Time: 10:30AM – 4:30PM

Location: Fremont – Chafee country line upstream for a mile

Fish Landed: 11

Arkansas River 10/01/2015 Photo Album

Admittedly I held high expectations for Thursday, October 1 on the Arkansas River. I searched this blog and read a post from 2013 when I landed 26 fish on October 3. October 1 was close enough to October 3 so that I could expect to replicate the experience, right? Remember that the only constant in fly fishing is change.

I made reservations to stay at the Woodland Motel in Salida, so I could optimize my fishing time after a three hour drive. As it turned out, the weather was quite mild, and I could have camped at Vallie Bridge, but I discovered that the Woodland Motel is a reasonably priced convenient stay over option for future cold weather trips to the Arkansas River.

I departed Stapleton at 6:45 on Thursday morning, and after a three hour drive I pulled into my usual parking space at the Fremont/Chafee countly line. The air temperature was in the low 50’s, and this prompted me to wear my raincoat as a windbreaker and extra layer until the sun warmed the temperature to the high 50’s. In fact the high on Thursday reached 83 degrees, and minimal cloud cover ruled the sky. In addition when I gazed down at the river, it appeared to be higher than my visit two weeks prior. A check of stream flows on Thursday evening confirmed that the flows spiked from 200 cfs to 278 cfs on Wednesday night.

Since I spent two days fishing the water downstream from the long pool at the county line on my previous visit, I crossed the river at the usual location and climbed the bank to the railroad tracks and then hiked westward. When I reached a position that was perpendicular to the top of the long pool, I cut back down to the north shore and prepared to fish. The water at this point was faster and more conducive to the dry/dropper technique that I planned to deploy. The historical blog post that I read documented that I enjoyed success with a Chernobyl ant and beadhead hares ear, so these became my initial offerings.

Nice Water Ahead

These two flies failed to generate any looks or takes over the first fifteen minutes so I added an RS2, and this addition paid off with two small brown trout that snatched the RS2 as it drifted tight to the rocky edge. A dry spell commenced after the first hour and continued until I sat down on a rock and ate my light lunch. After lunch I resumed fishing the north bank of the river with the dry/dropper offering, and I managed to land a third small brown, but this one fish was my only reward for covering a huge amount of very attractive water. In short I was pretty frustrated by my morning and early afternoon on the Arkansas River, and with the temperature soaring and bright clear skies above, I was not optimistic that my day would improve.

My confidence was at a low, when I remembered the success I experienced on the Big Thompson River with Jake’s gulp beetle. If the beetle attracted the fish on the Big Thompson, perhaps it could do the same along the banks of the Arkansas River. I tied four new gulp beetles on Wednesday night, so I removed one with a peacock ice dub body from my fly box and tied it to my line. In case a blue winged olive hatch commenced I added a 2.5 foot dropper to the beetle and knotted a soft hackle emerger to the tippet section. This move finally created some minor interest, and I landed two small brown trout on the soft hackle.

Brilliant Buttery Color

I was still feeling rather depressed about my Arkansas fall fishing trip going awry, when I approached a nice run of moderate depth. I plopped the beetle to the top of the run, and as it drifted back toward a large boulder at the tail, I spotted a small brown that rose to inspect the terrestrial. The fish rejected my fake, and then on the next drift, a second larger brown trout copied the actions of the smaller cousin. I made additional drifts, and the two fish repeatedly demonstrated movements that indicated they saw the beetle, but they refused to eat. During this time period, I also observed the larger of the two fish as it swirled about and sipped a natural insect from the surface. I concluded that it must have eaten an adult blue winged olive.

I was now faced with a dilemma. Should I go to the trouble of removing the beetle and emerger to tie a CDC BWO to my line, or should I simply move on and continue prospecting in the hopes that other fish might be less selective? I was not setting the world on fire, so I decided to make a fly change and focus on the two visible fish in front of me. I tied a size 22 CDC blue winged olive to my tippet, and on the second drift over the two fish, the larger specimen rose and confidently inhaled my offering. I set the hook and after a brief tussle, I slid my net beneath a nice twelve inch brown trout.

This Run Yielded the Previous Nice Brown

As I focused on the two reluctant eaters before me, I spotted a single swirl in the next short pocket upstream of the run I presently occupied. With the release of the twelve inch brown, I moved upstream a bit so that I was in a position to fish to the initiator of the swirl. The water in the pocket was quite active, and I realized it would be nearly impossible to see the small CDC BWO, so I once again made a change and reverted to the beetle/soft hackle emerger combination. I flicked a short cast to the bubbling top of the pocket, and as the beetle slowly drifted to the lip, I lifted to avoid entanglement in a large boulder. This action prompted a fifteen inch brown trout to grab the fleeing emerger, and I landed my best fish of the day to that point. Needless to say this sent my optimism to a new high, and I resumed prospecting the beetle with greater intensity. I moved quickly upstream along the north bank and managed to landed another small brown on the soft hackle emerger, but then by 2:30 the action ended.

A Fifteen Inch Beauty

The air temperature was now at its peak and the sun was quite bright and nearly directly overhead. The small amount of blue winged olive activity ended, and the fish decided to close their mouths, seek shelter and rest. I persisted with the beetle and emerger much longer than I should have, since I was slow to recognize the change in conditions. Eventually however I grew bored with fruitless casting and made another change. I tied a Charlie boy hopper to my line, and below that I added a salvation nymph, and then knotted a soft hackle emerger below the salvation. The emerger was in place in case stragglers remained, but the hopper and salvation were present as larger attractors.

While the change did not dramatically improve my fortunes, it did allow me to land three additional fish over the remainder of the afternoon during some fairly adverse conditions. One of the last three fish was a respectable twelve inch hard fighting brown, and another was a surprising fifteen inch prize that matched the one that snatched the emerger earlier. This late afternoon brown materialized from a short deep pocket in an area where the entire river spilled through a wide section of large exposed boulders.

Resided in Pocket Water

The last three fish enabled me to reach double digits, but it was a tough day of fishing under very adverse conditions. Making matters worse, the weather forecast for Friday was similar unseasonably warm dry conditions. Had I not reserved a room at the Woodland Motel, I probably would have jumped in the car and returned to Denver. It was undoubtedly too late to cancel, so I pondered alternative fishing destinations. I covered at least a mile of the river, climbed over hundreds of boulders, and taxed my arm and shoulder muscles to exhaustion; so I was too tired to consider logical options for Friday. I returned to the car and checked into the motel and enjoyed a nice dinner at the Boathouse Cantina in Salida. The room at the motel turned out to be nice and clean, and the best part of the day was falling into a deep sleep.