It’s pretty safe to say that spring has sprung in the
canyons. The ice has long since
disappeared, the baetis are alive and well, and with the recent arrival of
daylight savings time, I can fish longer and I don’t have to hike out via
headlamp. Even as I sat here yesterday
in my office, with the woodstove cranked, while a spring snowstorm dumped several inches of late March slop, I knew that come Sunday it would be back up
to near 60 degrees. I just love
spring snowstorms along the Colorado foothills!
It looks like winter one day, and it’s back to shirtsleeve weather the
next.
I just came off four straight days of guiding tenkara
clients on one of my favorite streams.
With warm (albeit windy) weather, willing browns and rainbows, and the
best clients on the face of the earth, it was a simply amazing week! We spent each day on different water, and
each day we tasted a different flavor of this canyon. When my guys flew home to Utah yesterday, I knew they had experienced something special, and I’ll bet it won’t be the
last time we poke up into deep cracks containing tiny blue lines together.
My clients this past week, brothers, fishing together. |
Fishing a bend. |
Another one falls to the reliable RS2! |
As for the fishing, it was fairly consistent. Japanese mountain water and Colorado
wilderness streams may lend themselves to only fishing one traditional kebari
pattern all day long, but these gnarly canyon trickles require opening your
mind to other tactics. These canyons contain fairly fertile streams with heavy doses of emerging blue-winged olives this time of year. You have to pay attention
to what the fish tell you, and the browns and rainbows in the canyons told us
they wanted to munch on a slightly weighted two-nymph rig all day long, with
the venerable #20 gray sparkle wing RS2 the clear winner. That’s not to say that the fish wouldn’t take
a #18 Nosepicker or bead head pheasant tail once in a while. However,
they wouldn’t give a sakasa kebari the time of day. Even though the blue-winged olives were
hatching in the late afternoon, the fish wouldn’t take a dry off the surface because
of the wind. The hatched adult BWOs just
simply blew away. That didn’t matter
much, because our little nymph rigs were extremely effective. We fished them on size 3.5 and 4 level line,
with 12-foot (360 cm) rods. We cast
middle-of-the road medium-flex (6:4)
rods, and they did just fine. The gusty
wind oftentimes made the decision for us to switch over to heavier size 4 level
line.
Fishing one of countless pockets. |
Along with sharing spectacular landscapes and water with my
clients, I also enjoy providing backcountry epicurean delights along the banks
of the stream. I nearly always pack a
homemade, mostly dehydrated hot meal in on my back. The highlight of our week was a hot meal of
alfredo pasta with sautéed portabello mushrooms and Italian sausage (from the
best butcher shop in town, Hilltop Market), rehydrated and warmed up on one of
my backpacking stoves. There’s just something
special about kicking back in the middle of nowhere, savoring homemade Italian
cooking, after a morning of tenkara!
Backcountry, homemade Italian cuisine. |
The canyons never cease to amaze me, and recent trips have
been no exception. Some relatively big
browns and rainbows weave their way up these creeks and end up living in some
pretty obscure spots. Targeting the
deepest pools along rock walls on the outside of the bends in the creeks, and
undercut banks covered in thick grass produced several fish over 16
inches. That’s a trophy trout in water
that’s only flowing at less than thirty cubic feet per second!
A nice 18" rainbow taken on a lightweight two-nymph rig. |
I hope you have a chance to get out and fish very soon,
because this is one of my favorite times of the year! As I sit here on Easter Sunday, watching the
sun rise, I’m already trying to figure out how I can sneak out of the house
late this afternoon after things warm up and some of the snow melts. Happy Easter and happy spring tenkara to you!