Arkansas River, Salida, CO - August 3-4, 2024

It's been a few weeks since I have posted - I have fished a couple times since (Grand Lake, Bailey), but nothing with the video camera. Opportunity to fish with some old buddies of mine - we headed out Saturday night and camped in the BLM area of Hecla Junction near Salida. We found the very first spot to be available (of the 20 sites, half were available at 3pm on Saturday) and it was the most flat - with great views - so we left a truck and headed down to the water. Besides the 1 million rafters, and the people swimming and drinking in the river, we were about the only ones fly fishing. We fished for a few hours, but the catching was tough. We rolled back into the campground around 7:30pm and set up the campers and made dinner. We drank more than our fair share of beers (we are old and can't drink like we used to!). We shot the shit until about 11pm, got a chance to watch the Perseid meteor shower (which was amazing) and knocked out in the tent.
Up at 4:51am to pee, fell back to sleep until about 6am. The weather was amazing - it was never cold overnight - hit a low of 57 degrees with clear skies. We were down at the parking lot to meet Werms at 7:30am - rigged and on the water by 8am. We hiked in a bit and fished our way back. The water was amazing, about 614cfs and we were able to cross (which opened up the tracks to hike on the far side of the river). We fished a few spots with limited luck - the one hole you see in the video was amazing, a riffle into a drop off into a swirl pool - I could see the fish, but no luck. Further down river I found a nice hole and caught 5 or 6 browns out of. It took until about 10am for the fishing to start to heat up. I was fishing a nymph rig with a weighted double bead wire golden stone and perdigons (green and a rainbow warrior color) - all those flies caught fish. Browns are my favorite trout to catch (brookies tend to be in more beautiful places - but browns fight the best). Scott even caught two rainbows - they were very clean with white tipped fins - and fat. We were burnt out by abotu 12:30pm and were unrigged and in the truck by 1pm - ready for the 2.5 hour ride home.
About 10 miles from Fairplay on 285 is the turn off to go to Colorado Springs - they had blocked and closed the road due to a motorcycle vs car accident. About 4 miles later we were dead stopped 6 miles from Fairplay. We would be stopped there for the next2.5 hours not moving. There were two accidents ahead in Fairplay - one ended up being a burned out camper bus - not sure about the other. I got home a little after 6pm - exhausted.
Thanks for the great weekend of fishing boys!! I look forward to doing it again!
#arkansasriver
#salidacolorado
#canthotspottheark
#catchandrelease
#browntroutfishing
#browntrout