Toward the end of that first summer of fly fishing, my son and I decided to take a trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park. Now the park is actually quite large and it can be intimidating just thinking about where to start. Typically, I would figure that most front range anglers would head up to the east entrance via the Big Thompson River, a great fishery in its own right, continue through Estes Park and fish the Moraine or the rest of the streams that feed the Atlantic drainage. We chose the west entrance near Grand Lake and up to the Colorado River. It’s several hours in the car to get there, so we had to set off early enough to get to the river at a reasonable hour. It was a longer drive than I remembered.
I had searched my maps and settled on reaching the Colorado where the turn-off for the Never Summer Ranch trailhead. The setting is spectacular!
Reaching our destination, the first thing you notice as you pull in to the parking area is the spaciousness of the Kawuneeche Valley backed by the steep mountains to the west. The Colorado River bisects the valley, running north to south.
We got lucky that day, I guess. Although there were a few cars in the parking lot, it appeared that the others were off hiking. We saw no one else fishing.
The second thing you notice, is that the Colorado River, the mighty river that rolls through the Grand Canyon in Arizona and provides water for the entire southwest, including Southern California, is a stream up there… in most places, two feet deep and 20 feet across. How cool is that. Forget the fish… I waded across the Mighty Colorado a hundred times that day! I’m easily amused.
We spent several hours exploring the rifles and pockets. I spent an equal amount of time tying on flies that returned no fish. Still struggling with that, my son wound up helping me a number of times. He’s much better than me in that department. Unfortunately, that cut into his time in the water a bit, too.
There’s this thing they tell you when you start fly fishing… wear polarized sunglasses. They cut down the reflection on the water so that you can see the fish. After several outings and now, on an awesome river that’s (supposedly) loaded with fish, I realized that I had never seen a fish. Not on this day or any other. The other thing about fly fishing is that it’s not a “throw your line in and see if you get a bite” kind of fishing you do with worms. It’s more like hunting or stalking for fish. You walk around, look for the spots where the fish are supposed to be, SEE them, and then figure out the best way to catch them.
So, after several hours of not seeing any fish, in the water or on our lines, we sauntered back to the car figuring we would look elsewhere or, that we were going to have another day of successfully being unsuccessful.
When we reached the parking lot, a friendly ranger (Mr. Ranger, sir), was checking in on some campers. When he was through, I asked him where I might find fish. I told him that my poor son had never caught a fish (but not that I had only caught one several weeks earlier). The ranger told me where I could find some beaver ponds down the road. I’d heard that beaver ponds were good places because fish sit at the bottom of beaver dams waiting for bugs to wash over.
We found the turnout, hiked up the stream and found the beaver pond. As soon as we got there, I looked down. THERE WERE FISH! Not just one or two… but a dozen or more. I actually saw the fish. We backed down the stream a bit to stay out of sight and got ready to cast into the pool at the base of the dam. I threw my line in first, a good cast that plopped down just short of the sticks, and… boom, my line went tight.
Having landed my big 8” fish earlier in the year, I knew more about the size of fish this might be. I had seen them, too. I landed a nice 6-incher. As I went to remove the hook, I discovered that the hook was on the outside of the fish’s mouth, not in the mouth. What the hell… I caught a fish in Rocky Mountain National Park, by God!
My son took his shot at the pool. BAM! He had one on, too. This was going to be good. However, upon further review, his fish was hooked by the tail fin.
So, that day, we learned about “foul hooking.” It seems the turbulence of the water spilling over the dam was just forcing our flies to rush past the fish and hook them as they blasted through the pod.
Still, we kept at it. We got a little smarter about placing our casts where they would sit more calmly and drift more slowly toward the feeding fish. We both caught a few that day. The fish would have made good fish sticks at that size, but we are strictly catch and release.
Bad Fisherman 