Category: 2018, August, September Colorado, New Mexico Retirement Trip

Sometime around October 12th I will begin a Texas Road Trip, Texas Hill Country, West Texas, and the Texas BBQ Trail.

Three things I noticed during my trip;

Almost everyone is pleasant if you are

Traffic, places that were cool are jammed

Self Storage facilities are everywhere, why

Heading home. Camped at Cheyenne Mountain State Park on the outskirts of Colorado Springs. Very nice with full hook up. It’s right across the interstate from Fort Carson, an army base. When I was passing through the campground’s entry station, I could hear Taps playing over a speaker. It was exactly 5 pm. I don’t know.

Colorado Springs from my campsite.

Very nice homes towards the mountain. Went into a wine store a few miles from here. Selling wines like Opus One and $200 decanters. They had a cheap section.

Didn’t fish today. It’s pretty windy yet a beautiful day. Driving back to Colorado tomorrow, so I went grocery shopping in Aztec, Colorado, a town about 20 miles west of my campground, and generally just relaxed. Had a good brisket sandwich in a little dive in Aztec, drove back home (my campground) and had a couple of beers in the breezy shade. Life is good.

Here are photos of each side of the dam, a big footprint.

The face of the dam. You can drive across the top or down the face of the dam to go to the little town of Navajo Dam.Just below the dam where I’ve done most of my fishing.

The little town of Navajo Dam. Abe’s, the fly shop I got my guide through, is the long cream colored building on the left side of the street. There are a couple more little fly shops and a couple of diner/taverns down there. Nothing else for 20 miles. My campground is two miles to the right. There are Park rangers and campground hosts. I feel safer here than I do driving around at home.My trailer is in the center. The river is on the other side of the trees.

Abe’s, which I’ve grown fond of. Nothing negative to say about the other shops here. I bought flies and ate at the other places and have no complaints.

Caught maybe eight good size, colorful rainbows and one big, beautiful brown trout. Same story as yesterday, little black midges on the shins of my waders, so I tied on two different black midges and nymphed.

No photos because I need to get the worn out fish back into the river. Also, with my right hand I’m holding a net with a fish in it, and my fly rod is being held under my right elbow. That means unzipping a fly vest pocket, taking my phone out, turning it on, and taking a picture without dropping my phone into the river.

The old saying “big lure, big fish” seems to be 180 out here. Yesterday and today, I caught some big rainbows, only on the smallest flies I have, I think size 26, no bigger than 24. Ridiculous! You need to bend over, look at the water, and see what tiny bug is hatching. These tiny creatures live in and on the bottom. At different times of the day and year, certain ones come up from the bottom, escape their husks, mate, and die. Some fly around for a while, then lay their eggs on the water, and the cycle starts over. That’s it, trout food. It’s called “matching the hatch”. You have to do it. When you get it right, it feels good. These super tiny bugs are called midges. This morning, the first ones I noticed were a little brown. I caught a rainbow two or three inches bigger than yesterday’s big fish. The action faded. I looked down at my waders just above my boots. There were hundreds of black midges.So I tied on a blackish midge and had quite a bit of action. Caught a couple of big colorful rainbows and had a very big fish on for a while. This is what you see sometimes after a fish gets off.If you zoom in on the point of the hook, you’ll see a little scale which came from the edge of the trouts mouth. Should have trimmed my knot a little closer.

I’ve been fishing just downstream of this dam. Zoom in on the diagonal line moving down from left to right. A car is about halfway across. It’s a big dam.

Must have learned a couple of things yesterday from my guide Randy. Set my rig up the way he recommended and fished flies he picked out for that stretch of the river. A little farther down the river and different flies are recommended. Found a good place to stand, maybe two feet deep. If I cast 15 feet towards either bank or downstream, it was a foot or two deeper. There were active fish in these runs.The lighter point way left center was where I was standing.

Caught one of the big rainbows I had been looking at for days, and several other fish a little smaller. It took a good 15 minutes to land the big one. The last two feet of my leader, called tippet, was 6x. It’s 3.5 pound test. Have to let bigger fish do what they want until they tire, but don’t get them so tired that you kill them. They liked this fly.This one hasn’t been used. It still has the barb. Barbs aren’t allowed. You have to pinch them down with a tiny, flat needle nose pliers. It’s a good thing cause I buried one in my finger. Came right out with no pain.

Guides are good for more than fishing . Randy told me Abe’s Restaurant made good enchiladas and good red sauce. He was right.

The drift boat we used to float the river yesterday.

Kind of funny. I think I mentioned several days ago that it is illegal to move your feet around and then fish downstream because you dislodge insects and big trout collect just downstream of your feet. Randy said it’s called “The San Juan Shuffle”

Went on a full day guided float trip with a great and interesting guy. He, Randy, is a 55 year old special needs high school teacher who grew up on a ranch. His dad had 100 head of horses. As a teenager, Randy would take pack teams in to supply Outward Bounds groups. Randy is from Durango, which is something like an hour from here. While in his 20s he would walk here, guide people trout fishing and sleep on picnic tables. He told me he walked 80 miles many times. I asked how long that would take, 7 days. I don’t think he’s a bullshitter.

In the morning we floated a stretch below the “quality area”. I caught at least 20 rainbows from 10 to 12 inches and a couple of browns that were a little bigger. We saw very few people. In the afternoon we went to the quality area where there are big fish and big crowds. Didn’t have much luck. You can look down and see many large fish.

For fly fisher people, Randy taught me a lot. He told me to go back to where I had been fishing but use smaller flies, a two fly nymph rig size 24 down to 26, 6X tippet, and at least twice the distance from the tiny sinkers to the strike indicator.

After we finished I asked him to help me pick out a few flies. This is a photo of the flies and two different size sinkers.

Just wanted to relax today so I drove about 35 miles west to the nearest town, Aztec. There’s a National Monument named Aztec Ruins. Must be named after the town because the ruins are similar to the ruins at Mesa Verde. Both were built by Ancestral Pueblo Native Americans. Each set of ruins have Kivas, the round ceremonial rooms.

A large, reconstructed kiva.

The farther I went into this series of rooms, the cooler it got. It was 90 outside but felt like 70 in the innermost rooms.

It’s a large compound, room after room used for ceremonies and trading by the people living in the area. Not many people lived in this structure.

Had to move to a different campground in the same state park. This is prettier but no electricity. It’s only for two days and then back to the same site I was in. It’s in the 90s. Just need to stay outside in the shade during the day or run the generators. Cools off fast at sunset.

The blue spot just right of center is my trailer. Not much up here. Super quiet. Must be some critters up here. This campground loop is very small, all stone, and no electricity, yet it has a big bathroom with 2 big showers/changing rooms. New Mexico State Park campgrounds are very clean. A sign states that the bathrooms are mopped with bleach at least once a day.

Checked out the marina.Tons of houseboats. No sailboats. No wind.

Lots of toys to rent

Watch this video. People feed them, obviously. If someone throws just one or two pieces of food in, the duck always wins.

https://retiredwithatrailer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/img_2826.mov

Arranged for a full day float trip on Sunday with a fishing guide. Not cheap but I brought money for Vegas and I changed my plans and didn’t go to Vegas. It will be a lot less expensive than Vegas would have been.