to give up. My wading staff was too short to reach the hopper, but the branch I just broke down was quite long. I picked it up and used it like a jousting pole to hit the small dead branch holding the two flies, and succeeded in breaking it off on the first attempt. I picked up the small twig and unraveled the two flies, and in a short amount of time I was back in business.

I moved up a bit and cast to the middle of a short run, and as the hopper drifted back toward me I saw a swirl and set the hook. I thought the fish took the top fly, but when I managed to land it, I noticed the salvation nymph was embedded in the lip. The Letort hopper appeared to be attracting attention, but it was not exactly what the fish expected. I clipped it off and tried a yellow stimulator size 12 2XL, that I purchased at ArkAnglers as a golden stonefly imitation. This did not even generate refusals.

Maybe they were looking for yellow sallies? I tried one, but it was soundly ignored. Next I tried a solitary size 16 gray deer hair caddis. This actually generated a rise on a prospecting cast, and I added another fish to my count. By now I reached seven fish, and it was 2PM, and the sun was high in the sky, and the air temperature reached its peak. The conditions became quite challenging. The Chernobyl ant produced most effectively for me in the early going as a top fly because although it was refused, at least the fish also tuned in to the nymphs. I decided to return to my original threesome for the tough afternoon conditions.

Iron Sally in Upper Lip

I picked up my pace and did not dwell at any particular spot for long. I was particularly focused on depth along the bank, and I covered a lot of stream real estate. I landed two fish in the last two hours, and one was a decent brown of around thirteen inches that hammered the iron sally. Despite being debarbed the hook point  got stuck in the tough cartilage that forms the lip, and I had a difficult time removing the fly. Some dark clouds appeared in the western sky as 4PM approached. I was quite weary from four days of camping and fishing and the action was quite sparse, so I decided to call it quits.

I ended the day with nine fish, and a few were in the 12 -13 inch range, but it was by no means the hot edge fishing that I anticipated. Although the flows remain at 1,000 CFS, it seems the fishing has slowed a bit particularly in the middle of the afternoon when the sun is bright and the air temperatures peak. If I return to the Arkansas River, I will schedule my fishing time for the morning and evening, and do something else from 2-5PM.