Tails from the Road: Two Days in Gunnison Country

There aren’t many places in Colorado that are as heralded as the greater Gunnison area. With endless amounts of public land, water, and happy fish, it certainly deserves all the credit it receives. Whether you want to fish the trophy fish that live in the tailwater section of the Taylor River, float and/or wade fish for the hard fighting fish in the Gunnison River, hike up to the beautiful alpine lakes for brook trout or native cutthroat, or explore the many meandering high country streams, the opportunities are endless. Back in July I went to Gunnison to hang out with my brother, go to a concert, and, of course, do some fishing. I spent two of my three days up there exploring some high country streams and floating the Gunnison, and I have to say it was an absolute blast. I’ve spent my fair share of time fishing in the Gunnison area in the past, but this trip seems to stick out more than the past. Maybe it was the company I kept, maybe it was the fish, or maybe it was a combination of both. Regardless, it was such a good time I figured I’d write up a little blog about my time. 

I won’t talk too much about the first day there because we spent most of our time driving, hanging out in “downtown” Gunnison, and going to a concert. But, day two is where the fun really began. We had a slow start to the day, we needed some coffee and bug remedy from our outdoor concert the night before. After all that, we packed up our stuff and made our drive to our campsite. We established a good area to camp and went straight to fishing. My brother was a little ways behind us, so I put together a rod to fish the lake that was near our campsite. I grabbed my 9’ 6wt Hardy Marksman and paired with a Rio Midge Tip with three flies. Fishing stillwater can be daunting at times, but when fish are rising near the bank, it’s easy to figure out where they are. My three flies I had on were a hot-eyed damsel, a scud, and a hothead leech. I fished the lake for about 45 minutes and had really good luck with the leech. I had other fish eat the damsel and scud, but all of those fish popped off. It was nothing crazy, but catching 12-14 inch rainbows full of spunk made for a good time. 

My brother eventually made it to the spot and I quickly broke down my rig in anticipation for what was to come. The real reason we were there was because of the beautiful meadow stream filled with wild brown trout that love eating dry flies. For the sake of keeping the area as wild as it is, I won’t be mentioning the name of it, but finding this body of water isn’t difficult. I don’t want to be a gatekeeper by any means, but there are very few areas in this state that are as untouched as this area. 

The fishing at this particular location was fantastic, I had my Winston Air 2 8’6” 3wt rigged with a single dry fly the entire time and that got me plenty of attention. My wife’s rod was a Sage Sonic 9’ 5wt rigged with a chubby chernobyl and a quill ribbed perdigon and she got plenty of action as well. The average fish size wasn’t anything too crazy, averaging 8-13 inches throughout the day, but every once in a while we’d stumble into a bigger one. In fact, there was one encounter with a bigger fish that was so amazing that neither my wife nor I could react fast enough. Keep in mind, a 16-17 inch fish in this type of system is a very large fish. One of these fish in this size category came up from the bottom of a run and absolutely smoked Josie’s hopper. It was insane to watch and she was so giddy when it happened, and Josie doesn’t love fishing the most so seeing her excitement was awesome. The fish striked at the hopper and immediately ran straight down stream. The banks were so beat up from the cattle in the area that chasing this fish downstream would’ve almost certainly led to a broken ankle. So she played the fish as best as she could for the circumstances given before the fish inevitably ran into an undercut and broke her off. It was a bummer that the big fish broke her off, but there was really nothing she could’ve done. She was sad, but I reassured her that an encounter with a fish like that in an environment we were in was absolutely spectacular and she should be happy that her presentation was good enough to fool a fish like that!

After a little while, Ian and Josie were done fishing and decided to hang out at the campsite. I gladly took this time to keep fishing, go figure. Over the next two or so miles working up the meandering stream I caught many fish and missed or dropped even more! It truly was the most fun I’ve had while fishing in a very long time. Throwing practically any dry fly that these fish could fit in their mouth and watch them destroy was so dang fun. And having the light duty rod made it even more fun. I know the 5wt is considered the do-all trout rod, but when fishing in the environment that I was, I’d say a 5wt is a bit overkill. My Winston 3wt was gosh darn fun and was the absolute best tool for the job. 

