The Million Dollar Highway, Anizasi Cliff Dwellings and the Animas River

Ok, time to head south to more sights.  Since we wanted to see Mesa Verde we booked a hotel in Durango for the last two nights of the trip. The road between Montrose and Durango is beautiful.  It meanders through the town of Ouray on the million dollar highway. 

Ouray is called the Switzerland of the US.  Every house is an A-frame.  

 There is even a mountain seen from the highway that looks like the Matterhorn. 

The highway runs through the San Juan National Forest, goes through the town of Silverton and past the Telluride Ski Resort.  

The highway has a lot of pull-outs to take pictures at all the sights – mountains, valleys, waterfalls and old mining remains.

We spent Thursday seeing the amazing sights of Mesa Verde. 

 This is a national park built around the remains of the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi Indians. 

Similar to Black Canyon, we would drive from vista to vista to see the cliffs in this area as well as the dwellings built among the cliffs.  

We were actually able to take a tour into one of the more elaborate dwellings. 

Going out to dinner in Durango reminded me of being in a rough old western town from the movies. We stopped by the fly shop Duranglers and asked about the fishing.  They said they recommended dries, streamers or even nymphs on the Animas River.  The trout aren’t too selective they said.  After dinner we scouted out places to fish the next morning.  The Animas River is strewn full of large boulders with few real runs. There was an access point just south of town that seemed to have the best looking water. Even though the weather was nice, in the mornings it was freezing.  Nevertheless we headed out early and gave the river a shot.  We fished upstream and downstream, switching from dries to streamers and then nymphs-not even a strike. We did however, get painted by a ladies club of artists that also thought that spot of the river looked picture perfect.

On our drive back to the hotel we noticed a guide with a couple of clients.  They were fishing what looked like the only deep run in that stretch of water.  I pulled over to watch.  They were using nymphs under split shot and a strike indicator.  You can imagine my surprise when one of the clients hooked one and the guide netted the 15 inch rainbow. Even more surprising was in the few minutes I was pulled over to watch, he caught a second trout in the exact same spot.  The other client hadn’t caught one.  This seemed to be the one spot with actively feeding fish.  That’s the advantage of hiring a guide; they know exactly where in a long stretch of water the fish will be feeding.  I wish we had a couple more hours but it was getting late and we both had long drives ahead of us.  Especially Nick - all the way back to Cincinnati in time to take his son to six peaks for Halloween.

The Black Canyon Tour and Fishing

The next morning we headed toward the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.  Although I knew it was a deep gorge that the river flowed through and would look spectacular, I had no idea of the immensity and number of evermore spectacular views there would be.  

At the park entrance you are given a map of the park and instructed that if you want to drive down to the river you take the super steep road to the right.  

To go to the visitor’s center and to tour the park, you go straight.  

We thought we would quickly check out the visitors center and a view or two and quickly be headed down to fish the river. 

Wow, was I in for a big surprise. This turned out to be the highlight of the whole trip.  

After seeing the first couple of awe inspiring views, we knew we needed to take the whole tour, especially the sights recommended by the Park Rangers, like Painted Wall.  

It seemed each new vista was impossibly more breath taking than the last. The rugged sheer cliffs of black granite with spires even steeper and more crazy than the previous were truly astounding.

Finally after being satisfied we’d seen all the sights of the park, we put the SUV into low gear and headed down the steep road to the river.  We started out going upstream and found a good access spot where we could follow a trail down to the river were there was widening bank.  

Would you believe the first cast produced a nice rainbow? We continued fishing upstream a bit into the fast riffles and then downstream into the deeper quiet pools.  

Then we headed downstream as far as the trail would take us and we were blocked by a vertical cliff in deep water.  This was fun fishing, Nick caught a big rainbow, but all in all, the fishing was slow. 

But, just being inside the canyon itself was spectacular, this time looking upwards at the jagged cliffs on each side of the river.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison Fishing Trip

One thing I love about fly fishing is the beautiful setting.  Trout waters are located in the prettiest places on earth.  Places that are worth seeing in their own right, even if they didn’t provide great fly fishing.  In October I met Nick at one of these places, the Black Gorge of the Gunnison.  The Gorge itself is as deep as it is wide.  Majestic black rock walls keep getting more spectacular at each turn and vista.

Nick called and said he had a week vacation he needed to take and asked if I had any ideas.  I had been thinking I needed to take a fall trip and had researched some places.  One of these places was the Gunnison River that flows through the Black Canyon in Colorado. 

