We will resume our monthly trail work days as soon as conditions and weather permit.

You can also check the SMT website http://salidamountaintrails.org/ for updates.

We will be meeting Forest Service personnel at the Shirley Site, a parking area on the dirt road that goes to O’Haver Lake. Drive south on Hwy 285 out of Poncha Springs, going up Poncha Pass, and take the right turn to O’Haver Lake. The Shirley Site is approximately 1.5 miles down the road, on the left where you would turn right to go to the lake. We can park in the Shirley Site lot, and Forest Service personnel will ferry us up to the work site on Silver Creek. Since more travel than usual is involved, the volunteer lunch after work will be moved back to 2:00pm behind the Salida Cafe and Roastery.

As usual, come prepared with water, gloves, long pants and sturdy boots. You might want to bring a snack if you get hungry before 2. Tools will be provided.

Missed Fishing, Missed Fish from Hayden Mellsop on Vimeo.

The lady I was guiding, Samantha, was having difficulty getting the timing of her hook set right. The situation wasn’t helped by the speed with which the fish were hitting the flies on the surface. When a caddis hatches, it rises from the bottom of the river, often riding an air bubble to the top, wings fully developed and ready to fly. Breaking through the surface film, it is off, like a rat out of an aquaduct, to quote Brian’s mother.

The fish know this, and know too that if they want to have caddis for dinner, they’d better be quick. Accordingly, you have to adjust your reaction time to the rhythm of the fish. Having missed several takes, in exasperation Samantha turned to me, handing me the rod. “You do it, show me how.”

It was then I went 0 for 9 over the next five minutes. Handing the rod back to her, I shrugged and suggested the river was telling us to break for a beer rather than let the humiliation continue.

This time of the year, the takes tend to be a little more languid. Fish are seeing and feeding on a lot of terrestrials. The conveyor belt passing over their heads carries lots of hoppers, beetles and ants, creatures not meant to be in the water, usually inept and helpless when they are. Fish know they have more time, so leisurely inspect their prey before committing or refusing.

In this situation, the challenge lies in not setting the hook too early, thereby pulling the fly away from a still open mouth. You get to watch the fish rise up to inspect the fly, sometimes drifting downstream with it, nudging it, before taking or refusing. The bigger the fish, the more time they tend to take. You need to discipline yourself to wait.

In New Zealand, it’s called the “God Save The Queen” rule. Downunder, until they sense something is wrong with their world, the big fish do everything slowly and with deliberation. No calorie of energy is expended unnecessarily. A fish rising to a dry fly will sometimes inspect it for five or ten seconds of more before deciding to take or refuse. I’ve seen them open their mouths around a fly, then drift backwards downriver for several yards, mulling their options, before backing away and returning to their station.

When they do take, it is usually so slow and deliberate that the fisherman, knees shaking in anticipation, must discipline him or herself to wait until the fish is back below the surface, mouth firmly shut, before reacting. Hence the mantra “God Save The Queen” before setting the hook.

All of this is a rather round about way of saying that on the day in question, it took me a little while to get my mojo working. For the first twenty minutes or so, and at regular intervals thereafter, I couldn’t hook a fish to save myself. I’ll put it down to lack of match practice – my other job has kept me from the river for most of this summer, which given the state of the economy over the last few years is a good thing, I guess – and keep telling myself that it just wouldn’t be as much fun if you hooked them all.

I’d checked the flow gauge that morning, and knew that the level had dropped to around 2000 cfs. Still pretty high for float fishing, but after the extended runoff, the river was finally clear, and the fish were bound to be hungry.

Back In The Saddle from Hayden Mellsop on Vimeo.

“I’d love to, but I’ve gotta work today. Maybe later in the week.” I silently cursed in equal measure the laws of economics, and the Puritans and their damned work ethic.

“What time do you finish? I’ll meet you at Salida East,” came the reply.

I thought for about three seconds: wife and kids out of town, no domestic duties, lawns are mowed, cat has food. “Good idea. See you at four.”

Anglers normally expect to lose the best part of the month of June to high water, but not since 1995, to my recollection, have levels stayed so high for so long. So the sight of the river finally clearing and dropping had me happy as a clam. I threw my gear into the back of the car and headed to the office, hoping that no one would walk in the door at 3:55 wanting to buy a house.

