Colorado

By peter burrows

I’ve always had a thing against Colorado. I’ve looked for any excuse to fish in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming or Utah, but never even wet a fly in the Centennial State. Why so biased? I really don’t know. I think it has something to do with watching John Denver’s Rocky Mountain Christmas special in 1975 as a kid. All that cringey, fake cowboy stuff left me thinking of Colorado as the “fake” West.

How wrong I was. I spent the first two weeks of July, travelling from Alameda to Fort Collins with my son Ari. I managed to squeeze in four days of fishing, on everything from roaring rivers to placid Alpine lakes. I saw some of the most beautiful country of my life, and definitely the most beautiful species of trout (the greenback cutthroat). And once in CO, no ride took more than four or five hours. They all felt short, next to schlep to the McCloud. Why am I telling you about this in the Irideus? Because if you like long, extended road trips – and I’d bet this will be a more popular option in the “new normal” – you could do a lot worse than northern Colorado. It’s closer than Yellowstone, for example, but offers a huge variety of water and probably less crowds.

The first good thing about the trip is that it doesn’t require taking Rt 80 route across Nevada. Been there, done that. We took Rt. 50 out of Reno, and drove a section once dubbed by Life magazine as the “Loneliest Road in America.” I’ve been on lonelier, but it is a varied, interesting landscape, with everything from moonscape-like desert to pine-covered mountains, with a few former ghost-towns mixed in. We made it to Ely in eight hours or so, just in time to grab a decent prime rib at the Cellblock Steakhouse.

The next day’s seven-hour drive, mostly through Southern Utah on Highway 70, was spectacular, much of it looking like a backdrop to a John Wayne flick. Some spots actually were.

Once we turned south off the highway in Grand Junction, CO, the scenery became lusher and greener, as we were now on the west slope of the Rockies. Our destination was Montrose, a lovely small city with an idyllic 1950s vibe, of the Red State variety. I’m told its Trump Country,

unlike many of the towns we visited. It’s also the home of Scott Fly Rods.

We were in Montrose to float the Roaring Fork River the next day. This river drops in elevation as much as the mighty Colorado, but in just 70 miles. That night, our guide told me the river was at just 1100 CFS, less than half of what it usually is in July, and that the famous green drake hatch was starting to take off. I had that hopeful pre-trip feeling that maybe we’d hit it just right, that we were in for an epic day of battling muscular rainbows until we were sick of it.

Of course, that didn’t happen. We caught quite a few fish, up to maybe 15 inches long. But none were particularly memorable. There were plenty of bugs coming off, including caddis and some thick clouds of yellow sallies, the smallest of the North American stoneflies. But not a single green drake, which must have been what the fish wanted because we didn’t get more than a couple of grabs on dries all day.

That said, I’d fish the Roaring Fork again. We floated the section from Carbondale to Glenwood Springs, which is right on Rt. 70. It’s mostly private water so it wasn’t very crowded, even on July 4 weekend, and we saw plenty of wildlife, including a mama black bear. The fishing, if not the catching, was fast and furious. Even at the lower flows, you need to be on your game to cast frequently, both to get a decent drift in the turbulent water but also because there are just so many fishy looking spots to try. By the way, our guide was Jimi Orori, who visited the area from his native Japan in the 1980s and never left. I booked Jimi through Cutthroat Anglers, at anglers@fishcolorado.com.

The next day we resisted the temptation to hit the famous Frying Pan River, mostly because it was sure to be packed with wading fisherman trying to get spooky fish to rise to tiny flies. So it was off to Fort Collins, to help my son get situated in a new apartment.

Fortunately, my friend Dave Webb offered to let us stay with him. And three days later, he and his fishing buddy Lewis Hartle treated us to something special: a float on the North Platte in southeast Wyoming.

The 3.5 hour ride, with their 16-foot raft in tow, took us through the lovely Cache La Poudre River Canyon just outside of Fort Collins. Soon we were in classic Wyoming high plains. I never dreamed there was a place in America with this many antelope; more than I could count.

