Weminuche snapshots

For the third summer in a row I had the opportunity to spend a week backpacking the Weminuche Wilderness (WW) of southern Colorado. This we focused on the Pine (Los Pinos) River headwaters and had a BALL - great weather (well, except for one day spent cowering in our tents as hail and lightning lashed our campsite just below treeline), good fellowship, and LOTS of cutthroat.

We started our trip at the Poison Park trailhead above Williams Creek Res. and headed north into the WW with our first campsite on the edge of Iona park on the bank of Hossick Creek. Hossick proved to be full of brookies and I great a great afternoon with the 1 wt. and a handful of stimulators. The second day camp was at the trail crossing of the east fork of Weminuche creek. This was the best campsite I've seen in sometime - someone had even made a "couch" out of a large section of downed pine bark. It's the little things that are appreciated out there; like something with a "back" to sit on.

Our third camp was on the Pine River itself, just below Granite Lake. From here, we spent two days moving up and down river to fish on day trips. Moose and bear tracks everywhere, coyote serenades every night, and plenty of nice cuts that would rise to caddis almost all day!

July and Grassies

Sorry for the long dry spell of posts but July was kind of a blur. If I wasn't guiding I was in Colorado backpacking and chasing trout from the Weminuche Wilderness to Crested Butte. The carp fishing in July was fantasic with several memorable outings.

I guided Wilson Jaeggli and his friend, Frosty early in July and enjoyed a grand appearance from the grass carp. Usually, these MONSTERS give us just a passing shot and a Melville-esque glimpse at a large, silver-scaled fish in a foot or two of water. Wilson had done some research and came armed with milkfish tackle and tactics for just such an encounter. Around lunchtime, we saw a grassie tail at the edge of an old road bed. While moving into position, two more tails popped up (each tail easily 12-14 inches across). AND they stayed there - tailing and moving around the area for a good 10 minutes. Wilson made several presentations with a grass fly but no takers. Someday. Someday.

The photo shows Frosty with a nice common carp. Wilson is holding the rods in the background - one of which is a 9wt Sage rigged for grassies. The other is one of the coolest little rods I've ever seen. It's a little Scott 6 wt. from their Concepts line (I think) a few years ago. It's only 7 feet long and was designed by Chico Fernandez as a light snook and redfish rod for fishing the mangroves out of a canoe. NEAT!