Nick and I both researched the area on line and came up with Pleasure Park as a good place to try. 

Delta is the closest city and I found us a hotel, Riverwood Inn, right on the banks of the Gunnison, at the confluence with the Uncompahgre River. 

I arrived at the hotel an hour before Nick was due to arrive.  After checking into the hotel I made my way down to the river.  By the time the Gunnison gets to Delta, it is a big river. 

Behind the hotel is a side channel that made it easier to fish.  After catching my first brown, Nick called and said he was delayed due to road construction. 

This gave me time to hike upstream a little further and by the time Nick arrived I had landed 4 trout.  This early success sure got me even more excited for the trip.

After unpacking the car, we drove to Pleasure Park to check it out.  It was a nice place to launch a boat but didn’t look easy to wade fish.  If you waded across the North Fork of the Gunnison River, which was possible because it was in the fall with lower water flow, you could follow a trail that would follow the south side of the River, somewhat.  From google maps it looked like the trail on the other side was better and followed the river further.  This was our first time here so we knew we would have to do some exploring.

Fly Fishing With The Kids, The Grand Finale

The last day of Sara and Nick’s visit was kind of the grand finale.  

We took all five grandkids fishing; Sara’s five and Gary’s son Josh who lives here in Salt Lake.  

Not only did the sheep keep the attention of the kids but Andrew found a snake which I caught and let the kids play with.  

While Nick and Nick and I were fishing, the other kids were taking turns holding the snake or catching it with the net.  

Whenever one of us would catch a fish, whichever kid wasn’t currently involved in holding the snake would run over to help net the fish. 

We caught quite a few fish right there without even having to cross the river.

After a quick lunch Nick asked me if there was another kid friendly stretch we could investigate.  

I knew just the place. There is this 90 degree bend in the river with a deep hole that has a good size bank where kids could play while we fished.  

To get there you have to cross a field with bulls and climb over two fences.  It was worth it.  

There were no other fishermen in sight.  We had the whole stretch to ourselves.  

Starting out, Little Nick caught one of the largest browns of the week.  

The kids all fought over who could help net it.  Where is that garter snake when you need it?  

Not to worry though, Nick and I caught plenty more trout for the kids to take turns, after a little arguing over who’s turn it was. 

The Amazing Summer Fishing on the Weber River

It has amazed me the past couple of years at how good the fishing has been during the summer on the Weber River.  There were many years when I’d often fish the lower Provo River and would rarely catch a fish in July or August.  My daughter Sara came out again this past summer with her husband Nick and the four kids.  This is always a fun activity packed week.  I also look forward to spending time fishing with Nick as well as taking the grand-kids fishing.  This year I started out by taking Nick fishing for Wipers at Willard Bay.  

Last spring I had good luck fishing with Ron catching our limits at the inlet of the bay so I wanted to show Nick this wonderful fishery.  Well, we didn’t have any luck at all.  I felt bad wasting one of Nick’s vacation days on unproductive waters.  Back at work, talking with my fishermen friends; they had the same experience with it being great at certain seasons and totally dead at others. This trip however did give us a chance to explore the Smith & Edwards store. You can see the store from I-15 with the sign “We have everything you’re looking for, if we can find it.”  I’ve always wanted to check it out but never took the time.  It seems that every time I’m passing that location, I’m either in a hurry to get somewhere or I’m in a hurry to get home.  The Smith & Edwards store has a small restaurant, restrooms and tons of outdoor equipment, clothes, supplies or whatever…if you can find it.

The rest of the week we fished the Weber River.  Most sections were very productive and we caught quite a few good sized trout.  

One section that was good the previous year wasn’t so good this year.  

It often makes me wonder how you can fish one mile of river and catch a dozen fish while fishing the next mile you don’t catch a single one, even when the water looks good.  

With just Nick and me, we were able to cover great distances of stream, from one access point overlapping into the next and always anticipating the stretch of river just around the bend. This is my favorite type of fishing.  

Fishing a stream that you can just barely wade across with small nymphs and catching lots of willing brown trout.  The trout are good size, 14 to 19 inches for the most part.  

We would catch a few white fish, lots of browns, a few rainbows and a cutthroat once in a while. 

Utah has this Walk-in access program where the Division of Wildlife Resources leases land from land owners for hunting and fishing privileges.  With this free license you are allowed to cross designated private property to access a river to fish or a stretch of land to hunt.  

The Weber has land such as this with ladders to cross the fences. There are binders at certain access points to record your name and number so they know how many people are utilizing this program and can compensate the landowners accordingly.