We floated a stretch called Gray Reef, a rapidless 8-mile section that supposedly holds 8,000 fish per mile and is particularly famous for great hopper fishing for big rainbows, browns and cutthroats. We saw plenty of lunkers swimming around, but my son the spin-fishermen missed six or so hits on nymphs with mighty strikes, as if he were throwing crankbaits to largemouth bass. Hours passed, and we didn’t catch a thing except a suntan and

some nice pictures of antelope and deer posing at rivers’ edge against red canyon walls.

I got sick of constantly adjusting the depth on my nymphs given the constantly shifting bottom, so committed to sticking with a big tan hopper and a dry dropper to match whatever was coming off – usually yellow sallies.

Just as everyone was truly losing hope, something big gulped the hopper and took off like a bonefish. The fight was more like a salt-water fish than any trout I’ve ever caught, leaving us to wonder at one point whether it was some kind of carp. It turned out to be a mean old, hook-jawed 22-inch cutbow. It was the only fish we got to the net, but we all said it made our day (I think three of us were lying). I know this travelogue is getting long, so I’ll pick up the pace. The next highlight was an after-work trip to Lake Agnes, a gorgeous 2.5 hour ride from Fort Collins. After a steep but brief half-a-mile hike from the trailhead, we came to a small lake ringed by mountains, including Nokhu Crags (which would undoubtedly remind Irideus readers of Castle Crags near Dunsmuir.)

I’m usually not excited by lake fishing, but that changed when I noticed dozens of fish moseying around within five feet of the bank, clearly in some mating-related activity. Even underwater, I saw a shocking red underside. At Dave’s suggestion, I threw on a small purple hopper and a size-22 black midge, and immediately hooked up. After a surprisingly tough fight, I was gobsmacked to see a greenback cutthroat up close. I don’t know if it was just the right time of year, but the combination of the dark top, the soft yellowish cutthroat color in the middle and that neon red, almost orange belly was something I’ll never forget. Of course, this is when my iPhone battery died, so here’s a stock photo from the Web.

I caught a half-dozen or so of these beauties, with the biggest maybe 14 inches, before it started getting dark. If returning to a place you’ve already been is allowed on a bucket list, then going back to Lake Agnes is on mine.

My last adventure (Ari was working) was a Saturday trip to the Yampa River in northeast Colorado with Dave, his daughter Julia and her boyfriend Nathan. This turned out to be one of those days that felt like a week, in a very good way. And I didn’t even catch a fish.

We left the house at 5:00 AM, and were rewarded with seeing nine moose, seven of them in one huge bog, before dropping down from 10,000-foot peaks into North Park, a ridiculously scenic basin surrounded by high mountains and criss-crossed with slow-moving, buggy trout streams.

Our destination was farther on, and the temptations kept coming. After a late breakfast in Steamboat Springs, we followed the Yampa River for an hour or so until we came to Bear Lake, where Dave and Co. found a campsite. I needed to get back to Fort Collins, so after catching a few rainbows – again, on my trusty purple hopper – headed back towards North Park for some solo adventuring.

My first stop was the Michigan River, just outside of Walden. It’s a small braided stream, with endless cut banks and thick overhanding willows – small water, and fairly tight quarters for supposedly huge browns. I never had so much fun not catching fish, while keeping my eyes open for the moose that were obviously around, given all the hoofprints in the deep mud.

I pulled myself away so I’d have time to fish the evening hatch at Jim Wright Reservoir back up in the high country. Dave had told me you can catch grayling, which I’ve never done. I arrived with 30 minutes of light left, and walked a few hundred yards through aspens to reach a flat calm lake, glowing in sunset colors. And there was a lot of bug sipping going on.

Alas, I still haven’t caught a grayling. I had a few hits before tangling in a tree, and my 56-yearold eyes were unable to fix the ensuing rats nest in the fading light. But it was a great end to one of the best fishless days of fishing I ever had, and my introduction to Colorado fishing.