Time: 12:00PM – 4:30PM

Location: Fremont – Chafee county line.

Fish Landed: 9

Arkansas River 09/18/2015 Photo Album

Have you ever watched those blooper clips that they show between innings at major league baseball games? Well Friday September 18 was my day of fishing bloopers, but more on that later.

I had not visited the Arkansas River since the time period prior to snow melt, so I was anxious to return. I chose to travel to the Frying Pan River early in the week because the weather forecast projected above average temperatures in the Arkansas River Valley, and I suspected this meant a continuation of summer doldrums conditions despite the fly shop reports suggesting otherwise. The Frying Pan on the other hand is a tailwater and tends to yield more consistent conditions, although I was bewildered by the lack of hatches on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I was still feeling the urge to test the Arkansas before Jane and I make a week long trip to Pennsylvania to visit our son Dan and attend our niece’s wedding, so I packed the car with my camping gear on Friday morning and departed for the Big Horn Sheep Canyon segment of the river. The weather was expected to continue with warm afternoons and no precipitation, and this is what led me to defer the trip earlier in the week, but I was curious if the fly shop reports were correct. Historically fly fishing in September on the Arkansas River has been quite productive, and I did not want to miss out.

Because I needed to finish packing the car with camping provisions, I got off to a later than normal start and arrived at the Fremont – Chafee county line by 11:30. The flows were at 290 CFS which is relatively low even for September. As forecast the skies were cloudless and a deep shade of blue, and a bright sun warmed the air to high temperatures in the upper 70’s. I hoped otherwise, but I was rather convinced that the fishing conditions would be challenging.

I extracted my Sage One five weight and cautiously worked my way down the bank below the car and then crossed the river at the tail of the long smooth pool. Even at 290 CFS this crossing dictated a slow pace and cautious approach. When I reached the north side of the river, I climbed the steep bank to the railroad tracks and hiked downstream for half a mile until I was below the small island. Grasshoppers flushed in front of my every step as I moved through the brush, so I decided to knot a hares ear parachute hopper to my line. I feel that the parachute hopper is the most realistic grasshopper imitation that I tie.

From the middle of the deep run to the tail of the pool where I began, the parahopper did not produce, so I augmented it with a beadhead hares ear. This paid off, and I landed two fish in a short amount of time. One slurped the hopper on the surface and the other snatched the hares ear nymph. In addition I experienced a foul hooked fish and a momentary hook up, so the fish were definitely looking for food between noon and 12:30 when I paused for lunch.

After lunch I continued my progress upstream to the area just below the downstream tip of the island. I replaced the parachute hopper with a Charlie boy foam imitation and added a RS2 to the hares ear. For some reason I fall into the trap of applying deferred gratification to fly fishing, and I was eagerly anticipating an opportunity to fish the right channel, so I chose to move up along the left side of the island first. This ploy paid off with two small browns that grabbed the beadhead hares ear, as I lifted my rod to make another cast, and I also felt a momentary hookup and observed several refusals. All this suggests that there were quite a few fish along the left side of the island, and they were looking for food.

Next I retreated back to the bottom end of the island and began to fish the long smooth pool located on the right braid. This is typically very technical water, and I did not wish to begin plopping the large foam hopper and two beadheads, so I went small. This entailed a size 14 light olive stimulator with the tiny beadhead RS2 trailing nymph. I stayed back from the pool and made some nice long fluttering casts, but the only result of my measured approach was a refusal to the stimulator. Maybe a terrestrial would be more to their liking? I exchanged the stimulator for Jake’s gulp beetle. I spotted a rise in the current that entered the top of the pool, so I plopped the foam beetle, and a fish immediately chomped it. I made a solid hook set, and the fish suddenly streaked upstream at an alarming pace. Line began unraveling from my reel, so I glanced down and realized that slack fly line had wrapped around the butt of my rod. Alas I discovered this too late, and before I could flick the line free, the fly popped out, and the fish was gone. This was blooper clip number one, and I was rather distraught as evidenced by some very nasty words uttered.

I continued plopping the beetle a bit longer in the attractive deep pockets and runs at the head of the pool, but the interest of the trout became more casual, and they began to look but not eat. The parachute hopper is a light slim terrestrial imitation that does not disturb the water as much as a foam hopper, so I elected to switch but retained the hares ear nymph and RS2. While these flies were on my line, my polarized lenses enabled me to detect a couple below the surface looks, but the trout did not finish the job and chow down. It was around this time that I looked back and saw a large juniper tree next to the bank. I told myself to be aware of its presence as I cast upstream, but in my haste to fire a cast toward the ten o’clock position, the self warning evaporated from my brain, and I wrapped a high backcast in the tree. There was no strategy that would allow me to recover the three flies, so I yanked and left them for mother nature. Blooper number two was recorded.

I sat down on a large rock and reconfigured my line with the same three flies and resumed my upstream migration. The top half of the right braid is typically less productive than the bottom, but I landed two more brown trout in the twelve inch range to boost my spirits. In addition I registered a few momentary hookups including blooper number three. In this case I cast directly upstream to a relatively shallow riffle, and as the flies drifted back toward me, a decent fish materialized out of nowhere and nabbed one of the nymphs. As I went to strip line and apply pressure to the fish, I realized that somehow my fly line wrapped around my rod tip three times. Naturally my efforts to strip and remove slack were ineffective since the twists created a temporary knot. The trout raced back toward me and beyond my legs and then broke off the RS2. Needless to say, these three successive examples of fisherman error put me in a foul state of mind.

As I released one of the fish that I landed, it snagged the RS2 that was hanging from my net and broke it off. Chalk up blooper number four. It did not end there. Twice as I was changing flies, another fly fell from my foam pad in my front pack and began floating down the river away from me. The first time this happened it was my one and only Jake’s gulp beetle. A GoPro recording of my ridiculous effort to scramble to the bank and then dash downstream to scoop the fly from the water would obviously provide great YouTube humor. This happened again with a different fly later in the afternoon. The only positive in these two examples was the fact that I did manage to recover the flies.

From 2:30 until 4:00 I fished from the top of the island to the water across from the high rock ledge upstream from the Santa Fe. This was the warmest portion of the day, and to make matters worse, a strong headwind began to sweep down the canyon. I managed to land two additional brown trout in this time slot. One twelve inch brown grabbed the RS2 along the edge of a current seam in a deep pocket, and number nine on the day rose and slurped the Charlie boy hopper along the bank near the bottom of the long pool where I crossed.

The big story in the afternoon however was the stiff wind. My shoulder was complaining after the excessive effort required to punch casts upstream into the wind. In addition when I tried to counter the wind currents by fishing across, the wind blew downstream and created drag on my line.

At four o’clock I surrendered to the zephyr and swapped my floating line for a sinking tip and tied on a sparkle minnow. I was hoping the sparkle minnow could once again salvage my day and take me to a double digit fish count. I was at the top of the long pool with some nice deep runs across from me, and I stripped the sparkle minnow from top to bottom over a thirty minute period. Unfortunately I cannot report even one follow. It was a tough afternoon on the newly declared gold medal fishery.

Based on my experience I concluded that the Arkansas River continued to fish similar to late summer. Fishing is best in the morning and evening time periods. but it is best to seek shelter from the wind and take a nap in the afternoon.