Luck held, and by 4:15 my rod was rigged, I had a cold beer in my hand, and it was time find out how often I could cast close enough to the bank, and how hungry the fish really were. The answers to those questions proved to be: sometimes, and pretty.

The tough part about float fishing at these levels is trying to get a drift of over five seconds duration. The river is moving so fast, and the fish holding so tight to the edges, that often there isn’t even time to mend before the current has taken hold of your line and dragged the fly out from the narrow strip of slow water along the bank. A fast action rod is a real plus, the ability to deliver the fly where you want it quickly really helps.

At least it isn’t rocket science figuring out where the feeding fish are holding. They are riding out the deluge in whatever slack water they can find, hanging on to the willows and brush piles along the bank, mixed in with all the Nalgene bottles, baseball caps and tevas, testament to several weeks of high water rafting carnage upstream. You’ve got to be prepared to cast your fly in there after them, and not be afraid to lose a few in the process.

Trying to slow the boat down isn’t easy either. On the oars, you’ve got to pick your battles, knowing when to put the brakes on for the slower water, and when to let the current take you where and when it wants.

As the river continues to drop, I’d expect the conditions to get easier, and the fishing to get better and better. We caught a decent number of fish, turned a few more, and got spanked by several. All in all a great day, with the prospect of many more on the horizon.

Most people go there this time of the year, for the famed stonefly hatch. It’s hard to argue with the logic of that. After months of winter and spring spent fishing tiny flies and fine tippet, it’s great to tie five feet of ought x tippet onto your line and throw dry flies the size of hummingbirds to wanton fish. You can’t blame the fish for getting enthusiastic also. They’ve spent the same number of months dining on the equivalent of brown rice and bean sprouts, and suddenly the river is filled with cheeseburgers.

Although river conditions had meant the trip was up in the air until just a few days prior, our timing turned out to be perfect. The stoneflies were hatching throughout the canyon, crawling from the river to shed their skins at night, then taking to wing in search of a mate in the morning as the sun warmed the canyon air.

We fished dries to hungry fish for all three days. We caught multiple over twenty inches. We got sore shoulders from casting and rowing, and sore heads from bourbon. We slept under incredible starry skies and awoke to cool canyon breezes.

Towards the end of the trip, as we floated out of the granite canyon and into the sandstone country beyond, lit up in brilliant hues of pink, red and yellow by the late evening sun, I asked Cliff his impressions of his first experience of the place.

“I’m not sure if I can put it into words. I’ll show my friends the photos, but I really don’t think I can adequately describe this.” He massaged his tired casting shoulder. “I guess I’ll just have to tell them they need to get down here themselves.”

Kym regarded me over the top of her beer. “There are fish there?”

“Kinda. Carp.”

Even her sunglasses couldn’t hide the look of amusement in her eyes. “Poor thing. You must be desperate.”

Through no fault of their own, carp don’t enjoy the best reputation. Understandable when you’re the cellar dweller, the janitor of your domain, picking over everyone else’s left-overs. Yet the last few years have seen a change in attitude to carp among fly fisherman – some even openly admit to deliberately targeting them. They grow big and strong, and if you close your eyes and imagine real hard, you can almost tell yourself you’re bonefishing.

When Pinky suggested we go carping, I thought what the hell. He, Caveman and Bill had been down to the lakes a few days previous, enjoying great success. It’d been a month since I’d had a rod in my hand, and with snowmelt and runoff everywhere I wasn’t about to turn down an opportunity to fish.

Crossing over Poncha Pass, you enter a different world. The San Luis Valley, the largest alpine valley in the world, opens out before you, the highway running south straight as an arrow, through Old Mexico. People here still scratch a living out of the earth as they have done for centuries, Utes, Hispanics and Anglos. It is a place where for less than the price of a new pick-up, a person can buy a big square of land to get away from it all. You just need to make peace with the wind, dust, heat and cold, and have an affinity for miles of greasewood and rabbitbrush.

