April 25, Arkansas River

Well, Saturday was a bit interesting..... The air temps were in the mid 40s and the water temps were near 50.

We got to the river around 9:45 a little below Cotopaxi. The weather was not what we expected. It was only partly cloudy and the WIND was BLOWING!!

We walked to the river before rigging up so we could look at the situation. There were no bugs on the water so we set up to nymph fish. CO Flygal went with a DEEP dropper rig and I started out with a dry-dropper. We both used caddis larvae and BWO nymphs of various patterns.

We caught a few fish but it was a crap shoot as to what fly the fish would take. Most of the fish were average Arkansas fish but I did catch one BIG rainbow. My guess is 15" - 16" but I didn't measure it.

Since it was pretty slow, we went all the way to Wellsville. We found the BWO hatch but very few fish were on top after them. We fished there a while and caught a few more fish, but it was nothing major.

So, we are are heading back to Salida this weekend to fish with the CWF group that Jen is a member of. It should be a fun weekend as the temps are warming up a bit. We are hoping for some caddis activity higher up in the river.