For those of you who actually follow my itinerary, you will notice that I am not writing about the Roaring Fork this week but rather the Colorado at Glenwood Springs. As it turned out, the RV park where I parked my camper in No Name, Co – isn’t that a great name? – is adjacent to the Colorado River. Instead of driving the 20 minutes or so to Basalt over the weekend and fishing the Roaring Fork, it made sense to just walk a couple minutes to the banks of the Colorado, which is exactly what I did. Not that I was very successful as I tried to wade this river, but it was convenient.
In fact, the river is nearly impossible to wade around Glenwood. The river flows fast and deep right up to the banks. To make it even more difficult, the river bottom has that mud that is like glue, so you never know if the motion of picking up your leg to make a step is going to work or not. I spent a lot of time just paying attention to where and how I navigated the banks. It didn’t help that the river contains a lot of structure, so my flies continued to get caught on the bottom and twice I lost all my flies. As always, I found the bright side of things and looked at it as a day to practice tying my knots. That blood knot I spoke of earlier… I have it down. My evening entertainment over the last week has been practicing that knot dozens of times!
As Monday approached I received a phone call from my friend, Phyllis Pool, with whom I would be floating the Roaring Fork. It turned out that a drift boat would not make it through the Fork right now and thus our guide recommended we drift the Colorado. Perfect, now I would be able to come back and fish the Roaring Fork when I had the Colorado scheduled later in the year. The Fork is such a beautiful, productive river that I felt I would benefit from a later visit. And so, off to a float on the Colorado starting at Two Rivers Park in Glenwood Springs.
In the meantime, I enjoyed several rainbows (not the trout kind) and a dinner camper style.
