Once a fly fisher has done it all for about five minutes, scattershot in some exotic location, it seems like it’s time to go, either because the plane ticket says so, or work says so, or someone else says so. Rarely do we get a chance to get over the newness of a location and really settle in and focus on the details that make the locations we love unique. That takes time.

I finally feel comfortable enough in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, to slow down fish less, and experience the nuances more.

We’ve all been to just about every flavor of fly shop, from mom-and-pops, to big boxes wherever they may pop up. This time I listened to the voices of experience, Alvin Dedeaux and Joel Hays, and made my way to Let it Fly in Pagosa Springs. It was quite fitting that a mom-and-pop fly shop be run by someone going by the alias “Pops.”

If two guys as different as Alvin and Joel send me to the same guy, you know I have to go. Let it Fly is located on 160 in Pagosa Springs, set back off the road with a RV park behind it.

Pops has a full-time four legged assistant, Shima, and Pop himself has a new leg adorned with some spectacular fish related ink.

Being in Pagosa Springs in late October, you can’t help but feel that everyone is getting ready for the next season, their own short doldrums before everything closes down for months on end – snowbound and frozen to the core. It’s the end of the end of fly fishing season in Pagosa Springs, and while fish on the lakes are gobbling up all the protein they can get their kypes on, river and creek bound trout are few in numbers but equally willing.

Besides the friendliness of Pops, he is also willing to share information on hot locations, the flies you want and how to fish them. If there’s a secret handshake, I wasn’t offered the chance to show I didn’t know it. There’s no coy cat-and-mouse games, although he is ready and willing to provide guides who could shorten your learning curve from days into hours. His cabinets are covered with fly fishers holding exceptional fish, and if you look close enough you will even see a few classic photos of Xenie up there.

Pops said the fishing was actually good in town and below the reservoir along Williams Creek, and over about a 1/2 day of fishing that information proved spot-on. Ask where, and he will tell you. Ask which flies, and he will tell you. It’s pretty disarming not to have to know the secret handshake.

Pops didn’t bother to sugar coat the economic downturn that continues to make itself evident in Pagosa Springs as well. The business next to him has been gone awhile, and there is plenty of retail space available in Pagosa if you’re thinking of giving it a go. We had noticed the same thing as we drove around, “Didn’t such and such used to be there?” Gone.

It is time to shut in for the winter, a time when Pops expects to tie five to seven thousand flies, while his “OPEN” sign continues to blink on-and-off, a beacon of hope through winter’s long night.

Last blast of aspen trees – north of Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

Sometimes posts are a blunderbuss of information, and on occasion they are a .223 at about a hundred and fifty yards. Sure, a .223 drops some, but not much at 150.

I have been to Pagosa Springs many times in the last ten years, but by now I am becoming more familiar with where things are, where things were, and where roads lead to. There’s enough general information buried in this target to keep you reading for days, so I took my most recent visit to Pagosa Springs as an opportunity to concentrate on the details that make Pagosa Springs one of my favorite Colorado fly fishing locations.

If I took last week’s journey in chronological, our journey would start near Santa Fe, New Mexico. We had the privilege of staying at a friend’s brother’s house in Cochiti, New Mexico. I’ll be writing only a little about our time in Santa Fe (plugging a couple of restaurants), and there’ll be a lot of photographs of Tent Rocks, a hike we took while there.

However, I have to start with a great fly shop. Let it Fly, in Pagosa Springs since 1997 (a lifetime in mom-and-pop fly shop years), is permanently occupied by one of the nicest individuals I have come across in a long time. I’ll start with Pop, and his view on Pagosa Springs, and what makes him such a great person in a great place.

After the feature on Let it Fly, I will take you to some water, and a few photographs and video of fly fishing in and around Pagosa Springs. There will be as many as four posts on Pagosa Springs and at least one on New Mexico.

Feel free to ride along on this series, and don’t be surprised if you decide you have to head for Pagosa after reading about all the fun and fish to be had in Southwestern Colorado. If you’re really motivated, you can dig into past posts before this series gets underway -
Last Year’s Trip

There’s more in the past somewhere …

Note – We are looking at the new moon phase, and flounder are running on the north Gulf Coast of Texas, so I’ll let you know if fishing gets in the way of this series.

I finally had some time to sit down and read my latest Guadalupe River Trout Unlimited newsletter, and it actually answered some questions that have been popping up as the weather begins to try and cool down, and Texas fly fishers begin to think rainbow trout.

The biggest question those who fish the Guadalupe for stocked rainbow trout, stocked by GRTU, is WHEN will the fish be stocked. I have to forewarn you that just about everything you read here from now on, could be a bit shaded by my recent read of An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World“An Entirely Synthetic Fish,” by Anders Halverson.

GRTU had essentially experimented with the size of rainbow trout they were stocking, choosing to have fewer fish in quantity, and larger sizes. They far outsized anything Oklahoma (Broken Bow, Blue River) had done – pound-for pound. I was immediately a convert to the Guadalupe, and espoused the private lease program GRTU has that allows access to waters stocked by GRTU.

