Colorado 2020, days 1 & 2
We pulled into the Colorado Springs area Sunday afternoon and arrived at our friend Robert’s house. Mikey had arrived not too long before us and was sorting his stuff when we pulled in the driveway. He scouted a few places the day before to check conditions. It was good to not be moving and in a car. We unloaded a few necessary things, had a few beers, and started to plan out the next couple of days while we ate fajitas that Robert made. Mikey made some really good salsa. We lit up the chimnea and sat outside and talked some more over a couple really good glasses of Scotch. The trip was starting out really well.
We woke up some time way before first light, ate a tasty omelette that Robert made and then got on the road for another 4+ hours to go fish an alpine lake. We hit a lot of road construction traffic which delayed us quite a bit so we took a detour and decided to go fish a little cutthroat creek instead and decided to fish the lake the next day.
We got out of the trucks excitedly and started to gear up. The creek looked really good, there was some snow in the shadows and fish rising in the runs. We walked up a little ways then started fishing. We caught a bunch of browns and saw a few surprisingly good ones in some really skinny water. But it was not exactly what we were looking for. After a while we decided to follow the the road upstream to see if we could find cutthroat. We fished a few more spots but didn’t find any cuttys. We did see a couple cowboys working cattle through the land and up the creek. That was a fun sight to see way out in the middle of nowhere even though it toasted the rest of the fishing for the day. The cows were REALLY loud too - you could hear the mooing from a long way off.
Mikey fished my new 6’2” 3wt prototype, I fished my 6’4” 4wt prototype. Robert used a nice old short Fenwick glass rod. Dave used his 3 piece 68 I built him. After that we decided to make our way toward the lake and make camp there.
We ate hot dogs cooked on Dave’s baby Traeger and they were super tasty. And we drank a few beers.
Day two
We got up early the next morning and hiked a few miles up to the lake. This is a super secret spot so I’m not going to name it or try to give any info about it out of respect to our hosts. Stillwater high alpine lake fishing was a totally new experience for Dave and I. It was slow fishing and a different method than walking up stream all day fishing a new spot the whole time. This was, in some ways, similar to how I first learned how to fish with a bobber and a worm sitting on a bank with my grandma and is very relaxing but requires a different kind of patience. I used an Ijuin 7’9” 4wt Ninigi for the first time. The blank was a gift from my good friend Tomo Ijuin for my 40th birthday 5 years ago. I wanted to fish it in a special place for it’s first outing and felt like this was the right place for it. And it was the longest rod I had with me because I had loaned out my 82 which I would have fished had I had it. Dave used an 8’6” 6wt McFarland GTX rod I’d built him, Robert and Mikey were both using a Livingston Rod Co 8’6” 5wt if I remember right. I was undergunned with such a short rod but I made do and enjoyed it nonetheless. I was also underflied so I borrowed some from Dave only to lost most of them on fish or logs (or brush on the backcast). Mikey located the fish at about 8’ below the surface with a small midge. Dave caught the first fish - a beautiful 16”er on a streamer that Robert and Mikey told him wouldn’t work. Dave was proud. I spotted fish and they would sometimes look at my flies but would refuse. I was fishing a fly my friend Jay ties called the Alien Bug for my sighter fly and then tried various depths of nymphs, leaches, midges, etc. I once saw a huge trout come up and and tap the Alien Bug with its nose than it sunk back down never to be seen again. That fish was HUGE and it freaked me out. There was also another fish or two that would swim in a circuit around part of the lake. I hooked it once but it broke me off immediately and lost Dave’s gamechanger. That fish taunted us for most of the day.
Mikey hooked several nice fish but they all got off. He landed this one fish that another huge fish came after and tried to eat. Dave was filming that then Mikey yelled at him to put his camera down and throw his streamer at it. Dave caught that fish too as well as a few others that were all dubbed ‘fish of a lifetime’. Dave is one fishy dude, that’s for sure.
After a while I got a bit frustrated and laid down on some really sharp rocks and took a nap. Dave filmed a chipmunk trying to eat Mikey’s fritata. Then he set out some nuts for it to eat instead and got some fun footage of the rodent eating them. Good times.
Poor Robert didn’t catch anything all day. He tried really hard too so it wasn’t due to a lack of trying. That’s just the way fishing goes sometimes I guess.
Toward the end of the day I went to a different stretch of shoreline where it looked like the water was quite deep and tried Mikey’s method of dropping a fly off a sighter down about 8’ and I finally got some bites. The first fish I caught was a pale 10” Rio Grande Cutthroat. I felt victorious. About 15 minutes later I landed my biggest fish of the trip. Maybe it was about 18”, i’m not real sure but it was huge and beautiful. At that point I clocked out, watched the guys fish and talked with Stella. It was her first time in the high country and she seemed to be enjoying it. That day she did a lot of sleeping, chipmunk sniffing and running to see what the other guys were doing.
That night we said goodbye to Robert and Mikey and drove to our next destination. First we stopped in Antonito at a little Mexican steakhouse called Dos Hermanas that had a green chili burger on special. That’s what I ate and it tasted incredible and the calories were necessary but I don’t think I’d do that again. I won’t go into the details but it was a burger like no other I’ve ever experienced.
We got to our next campground late, set up camp in the dark under the light of the stars and high beams from the 4Runner to the sounds of the creek running just a few feet away.
More on days 3+ soon. Thanks for coming along!