West '05 Trip - Day 31

Posted: 2009-01-11
By: Randy Cochran

One thing I will have to remember to take along if I ever take another long trip will an ice scraper. Without it, I spent more time waiting for frost to thaw on my windshield than I care to admit this time out, which was what I was doing this very morning.

After a few cold minutes, I decided to drive to another access point when the sun rose and accomplished the task for me.

Walking down to the river, 2 things struck me: 1, that willows are the predominate type of vegetation streamside, and 2, wildlife abounds here. This was evident as I stumbled upon a family of raccoons feeding mid-stream, momentarily oblivious to my presence, with the aforementioned willows providing a blind through which to study them.

Sneaking away to get my camera, I returned to try and get some clandestine shots of the feeding animals, sneaking up on my hands and knees for a better view.

Raccoons are fidgety bastards. One false move on my part and they were scrambling out of the creek and off into the willows, with nary a picture snapped.

I wasn't there with the primary intent of documenting raccoon feeding habits, so I retreated to my car and exchanged photo gear for fishing equipment and set off to find a few fish.

Several rainbows, a cutt and a bunch of whitefish later and it was time for lunch at the car. After a quick sandwich, I went back to it and landed the biggest rainbow of the day, a beautiful trout of around 18" that was hiding in a depression under an algae ceiling. Shortly thereafter my luck ran thin and I opted to try another location.

Just upstream I came upon what looked like a HUGE rainbow in a deeper run just by the road. Repeated casts with a dry/dropper rig yielded nothing, so I figured I just need to adjust the depth and keep trying. When I went deeper, the fish responded accordingly. As soon as it shook it's head, I knew what I had hooked - a very large whitefish - to the tune of 23" long and somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 pounds or so. If only I had a smoker.

Slightly disgusted that the trophy rainbow turned into a whitey before my very eyes, I journeyed on to try the headwaters for Colorado Cutthroats.

On the way up I spotted a ton of wildlife, including foxes, deer, antelope and moose. One fox was even so kind as to pose for a few pictures before going on her merry way.

All I found upstream were small-ish rainbows, so I decided to check out a tailrace and plunge pool below one of the reservoirs for some staging browns.

After breaking off a few larger fish and catching a few dinks, I waded across at the tailout to try the far eddy. Many more small fish followed, mostly browns but a few rainbows made their presence known too.

A few moments later, all hell broke loose. My indicator went under and I set the hook to find a rather large male brown come to the surface and roll with my fly in his mouth. 10 minutes of tense moments passed as he ran me up and down a 30 yard stretch of river, the soles popping off my Korkers in the process.

2 guys who were spincasting nearby got a net ready and helped me land the beast. 24.5" of muscly angst and rage, and I had prevailed.

A quick photo later and I asked the guys if they wanted to keep the fish. Normally, I would release it, no questions asked. But I figured, in this instance, 1 less male spawner wasn't a huge deal. They were happy to have the fish anyway, especially after landing a 17" rainbow which was, as I informed them, within the 13-20 slot.

Moving back across the river, I made a few more casts before a large moose came crashing out of the willows 25 yards across and down from me. It immediately noticed my presence and bolted back up the bank and away before I could loose my camera for a pic. With that, I stopped fishing and made for Kemmerer, AKA the fossil capital of the world, AKA 'Little Chicago'. There I would enjoy a hotel room, bed and TV for the remainder of the day/evening.