Saturday, October 6, 2012

Lower Colorado Silt to Rifle October 4

I had to run down to Glenwood Springs on Thursday, and close the loop on a Yeti front seat retrofit on a guide boat. I always volunteer for this trip, because of good friends in Glenwood, and the chance to float the Lower C. Glenwood sits on the confluence of the Roaring Fork and Colorado Rivers. The 'Fork comes out of Aspen proper. Being recognized and managed by the state as Gold Medal water, she's busy for good reason. I love floating the 'Fork, but I really love floating the Colorado.  The Colorado runs beside I-70, and is scenic in a big vista kind of way. There are old growth Cottonwoods in places, and above Glenwood, and downstream of Grand Junction there are big canyons, but between Glenwood and Rifle she rolls out into the open sage country bordered by I-70. This is not a typical  postcard stretch, but I'm lucky I guess, because I hardly notice cars and trucks going by at75. Whenever I look up to relax my eyes from staring at the water I see thin clouds stretching for miles, and far off 1000 foot tall gray buttes, and farther away hills covered in Pine. I've learned to try not to take my eye away from the game for long on this stretch of the Colorado, because there are some old fashion big fish that swim down there. I have seen what myself and two other people on the boat believe to be a 20 lb Brown trout swim by us in a slough while we were looking for Carp. At first we thought it was a beaver. When it passed us 30 feet away we all knew Brown trout, and not a carp or beaver.  Last week a guide caught a legitimate 10 lb Brown down there. The float on Thursday was tough on us with blue skies, lots of bright sun, and a 20 mile an hour wind for a chunk of the afternoon. We kept hooks in the water all day, cut knots, and retied. We caught a bunch of Brown trout, one rainbow, and no really big ones. They ate the girdle bug all day, an olive and white bunny, the nymph formerly known as, and even the big foam terristicator. I had a blast. We didn't see one other boat all day.