Rigging our rods lakeside, I took in the view. The Sangres stretched north to south as far as the eye could see. Drought has dropped the lake level to where you can wade from one side to the other, a half mile or more, without getting in over your hips. The mud on the shoreline has been baked to a parched crust, the lake’s waters a milky brown, tinged blue under the cloudless sky. There is something serene, something other worldly, about the place. It has juju, a presence. It’s one of the few places in the world where you stand an equal chance of catching a fish, or getting abducted by an alien.

Subsurface, the lake’s inhabitants dwell in a world of murky twilight to pitch black. Visibility is little more than six inches. Stepping out into the water takes faith – it’s like stepping out into a cloud. There is no measure for depth, the smooth, muddy lake bed reassuring you to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

With no structure to cast to, no current save that generated by the fickleness of the wind, you look for “nervous water” to betray the possibility of a fish – somewhere your gut tells you there is activity – bubbles on the surface, a dark splotch or swirl in the milky gloom, a shadow near the surface, perhaps real, perhaps a trick of wind and light. If ever a setting typifies the optimism of fly fishing, this is it. Cast retrieve, cast retrieve, move a little, scan the water, cast retrieve. You fall into a kind of self hypnosis. There’s plenty of time to let your mind wander.

Random thoughts flit through your head: what happened to that girl you had your first crush on in middle school? What is it about politicians and their penises? Why is part of the lake’s surface is rippled by wind, but not moving closer? Then a tug on the end of your line wakes you from your reverie. You feel your fly come loose from whatever it was chewing on it, and let out an expletive heard across the other side of the lake. Spanked again, dammit. Concentrate.

By the end of the day, gorgeous and cloudless, I’d walked about two miles back and forth across the lake, on my feet for six hours, all for four strikes and no hook ups. Pinky fared about the same, while Caveman carried the banner with a fish landed and several more broken off. With a couple of hours of video footage of me staring around and casting to nothing, I had to pirate these photos of the previous trip from Pinky. Despite the lack of success, I’d go back in a heartbeat.

Thus said Rat, in the process opening a whole new world of possibilities to the the workaholic Mole. The fact that there was no point to the day, no destination or purpose, was the point.

So it should be. While we might hit the river with various excuses to justify it – friends in town, unexpected day off, need to try out the new fly rod, find out what the fish are up to for my guide trip tomorrow – the reality is that we really, or should be, doing it for the intangibles it provides.

The other day, boat parked out of a cold rain under a bridge, we sat for a couple of minutes and watched. A dipper moved in and out of the rocks along the shore bank searching for food, then filled the air with song more melodious than seemed possible to emanate from such a small creature. To whom or what she was singing was left unknown, but the gift of the song still richly reverberates.

On a recent float trip, I rowed the boat to the side of the river, seeking respite in the lee of a cliff from the constant wind, pushing us unwillingly downstream. At such times you are thankful for small mercies, namely that it was not, at least, blowing upstream. Mayflies had been hatching all afternoon, but getting blown off the water, their upright wings serving as unwitting spinnakers. In the lee, there was some shelter, and we watched as they bobbed and pirouetted down the eddy lines, running the gamut of the fish eagerly rising to them where they could.

The fish themselves were holding a couple of feet below the surface, unconcerned at our presence some twenty feet away, rising unhurried and fluid to the mayflies as they drifted. Do the mayflies sense the danger, I wondered, or do they float on, unaware of the predators watching, and the randomness of their circumstance?

It’s probably not a good thing for a guide to respond with “Who cares?” when asked “How’s the fishing?” But reality is that the fishing is always good. It’s only ever the catching that varies, and as Rat so succinctly observed:

“Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular.”

On the surface, it was hard to argue with her. The wind was blowing steadily onshore, 15 to 20 knots, gusting to 40, or so said the weather forecast. A group of surfers were huddled in the questionable shelter of some trees along the beachfront, staring forlornly at the messy shore break. The ocean beyond was an iron grey, a belt of approaching showers blurring the line between sea and sky.

If I wasn’t going to catch any fish, however, the elements were the last thing I could blame. Ignorance headed that list. We’d been in Maui a little over a week, and in that time the weather had been unseasonable windy and wet. I’d been putting off going fishing for several days, waiting for favorable tides and conditions, but had finally decided to strap on my man pants and get out there.

