Rocky Mountain High

or "The One - Revisited"

I have finally returned from Colorado (and DAMN - it's HOT) - an amazing 8 days of backpacking, fly-fishing and climbing. The Williams Creek drainage in the Weminuche Wilderness north of Pagosa Springs was our target this year and it did not disappoint! I caught more wild, native cutthroat on this trip than I have in years. Usually, a high mountain drainage in Colorado will start with rainbows and browns at lower elevations and segue into brookies and cuts higher up (and you always catch more brookies than cuts). Not this stream. By the time we started fishing on the second "trail" day, we were over 3 miles above Williams Creek Reservoir and it was ALL cutthroat. Every fish we caught was clear and bright; a beautiful little gem with flaming slashes under the jaw and wild colors across the belly.

The new one weight (see below) worked wonderfully. It could hit pockets between alder bushes and shoot casts under willow "tunnels" like no other rod in attendance. A 10" cut felt like a 20" Platte River rainbow on the thing and I could feel the blank flex UNDER the handle while fishing fish - NEAT! Most of the fish were 9-12" but a few "toads" (for this stream/elevation) were landed. My largest was the 15-1/2" beauty pictured above. He was holding in a deep pool along a cliff-face in about 3 feet of water. I could see his tail periodically in a shaft of sunlight and knew he was THE FISH in the pool. My #14 Humpy was quickly replaced with a #12 tungsten beaded Prince and I flipped it upstream (sans strike indicator). On the second cast the drift abruptly stopped and the rod tip plunged to the surface. A few minutes later the fish came to hand, having maxed out the fish-fighting capabilities of the 1.4 oz. rod (at one point, I think I heard the rod whimper).

We found a few cut-bow hybrids in Williams Lake just below the continental divide at 12,100 feet, but other than that, all the fish were pure cutthroats (and the cut-bows were delicious - steamed with raisins and brandy). And to top off the trip, five days ago I was in a tent at 10,900 feet getting SLEETED on! It makes 106 degrees just a little more relative!

If you want to learn more about this amazing fishery and backpacking the wilderness area, I'll be giving a slideshow presentation at the Arlington Orvis store October 5th. More information to come.