Trout Fishing the West-- an alternative?
 

I have poured energy, money, and driving miles into finding some replacement for Cape Cod, and it is a huge disappointment. Take last week for instance: 592 round trip driving miles from this desert, Fort Defiance, just to rest my soul and eyes on some surface water. So, upon "advice", I bumped 32 miles in to Ground Hog Reservoir, above Delores, for high alpine fishing. Wrong. I get in there and it is a madhouse of campers, blaring radios, bank maggot fishing (chair fishing, rods propped up in forked sticks with the obligatory Power Bait and a 1 oz. sinker, coolers and trash all over), and kids racing around on their high whine 2 cycle moto cross dirt cycles, along with some of the adults who think like the kids that they own… I was out of there in thirty minutes.

So, now I know…look for places with NO legal mechanized access. Fine. I hike in to a high alpine, Navajo Lake, above Dunton. 5.4 miles one way…up, on the way to a 14 K peak, Mt. Wilson. Pristine. Beautiful. But apparently so small, and too shallow, that it probably freezes solid and creates a complete winter fish kill. And, of course, with the funding and budget crunches, the helicopter stocking program is gone, or else bypasses this one. Who knows? There always seems to be some explanation or excuse, but the end result is the same. Another high alpine: Trout Lake, above Rico? The dam broke and there's almost no water in it. The San Miguel River west of Telluride? Drought, low water, the farmers s#^&#^&#^&#^&#^&g even more out of it for their irrigation rights; so, the river is "too warm" and the hatchery truck fish all died.

Gees, do I really want to depend on helicopters, hatchery trucks, farmers for any quality of fishing? I guess I'm home sick for some real environment.

Next week is a river guided trip on the Conejos. I wonder what the excuse will be this time. I already have a hint…."do you want to pay an extra $75. to fish a stretch of Private Property Water" ??!! Where I come from, nobody can own the ocean.

Bonds,
Alan Cordts, MD

Ain't go na happen, IMO
It's a "in your blood" kind of thingy. :) (home?)

Hey Alan. Good to hear a post from you way out west. Does sound depressing though. Sounds like a quick trip back home for some fishing is needed this fall. Hope everything else is working for you. Give me a buzz if you get back this fall and I will tell you all I know. P.

If you hadn't wasted your life soaking eels you would have learned how to fish and be doing better. Now quit your biitching and go find me a Clovis point.

I went through a similar shock when I moved to southern california
after living the majority of my life in the Northeast. At that time I
was mostly a freshwater fisherman.

The southern californian freshwater fishing was somehow tainted or
artificially represented. If you wanted the natural world you had to
travel deep and away from civilization.....and even then there was no guaranty.

I practically quit with fishing freshwater, and the only highlight in 2.5
years was fishing in a state park and catching the biggest native
rainbow that the ranger had ever seen. We backpacked 6 miles into
the park. I had released the fish without knowing its significance and
I am glad I did. You can imagine how good a rainbow can taste on a
backpacking trip...it was a close call.

Unlike your situation, I was fortunate to have the pacific at my feet,
and prior to living there I had only just started to get into surfasting
in the northeast. Just the same, the surffishing is different out there
and my few outings on this coast haunted me.

Plain and simple.... the wild energy of the northeastern surf is
unmatched.

I don't know you, but I have a feeling what might be suffering
through. Its like loosing a limb.

Those of us who live and fish the northeast are so lucky. Now that I
am back out here, I don't ever want to leave.

Spent a frustrating and mostly fruitless week trying to fish the "Gold Medal" trout streams of Colorado some years ago, driving and driving and driving to try to find access to the water. Yes, you can get on the Roaring Fork (better be a fearless wader!) and the Frying Pan (along with a few hundred (thousand?) others on the non-posted stretches but other "Gold Medal" highly touted streams and rivers? Let me put it this way: at the entrance of one long dirt road to a famous river there was a sign that said "If you trespass here you will be sorry!" From what I hear, it's even worse now, not only there but up in WY and MT too - with rich Hollywood pukes buying up mile after mile of streams and rivers and hiring armed guards to patrol. Yes, we have some serious access issues here but it is not even close to what fishermen face on many of the famous streams and rivers in the Rockies.