Colorado 2020, days 3 & 4

We arrived at the Crestone campground a little before midnight Tuesday. We were tired but satisfied with a great first couple days of fishing. We set up our tents under headlights and head lamps not real sure if we were in someone else’s reserved site or not. But no one was there and we were tired and decided to fix it in the morning.

The next morning we woke at first light next to Crestone Creek flowing fully and in an absolutely gorgeous spot. It’s a wonderful thing to set up camp at night to wake up in the morning and find where you set up camp is so much more beautiful than expected. We gathered and re-inventoried our fishing stuff, camping stuff and etcétera stuff. Then we walked down to the camp host’s site to ask if we needed to move our stuff because we were’t certain if the site was reserved. We walked down the road to where we thought the camp host was for about 3/4 of a mile. There was no camp host and no official person to talk to. So we walked back to the campsite and on the way notice one site was open so we decided to go ahead and uproot to change sites to play it safe. After walking back up the road to the site that is not ours and where our stuff was Dave decided to get in the 4Runner, that by this point I’ve named John, and move it. It won’t start. Lights come on, the dinger dings, ‘so it’s not the battery’ I say. Then, being the mechanical genius that I am, I open the hood. I put my hands on my hips and sway front and back and say ‘hmmm’. Then I rub my beard. Then I look at Dave in the eye to assess what his level of frustration is. I sway to and fro once again and said ‘Give it another try’. He tries and it clicks. I said, ‘oh man, it’s got to be the starter’. After Dave tried it again I located the clicking. ‘It’s coming from near the brake fluid reservoir’ I said to myself. I offer to try to turn the key so Dave could listen. He located the exact location of the clicking. Right next to the reservoir at a silver thing. ‘Oh man, it’s gotta be the starter’ I say out loud. One thing I really enjoy about being friends with Dave is that he’s got a level head in difficult times, but does show his humanness by getting frustrated every so often. He also has a good handle on the more colorful aspects of the English language. He said, ‘s#!t, what in the hell f’ing f@@k should we do now? I’ll google it.’ So he did. We had something like .03% phone signal so it took a very long time to load. We go through the possibilities of what the next steps should be. Dave said, ‘if we unload everything we can probably push it out to the road and then roll it downhill into town to a mechanic so we wouldn’t need to pay for a tow’. There’s A LOT of stuff to unload so we get started. Then we get ready to push only to discover that 4Runners are heavy, we only got it about 6 feet up the driveway. I asked Dave to unlock the doors so I could try something and they wouldn’t unlock! We looked at each other and said ‘it’s the battery!’ Eureka. I continued to take down the tents and put everything back in that we just took out and Dave went to find someone willing to help us jump start John the 4Runner. In 15 minutes we were up and running and taking our stuff down the hill to our new campsite. There are no pictures from this time, it did not seem appropriate to take any considering the graveness of the circumstances.

After getting camp set up, again, I decided it was time to do laundry. I only brought 3 of each and it was time. So I rinsed my dirty clothes in the creek while recovering from what just happened. It was about 10am and it had already been a long morning so we were ready to make the hike up stream to fish. We had heard that this creek had wild brook trout and native Rio Grande cutthroat so we were excited to get the day going. The creek goes along a popular hiking trail that connects several other areas on the west side of the San Luis mountains. We walked up about a mile and started fishing. This is a higher gradient stream, much like our Carolina and Virginia brook trout streams but the fish behaved very differently. The way the fish rise back home is like a firecracker. Instantaneous and if you blink you’d miss it. Here it was a true exercise in patience. You could see the fish slowly rise, examine and get closer then either reject the fly or slowly take it. We had many premature hooksets before finally connecting. The first fish was a brookie. It was an incredibly beautiful one at that. Much different the coloring than ours back home. More brilliant in the orange and greens. The white tipped fins and their almost blue/black bellies. And bigger too! After a few dozen really nice book trout we wondered where the cuttys were.

We got to the point of shaking the fish off so we motor on upstream to find the cutthroat. After walking up the trail a little way, I saw a fishy pool and make a cast. A few more brook trout, nice ones too. Then a fish rose to my fly a little differently and I hook it. It ended up being quickly pre-released but, I am 88% sure it was a cutthroat. Dave didn’t believe me but I get excited that there’s actual hope that we’ll catch our target fish. As we’re walking along looking at fishy pool after fishy run, after fishy riffle Dave stops suddenly and watches some fish. I keep walking but he tells me to stop. He makes a cast and the bigger fish of the little corner eddy take is fly, beating out about half a dozen small brook trout. He screams RIORIORIORIORIORIORIORIORIO! It was at that very moment that I knew Dave had definitely caught a nice Rio Grande cutthroat trout, our target fish. We get pictures, bump fists, talk about it excessively and then I get a whole new spring in my step and motor on ahead to catch one. I caught more brookies. A LOT more brookies. In fact if I had that same kind of day on my favorite creek back home it would have the best day ever at all possible. We kept catching 10-12” brookies that would have been ‘nicest fish of the month’ back home. But since they are not native (I have a hard time calling a beautiful brook trout ‘invasive’) to the area we really didn’t want to catch them but we were having so much fun. That there is a moral dilemma like no other. Dave caught another really nice 12-13” Rio later in the day but that was it. Between the two of us we caught well over 200 brook trout, and 2.88 Rio Grande cutthroat. We really wanted to go up and fish up stream more but decided to cal it a day. The next day promised to be a long one and we were hungry so we decided to head back to the campsite. Once there we go into the town of Crestone to the little co-op for groceries. We didn’t know it but Crestone is a really cool little town with a great personality. We get a couple of rib eyes, some veggies and head back to the campsite. First we stop off at the local walk up liquor shack to get some beer. I notice they have a good selection of bourbons too so I get a bottle of Eagle Rare - one of our favorites, some Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a local nut brown ale. Once back to the campsite, Dave whips out his battery pack thing and baby Traeger and starts food prep. I stand around awkwardly and ask him what I can do and he basically tells me to stay out of the way, so I do. I go off and rinse dirty clothes in the creek, drink a beer and mess with my fishing stuff. A great day of fishing finished off with steaks and veggies on the Traeger and a couple helpings of Eagle Rare. That was a really good day.

