As fly-fishing continues to rise in popularity, it has become more and more difficult to find water that you feel alone in. However, the search has become ever more prevalent because of the advancements in satellite imagery and the time that you can sit behind your screen and scour the mountain sides for streams that you hope no one else knows about.
On days that fishing seems too overwhelming, or the girls are not in the mood to fish, we spend a lot of time tracking these findings in the truck and driving as far as we can without going overboard. During one of these drives we were met by unsurpassable obstacles that included a downed tree and very deep snow, in mid-April. After we finished our drive, I immediately began following that road via Google Earth and found some really good-looking water that I thought was too far back for the uncommitted fly-fisherman. Due to my excitement our first two trips to this creek were every bit of the word, miserable. I found another route in around the downed tree and deep snow, but this made the drive-in three hours long. Naturally, because we had to double our drive time in, once we arrived the wind was a consistent 30 miles an hour with gusts that felt close to 50 mph, and because of the rise in elevation it was only 40 degrees. All conditions that we were unprepared for and the white flag was flown.
The second attempt may have been even worse except we were able to take the shorter way in. As the Colorado monsoon season approaches you never know when a surprise storm will develop right over the top of you. Our second morning at trying to get back to our “secret” spot began as a beautiful spring morning with a forecast of a low chance of rain. Attempting to have the perfect plan, we planned on driving through the worst of the storm to arrive as the sun reappeared and all was well. Let’s just say we underestimated this storm. We drove through pea-size hail up, down, and around the mountainside and yet again were not prepared for the temperature drop that we experienced. When we left our trailer, it was a beautiful day in the mid-60’s and when we parked the truck at our fishing spot, it had dropped back to 40 degrees and felt very cold. White flag #2.
Our third, fourth, and fifth trips back to this creek were exactly what we had been dreaming about. We were catching big, beautiful, and native Cutthroat Trout that are often the most sought after because of their unique coloring and their connection to the North American waters as one of the only native trout. The only downside to this discovery is that this creek is not our “secret” by any means. Although I do believe that this creek does not get the fishing pressure that you typically see in Colorado, a resident we met out here did say that it was a local secret. However, there was never a day that we traipsed around these beautiful mountains without seeing another person enjoying them the same way.
We will continue to fish this creek in the area until the word gets out too far and we are unable to spread out enough to not combat fish over water. We were ran out of one valley once already and the same resident mentioned earlier did say that people get territorial of this area because of the desire to have it all to themselves.
But we did catch some good fish though. 😊