The Hawaiian Islands in general, and Maui in particular, are not regarded as prime salt water fly fishing destinations. The land rises steeply out of the sea, meaning very little in the way of flats for wading, and in many places the rocks sharp, the remnants of ongoing volcanic activity. Speaking to a couple of locals on a previous trip, I’d learned that this time of the year isn’t the best time for finding fish in close to the shore anyway.

I had a nine weight with a sink tip, a handful of clousers and a fresh spool of 20 pound test. I turned to my wife as I got out of the car and replied “I know, but how bad can it be?” In my youth I’d hiked shorelines very similar, armed with a hand line or surfcaster, some heavy weights and a packet of frozen pilchards for bait. Back then, I was fishing for snapper, gurnard and rock cod, bottom feeders mostly.

Here, it was a whole new ball game. The reefs abounded with strange fish of every color combination imaginable, ranging in size from smaller than my clousers to a pound or so. But it was the fish that fed on these guys that I was hoping would be around. It felt good to be in the water, wading out to rock outcrops, leaping from boulder to boulder, timing my movements with the ebb and flow of the waves.

The dark clouser didn’t do much, but after a while I switched to a neon green, easier to see in the overcast, and I started to get a few chasers – nothing huge, and I couldn’t figure out if they were interested or just saying “wtf is that?” The hundred yards or so between the surf break and the shore was a labyrinth of reefs and channels, the water surging and draining, the fish riding the waves in and retreating with the outflow.

Alas, despite the chasers, I couldn’t get a fish to hook up to help counter my wife’s skepticism. An exercise in futility it was, if putting dinner on the table had been the objective. But for a Kiwi boy land-locked in the Rockies, it was great to taste the salt air and experience its sting on my skin, to feel the surge of the ocean against my legs and stand and stare back across the limitless ocean towards home.

So, no photos of fish to share, no tales of Ahab and Leviathan, but how about that sunset? Taken from the deck of our holiday home, through a mai tai infused lense. As I said before, “How bad can it be?”

by Nathan Ward

Salida Mountain Trails (SMT) volunteers continue to change Salida for the better as the SMT trail system continues to grow. 2010 was a banner year for SMT trail builders, seeing completion of the North Backbone Trail, the Little Rainbow Trail, and sustainable reroutes of the Sand Dunes and Uncle Nasty trails. Salida now has more miles of new, free and fun singletrack right on the edge of town.

Here are some of the highlights from 2010

North Backbone
Winding through the red rocks north of downtown, the North Backbone trail connects County Road 173 behind Tenderfoot with Ute Trail (CR 175). It’s 3.5 new miles of challenging singletrack that allows mountain bikers, runners and hikers to link up trails all the way across the front of the Arkansas Hills. Try it out yourself – ride or drive up CR 175 until the pavement turns to dirt and look for the parking area on the right (east) side of the road. It’s one of the best trails around and was built by unceasing effort by a few key trail builders, Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, Southwest Conservation Corps, local volunteers and even some of the prisoners that enjoy the penitentiary up in Buena Vista. Try the North Backbone, you’ll like it.

Little Rainbow Trail
Getting back to one of the SMT’s original goals of building a trail for beginners to learn to mountain bike, the Little Rainbow Trail (LRT) is a wide, non-technical trail for all ability levels. The LRT connects the old “race track” trail near Burmac’s just east of Salida to the Skull Trail off CR 110. It’s 5 miles of excellent and easy trail that is wider than normal skinny singletrack. The LRT is also perfect for hiking or trail running. It’s reported that tough moms have even been pushing their jogging strollers on the trail. Regardless of your method, travel the LRT during the last light of day for great sunset views on the western peaks.

Sand Dunes and Uncle Nasty Trails
Volunteers rerouted these trails slightly to make them more sustainable. They did not make them any easier so technical riders don’t worry, they’re still hard.

2011 will see more exciting local trail developments.
First on the plan is the Grand Opening of the Little Rainbow Trail on February 12, 9:00 a.m. to Noon at the trailhead off CR 110 (2.2 miles up the road from US 50). There will be some work to do on a trail reroute first, then you can ride the trail, drop back into town and join the group for a celebratory BBQ at the Salida Café.