Gear notes: Dave used his 68 with a SA SBT WF2 line. I used my prototype 623 with SA SBT WF2 and SA Amplitude DT3. I wasn’t all that happy with my leader configuration that day so later I decided to make up a few knotted leader ideas to try. More on leaders later.

Day 4

That night we plan the next day. We wanted to go back to Medano Creek near the Great Sand Dunes. We went there 2 years ago with Aaron and Jess on an epic road trip around the southwest and wanted to see it again. Read about that trip here.

We knew it was going to be a long day but didn’t quite know exactly what it would entail. John the 4Runner is very capable off road but we had heard warnings about the Medano Creek Primitive Road (MPCR) being a bit rough and tricky lately due to a massive surprise snow storm. And with the recent dead battery scare we decided to play it safe. We drove into and past the Great Sand Dunes National Park entrance and find the MCPR and decided to park at the ‘point of no return’ parking area. That was a mile or two into the wilderness area - it sounded like the right decision - and decided to walk to the creek. On the map it wasn’t far to where we thought would be fishable water. What we didn’t realize was that the creek we could see on the map was about 1/4” deep and 100’ wide. Not fishable. So we found a game trail and followed the creek upstream several miles. In deep sand. My phone didn’t get a good charge the night before so I was conserving the battery by turning it off. Our map was on my phone so I had to use it sparingly. After a few hours of walking we get to fishable water. First cast rose a fish, second cast landed him. It was glorious. The rest of the day we catch pure Rio Grande cutthroat trout hand over fist. Walked around beaver ponds and saw some wonderful nature. BUt the fish were so incredible. Hungry, healthy, feisty and beautiful. Around mid afternoon we look at the time and begin to consider the long walk back to the point of no return. We fish a little more and then hop back on the MPCR and start walking. I was secretly hoping that we’d be able to hitch a ride back with someone going our way along the primitive road. We saw nobody going our way until we were within sight of the point of no return . However it was satisfying to be able to walk the whole way back and not die. Somewhere near the beginning of the walk back I re-experience my double green chili cheeseburger from two days prior. I had been feeling sluggish and out of sorts up until that point and just figured it was the walking 4,292 miles in deep hot sand in wet wading boots. After that, I felt like a new man ready for the challenge ahead. Stella stopped or slowed down in all the shady spots along the MPC. She’s never done that before. She was tired. When I first got Stella back in 2014 I was told that a tired heeler is a happy heeler. She was in heaven. All in all, we ended up walking roughly 13 miles. Caught innumerable fish. I thoroughly tested two rods, reels, lines, leaders and worked up quite an appetite.

On the way back to Crestone, I look for restaurants that would be open and good. We did not have the energy to make our own food after a day like that so we ended up stopping by a place called Our Food Is Art. I kinda thought it was a strange name but also intriguing and bold and we were hungry and feeling particularly like having a whole lot of tasty calories. Stella did not want to get out of the truck to eat so I fed her where she was in her little nest behind the driver’s seat. She looked at me with a huge smile like the queen she is. When ordering food, I hear someone from the back of the kitchen yell ‘you from Cackalacky?!). One of the owners peeks through the kitchen window and points to my shirt that has the shape of North Carolina on it says he’s from Asheville and his wife is from Raleigh. Go figure. Dave ordered enough food for 3 people. I step up to order and the order taker young lady acts surprised when I order the steak special meal, full dinner salad and baked potato and a few beers. I guess 5 people’s worth of food for two guys was a little surprise. When we left I had them cook a burger patty for Stella and the Carolina duo were happy to make her an extra good burger patty for an extra good queen dog. When we got back to the campsite we had an Eagle Rare nightcap and planned the next day.

Gear notes: That day at Medano I fished my prototype 623 and 644. I bounced between my trusty 406 Fly Lines a few Scientific Anglers lines - Short Belly Taper, All Round Taper, the new Creek taper and the Amplitude DT. It’s a bit time consuming switching spools and reels but really fun for me to geek out on the details of each line and making mental notes on how each perform in various situations trying to be scientific about it with different flies and leaders. Dave is much less of techno weenie and used my 7’ 3wt prototype and a SA SBT line. Watching him fish that rod was very instructional for me. He’s kind of like my lab rat. I am very familiar with his casting style, know his strengths and limitations and what rods he’d like to have and which he’d try to be nice about it saying ‘that’s interesting’. Essentially saying ‘well, bless your heart for putting so much time and effort to that rod but it’s not for me or anyone else. Burn it’. I know if he’s quietly catching fish after fish and nailing cast after cast and doesn’t even speak a word about the rod then it’s a winner. On the walk back along the MCPR after I asked him his thoughts on the rod, he only said ‘I want one.’ I needed to fish it some more before I pronounced it to be ‘good’ or ‘needs improvement’ but it was good to hear that Dave liked it so much and I felt it was a really good sign.

I used my Patagonia waterproof sling bag and carried lots of food, water, reels, spools that really added up. I don’t know how heavy it was exactly but I do know that a one-shouldered sling bag was NOT a good idea. I think I disjointed my right collar bone. Or at least pulled it. It’s a great bag though, just poor choice for a long day.

Days 5 & 6+ coming soon. Thanks for coming along!

Chris