I fished for quite some time and realized it was time to get back to camp. I didn’t want my kin thinking I fell into a cattle hole and couldn’t get out, especially since I was wearing a camo sun shirt! When I got to camp I noticed my car was gone. “Great, they’re looking for me…” was the first thing I said. Luckily they weren’t too far down the road and were back to camp after I was hanging out for twenty minutes or so. They were just curious as to where I was, but they weren’t worrying their hearts out which made me feel better about being gone for so long. 

We wrapped our night cooking some venison hamburger, beans, broccoli, and campfire baked potatoes for dinner. We certainly weren’t expecting a dinner and show though, but we sure got one! There were two different storms hovering the area and teasing whether they were going to drop on us or not. The rain never came, but we sure did get a beautiful skyline with every single color displayed. The beautiful show was followed up with a lightning show that lasted for almost two hours. It was quite the night and it would’ve been cool to get it all on camera. But, Golden Fly Shop doesn’t have the same budget as National Geographic so I’m sorry I couldn’t make it happen (haha).

The next morning everyone was slow to wake up, so I decided to go jump on the creek for another 30 minutes and see what else I could pull out. What do you know, in the short amount of time I was able to pull out some browns that were hammering my stimulator. I kept my fishing rather brief this morning though because we had to pack up and camp and head back to town; we’re floating the Gunnison! I’ve spent many days fishing the lower Gunnison in Pleasure Park and the Gorge back when I lived in Grand Junction, as well as fishing upper Gunnison, but not as much. But, during all these river days, I never had the opportunity to float any section of the Gunnison. I was quite excited to say the least when Ian told me he had a Hyside Mini Max with a “fishing frame.” Our decision to float was an unexpected one, and I didn’t have many appropriate flies to fish the river effectively. So I quickly ran into a shop in town and grabbed a couple green drakes (which were never used) and some girdle bugs. Luckily, I already had a couple perdigons with me so I was set there. Then we jetted upstream to the boat launch.

This was my latest float start ever, once things were all said and done, we began floating around 11:30-12:00. I was a little pessimistic that the other boats that had launched before us had picked apart the river accordingly, and we’d only be able to gather some scraps. Well, this was sort of true, but not as dire as I made it out to be. 

Ian is not a person who enjoys fishing very much, nor does he float at all for fishing. He’s a raft guide in the area and is used to pushing, spinning, and dunking the boat whenever he gets the chance. Throughout the float I definitely had to break him from habits. He definitely got the gist of what a fisherman wants in a boat, except for the whole backrowing thing, which he never did (haha). There were numerous times where I begged him to not cook through amazing runs stacked with rising fish, or give me a couple back rows to help me manage to fight a fish. Even without the fishy rowing skills, we had a ton of success! My rig was super simple, and is one of the very few rigs I’d even consider throwing on a boat. I had my Hardy Marksman 9’ 6wt paired up with a SA Textured MPX line, a 2x nylon leader, a sz8 chubby chernobyl, two feet below a sz10 black girdle bug, and another foot below to a sz16 red perdigon. Ironically, I didn’t need to rush into the shop to buy any flies that morning. The green drake patterns never made it onto my rig because there weren’t many flying around, and the girdle picked up zero fish. Ironically the hopper didn’t catch any fish either, the perdigon was the only fly that was working. Sure I could’ve switched to an indicator rig, but it’s the summer so I’m throwing some type of dry on my rig!

The fishing wasn’t crazy hot, but like I said, I caught a decent amount of fish given the circumstances. I already mentioned I’ve fished the Gunnison numerous times in the past, but coming back to it quickly reminded me how special of a place it is. There’s endless bug life on this river, even when the air temperatures are raging, which it was when we were there. When we were floating the air temperature was right about 90 degrees, it was hot to say the least. In addition to the bug life, the fish are plenty healthy in this river and they fight HARD. Keep in mind, I was using a 6wt and 3x tippet to my droppers and even the 14 inch fish were kicking my butt. It was an absolute ball and made me rather jealous of my past living situation. But I digress, the fishing was awesome! Have I mentioned that already?

The float wasn’t too long since we didn’t spend much time backrowing, eddying out, picking apart runs, or any of the other fishing stuff, but it was a good float. We wrapped our short day on the river with some of Ian’s homemade alcoholic tea, which was surprisingly very good. Then we ran over to a small, local Mexican restaurant and enjoyed a tasty meal and a cerveza before our drive home. It was a short trip, but a memorable one with my family and some good fishing as well.