The whole Little Rainbow Trail isn’t finished yet either – in 2011 SMT will build the trail west until it reaches Sand Gulch.

It takes more than just sweat and pick swinging to make these trails happen, it also takes money. There is no charge to use any of the trails, but the SMT is still fundraising to pay for the work completed in 2010 and to continue the work in 2011. If you use the trails and have a few extra dollars, think about contributing to Salida Mountain Trails. You can contribute here.

SMT also has plans to start working on the South Backbone Trail, which will run east and drop back down to the Arkansas River near the confluence with the Little Arkansas River. Once the South Backbone is complete, SMT and the Bureau of Land Management will have the skeleton in place to start working on the much larger loop trails that will head north off the Backbone.

SMT has started designing a beginner skills track on City of Salida land below the water tower just north of downtown. This will be an easily accessible trail to teach first-timers a few mountain bike skills before they ride the harder trails.

Finally, the SMT will work hand in hand with the US Forest Service to make the Columbine Trail (extended California Loop) a rideable and sustainable trail. The trail runs from CR101 to the Rainbow Trail. For more details, come to the next SMT meeting.

Please Be Respectful to Each Other on the Trail
The Salida Mountain Trails became popular almost the minute they were opened, with many types of people using the trails. As they continue to see more traffic, it’s more important than ever to respect the other trail users. This includes things like mountain bikers keeping their speed under control, horse riders shoveling the horse poop off the trail so others don’t have to bike/hike through it, and dog owners not only picking up their dog’s poo, but keeping their dogs on a leash while using the community trails. If we all keep it respectful, we can continue to build one of the coolest small town trail systems around.

The Salida Mountain Trails group continues to encourage new people to become part of the movement and help craft Salida’s ever-expanding trail system. To find out how to get involved, visit their website. Monthly planning meetings are on the 2nd Thursday of each month, from 9-11 a.m. downstairs in the Salida Café building. There is usually a trail work session on the Saturday following the monthly meeting. See you there!

Never before have I felt inspired to air up the boat this early in the year, transplanting the piles of stuff which nature decrees must accumulate on any surface or object that remains stationary for too long. Ski boots, snowboards and miscellaneous camping gear was swiftly relocated, the boat dragged out into the light of day a couple of months earlier than is custom. On several occasions I’ve floated in February, as much a rage against cabin fever and winter’s seeming endless icy grip as any serious expectation of catching fish.

But this time around, the consistent warm weather and accommodating water levels were too much to resist. I called up brother-in-law and ArkAnglers owner Greg Felt, who fortunately was of similar mind, and away we went. The kayakers playing at the river park, the bikers and hikers out and about, and dogs swimming in the river all spoke of a day in April or May, not January.

All things considered, the fishing was excellent. Floating the town stretch, we boated four, including a couple of lovely rainbows, missed a few more, and all that in shirt sleeves to boot. Stonefly nymphs and hare’s ears seemed to be on the fishes menu, with the one stomach we pumped revealing a healthy diet of primarily olive colored caddis larva.

Speaking of healthy diets, a routine visit to my doctor a few weeks ago, occasioned by turning fifty, revealed a couple of things, not the least of which is the mind’s propensity for believing what it wants to believe, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When the good doc informed me that since my last visit, some five or six years ago, my waistline had accumulated eight to ten pounds of carry on, my first reaction was one of disbelief.

“There must be something wrong with your scales. I’ve always weighed this much since I turned thirty.”

He smiled patiently. “Whatever.”

Ruminating on this a few days, I declared to my wife that I was thinking about losing some weight, but not enough to actually try. She suggested that perhaps I give up the frosty stuff for a bit and see what effect that has. So the Mellsop household declared an early Lent, no alcohol for forty days. Rest assured that should this experiment see my weight start a downward trend, I intend to make the requisite caloric adjustments to other parts of my diet to accommodate a resumption of my love affair with a PBR or two every now and again.

So it is good to remind yourself every once in a while that denial is more than a river in Egypt. Consequently, right now, seltzer water is the beverage of choice. As Greg says, “It tastes just like Coors Light, but without the unpleasant aftertaste.”