Arkansas River - Colorado - Revisited

 

February 3, 2024: 

Arkansas River- Canon City, CO

In the area for the Precast show in Denver we start setting up on Monday.

Drove in from KC yesterday. Left hotel at 4:30am. Long day of driving. Tumble weed hatch in Western Kansas and into Colorado. Same place as the locust hatch in August. Treading the same ground. Got it late in the day quickly checked out the river which looked clear, at the launch just above the Gorge. Royal Gorge. but rain was starting, so well how tomorrow goes.

The roads this morning have been sketchy. A light rain in Canon City becomes a heavy snow as I drive up to Parkendale. Pre sunrise. I’m waiting on the car for it to get lighter and me to get more motivated. Found a good looking bend in Big horn Canyon. Double Dip iii.

Fished bamboo to begin. Once I got started, the weather wasn’t so bad. I quickly switched to the sage SP 8’6” 5wt. It took a lot of fishing at a lot of spots along the Canyon Road. That fish was a great looking 16-17” Rainbow. I wasn’t able to get any thing else in the canyon. I saw a couple fish rise but nothing that seemed worth rigging for.

I head down to try the water in Canon City but wasn’t real impressed and decided to head to Pueblo where my phone said the weather was better, in the 40s and Sunny. This was very incorrect as between Canon city and Pueblo I hit the worst weather of the trip. A heavy wet snow that became a stiff slush in the sub freezing temps. I almost turned back at about the half way mark but figured that was as dangerous as going on.

Finally I reached the lake Pueblo Dam and the nice little tail water below. This is still the Arkansas river. The water was mostly shallow and flat as glass. Fish ate midges on top. One brown was as long as my leg with an adipose fin a good 2-3” long.

I was able to get a 14” rainbow on a tiny BWO emerger fished on the 7’ 3wt Bamboo.

February 4:

Woke up to a lot of frost outside. It was below freezing but clear and sunny. The day warmed up quick. I started down on the tail water and got there early. I was confident I had beat the crowd on this Sunday morning. So the I started fish a bit above the bridge pool I fished yesterday, and with a few minutes a couple of guys came in from the other side and jumped in the bridge pool. They thrashed it up pretty good. Later I would try the real slow water underneath and below the bridge. I think I had a grab fishing a deep nymph.

Headed down river a ways to the nature center. The river was really nice here and had a heard of deer cross the stream just above me and I got a nice video, but no fish.

And that was the end of the Arkansas adventure.