THE BEST OF TIMES THE WORST OF TIMES

It was the best of times for the Guadalupe river rainbow trout fishers. Photographs of stringers with large huge trout trailing behind kayaks of conventional fishers flourished. (For the many readers not from Texas, a person has access to navigable waterways, and can pass along private properties unimpeded on that water.) The old state TPWD record for rainbow trout was quickly replaced. Regulations along this stretch of the Guadalupe permit harvesting of two one fish over 18-inches per day, and most photographs were accompanied by recipes and lip licking comments from the Chicken Fried Nation (-Randy Galloway- thanks I am keeping that one). Some of the old-time members of GRTU were starting to take notice.

The GRTU giveth, and the good lord taketh away. The drought came to stay in earnest in 2011, and it wasn’t long before water releases from Canyon Lake, which precedes this stretch of the Guadalupe, began to be turned down. Down, down down. With a minimum release agreement in place, the remaining trout were assured of not being left in puddles, but their habitat was reduced in size and targeting became even easier. Release rates and water temperatures are measured all along this portion of the Guadalupe, but the flow rate has had a bumpy flatline that is in the range of 60 to 80 cfs.

By the time we shot our pilot episode of Kayak Fishing Journal on the Guadalupe, it was a matter of skipping / portaging from one spot to another with the guidance of Alvin Dedeaux. Some fishy stretches were larger, and some were smaller. However, it was obvious the area was just like the rest of Texas – in distress.

It would be unheard of for Texas to string together a number of years without some weather catastrophe thrown into the mix. The achilles heel of the Guadalupe river trout fishery is drought, and that’s what we’ve had for a year, and there’s no great change coming to the situation.

Questions began popping up on how the fish and fishing was on the Guadalupe as the summer burned on, and it’s obvious there will be survivors, holdovers, that become more active as the seasons change. Concerns about the Guadalupe also looked forward to the usual stocking of the GRTU areas; would they be stocked as usual, when will they start stocking, etc…?

What Everyone Wants To Know

Pretty much all questions are answered in the latest GRTU newsletter article by Jimbo Roberts the GRTU Vice President of Fisheries. Keep in mind that GRTU stocking of rainbow trout and Texas Parks and Wildlife stocking of rainbow trout operate independently.

Roberts is very open about the “issue” of stocking fewer, larger trout, over the stocking of more smaller trout by GRTU. As interesting is this logic is, the article states that the motivation for stocking larger trout by GRTU was motivated by the belief that larger fish are more likely to survive the Guadalupe’s sometime extreme conditions aka – holdover. I’ve come to realize, through reading the “Synthetic” book that establishing an holdover aka – wild trout population, is the holy grail that has lead to increased regulation and protection in the name of that wild trout population. The word “regulation” can be enough for some Texans to chamber a round, but the odds of rainbow trout going scientifically wild in the Guadalupe hover around zero.

In the article, Roberts said his online research revealed no studies comparing the survivability of 12-inch rainbow trout to 18-inch rainbow trout, and with no research to back up the idea that larger fish survive better, and armed with a survey of members who think smaller fish are a better investment, the decision has been made to go with smaller stockers for 2011-2012. I think some common sense has set in. The average rainbow trout size stocked by GRTU last year, 18-inches, is the minimum size you can take from the Trophy Waters, so the first time they’re caught, they’re eaten for supper.

HERE ARE THE NUMBERS FOR 2011-2012

The stocking numbers for GRTU (not TPWD) rainbow trout stocking from Crystal Lake Fisheries read like this:
75-percent of the fish will be 14-16 inch rainbow trout
25-percent of the fish will be larger than 18-inches
3 planned stockings to total 12-thousand pounds of rainbow trout
1 additional stocking if conditions permit, in the spring
This translates into a 50-percent increase in the actual number of fish GRTU stocks.
The fish that are smart enough to stay in the Trophy Trout Zones cannot be harvested according to regulations. God help them if they get washed downstream!

GRTU is always seeking volunteers to help with stocking (know where they hide the lunkers), and they are also be looking at the Pott’s stretch to see how they can create structure to create deeper, cooler water with more flow.

Looming on the horizon is the expiration of the Flow Agreement with GRBA, and a rate increase for the Lease Access Program of $10. per year to help offset the increasing cost of stocked fish. If you are unfamiliar with the lease access program, be sure to check it out. It’s a great idea for those of you who don’t paddle.

Feel free to do a search via the search box in the lower right column for keywords: Guadalupe, GRTU and other words related to fly fishing on the Guadalupe River. Past articles will tell you most of what I know, and where to go while in that part of Texas. For some fantastic reading, be sure to pick up An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America and Overran the World“An Entirely Synthetic Fish,” and learn just how rainbow trout “beguiled a nation.”