St Vrain Creek - Sept 25, 2010

Nadya, Stefan and I went for a ride in the mountains to see the fall colors.   Although we were a week late, it was still beautiful to see and be out in the fall afternoon.   We drove the Peak to Peak Highway from Nederland with intentions of making it up into The Moraine in Rocky Mnt National Park to see the elk herds strut their stuff.  Fortunately, we got sidetracked and never made it that far.

As we drove the twisty two lane highway across the tops of the mountains, viewing expanses of green dotted with aspen yellow we saw a road leading off the left and decided to see where it would take us.  With signs directing us to Wild Basin we discovered a previously unknown to us access into the park.   After about 1/4 mile we came upon Carter Lake and stopped to have a snack under a ponderosa pine watching the view of the lake with mountains in the background.  I got talking to a guy who was just finished fishing and he told me the road continues for a while more.

After a few miles over the dusty road were at a trail head walking along the upper reaches of North St Vrain river.  The air hovered at the autumnal inflection point between coolness and warmth as we moved between dark pine shadows and sunny bluebird sky.  Golden aspens, grey boulders, light green moss and a bluebird sky broke the evergreen dominance into a thoughtful patchwork of colors.

We shot off the main trail down toward the river, ducking under pine boughs and walking over soft needles, and found a likely looking spot for me to cast a line.  As Stefan and Nadya stayed on the bank building a fort and a dam I fished tiny dry flies to eager fish.  The first one, a brook trout in it brilliant  spawning uniform, took my #18 parachute Adams and was reeled in by Stefan.  I caught a little brown and a smaller brookie before moving up to a small waterfall.   Here, I tossed a long cast into a far eddy and watched a cutthroat raise up and examine the fly before refusing it twice due to drag.  After a minor adjustment the fly floated true and I had Stefan reeling in a cutthroat.