This last Sunday, I finally made it over to the West side of Rocky Mountain National Park. I set my eye on catching a few Colorado River Cutts and I read that North Inlet Creek above the Cascade Falls would be a good bet.
I headed up there with Jason Klass of
TenkaraTalk and Joe Egry of
Dragon Flyfishing early Sunday morning but it was a bit farther than anticipated, so we didn't get to the trailhead until after 8am. Thank god there was still space in the parking lot, I would hate to have to change fishing plans just because we got late to a full trailhead parking lot.
Cascade Falls are about 2.3miles from the trailhead and for some of us, it was torture not to start fishing when we first saw the creek down in the meadow. I was somehow able to talk everybody into continuing heading further up the trail and past Cascade Falls but wondered at times how long it will take us to see the creek again. Especially one of my fellow anglers was getting increasingly inpatient and frustrated.
That being said, once we got to the Cascade Falls I was pleasantly surprised of the awesome pocket water.
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| Jason (downstream) and Joe working their pools |
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| Joe |
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| keeping the profile low... |
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| Jason with his signature hat and - shocker! - a fishing vest! |
Once I started fishing, I quickly got into a number of brook trout that took my sakasa kebari. I even think that I probably had a Colorado Cutty on but lost it - a yellow instead of a white and orange belly is what I think I saw. The brook trout up there were just gorgeous, little jewels of white, orange, green, red and blue.
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| those colors are just stunning |
Just a little upstream of Cascade Falls the valley widened and we found ourselves suddenly in a combo of meadow and forest with a low gradient and slow water.
You probably guessed it already, but the day yielded "only" brook trout, no Colorado Cutties. I guess next time, we will have to venture even further upstream, get up earlier and maybe even camp out overnight.
One of the highlights of the day was our hike out where we encountered 5 (!) moose, two of them only maybe 30ft off the trail. Those guys were sure impressive and we made sure not to disturb them.
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| Fall is approaching... |
Days on the water: 26
Nice post Karel....The brookies and moose are beautiful!
ReplyDeleteThanks Chris!
DeleteKarel you just about covered what I love about RMNP. Good job!
ReplyDeleteThanks Howard!
DeleteJason posted a report of this outing as well, I think he stated you used a Sagiri rod. Will you be posting a review? Thanks for sharing this trip and the great pictures.
ReplyDeleteHi Thom, I will be eventually, yes. I fished with it 3 times so far. What I can say now is that it is a very neat rod, even if some would say that it's not a tenkara rod (...). It's very light and casts a level 3 line beautifully. The zoom feature is neat, it's different than the one of the ITO. When I post full review, I will go into further details. It has nice soft action like the Ayu from what I understand (never fished with an Ayu). The only thing that could be improved is it's backbone, this is not a rod for big fish. But it does a very good job with the average size trout.
DeleteVery nice Karel. I have wanted to hit that area for some time now. Drove through the park from east to west 10 years ago this week with my bride. I found the west side to be some of the nicest country we covered on a week long meandering trip. Hope to have time to come over again some time to fish.
ReplyDeletePaul
Hi Paul, when you come back to Colorado, let me know and we'll go catch some Rocky Mountain gems.
DeleteNice fishing, and very good photos. That river is so beautifule.
ReplyDelete