Fall fishing

[riverdog]

Spent the first day of fall fishing in southern Colorado. Hit the South Fork at noon with a light cloud cover. All looked great until I realized the wind was blowing between 10 and 20 mph constantly from the 10 to 2 o’clock position. Very hard to cast accurately more than 15 feet out. Stuck with the big flies. Foam hoppers produced a dozen but all 9 to 13 inches. Tried various sized nymphs without a single strike. Thought I’d try streamers only to realize I left what I wanted in the car. Rather than walk an hour round trip I cut off the tail of the 2 inch long orange streamer that mimics a crawfish. It was still 1.5 inches long but it did produce a few although the fish weren’t any bigger than I got on the hoppers. I drove up to Poage Lake at 11000 feet arriving at 4:30. Temperature was 44 degrees and when I hiked to the lake I found waves on the lake as the wind whipped through. I’m sure the windshield was below freezing. Despite being dressed for the weather I deferred fishing it. The next couple days are supposed to be sunny and warmer and it will likely be much more pleasant to fish on a return visit. Even at moderately high elevations of 10,000 to 11,000 feet I only found a single aspen (half fallen over) that was changing to fall colors.
I’ll try lower down on the main Rio Grande today as frosts have actually recently taken out all the hoppers where I fished.
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[Browntrout]

Nice fish and scenery. Thanks for the detailed report.
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[riverdog]

Southern Colorado is beautiful with lots of peaks over 12,000 feet and tons of streams. However my fishing success was modest. I caught fish everywhere I went but the size and numbers just weren’t there for me. I took me years to understand where, what and when to fish in Utah to have consistently good results. I’m going to have to put the time in fishing New Mexico and southern Colorado to figure these waters out. I might end up back in Utah in 10 days. If I do I know exactly where to fish and what to fish and even time of day to fish on several streams that are likely to be very productive.
I did make it back to Poage Lake the next day. Weather and scenery was nice. I even managed a 15 incher at that high mountain lake. Now that one was on a lure and not a fly. The smaller one was on a Prince nymph I think. I hate how my large net makes descent fish appear small. So here I purposely took a picture to make that smaller fish appear larger. Thats a 6ft rod with 2.5 inch reel.
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[flygoddess]

Great reading your post. Nice fishies and scenery.
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[richyd4u]

Thanks for sharing! Looks beautiful up there!
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