San Juan Rain and Vallecito Slush
My fishin buddy Alex, who has taught me so much about the catching, cooking and watching of animals over the years, decided to come down for a quick trip to the San Juan from his home in the frozen tundra of the north. "We're gonna go camp on the Juan and catch some big damn fish" he says excitedly. This is the guy who first took me to the San Juan, where I was heartily skunked and caught the back of my head. I'm thinking I have a chance to redeem myself, to show off that I can pull hogs out of the Juan with the greatest of ease, hell, I'm gonna throw a whoopin on these.... wait a second.. did he say "camping?"
Fortunately, the dude does not mess around when it comes to camping. Avid hunters tend to have warm dry camps in the worst weather and when your tent is enormous and has a woodstove in it, well heck that's warm and dry. We set up the massive wall tent at Cottonwood Campground just in time for the rain to start. We fished a bit at Simon Canyon before dark, I caught 1 decent fish and a bunch of smaller fish, nothing too exciting. When the darkness made it impossible to see our flies or indicators we headed back to camp, treated to Elk Bratwurst and Whiskey. We were joined by Seth of Durango Custom Rods and the amazing photographer Brett Henderson, making the grand total of sleepers in the tent 5. Josh from Wines Of The San Juan was along too but of course his bed was just a couple miles down the road. I've never been some comfortable camping in my life, and it's raining like crazy in January on the San Juan. The moral of the story is.. I'm getting a big wall tent, they're awesome! The fishing was pretty good on Saturday, although the storms did nothing to reduce the crowd. Our plan to run through the braids early before it was too crowded failed miserably, possibly due to the aforementioned whiskey, so we headed straight up to the Cable Hole area, just below the dam. I used a small midge below a San Juan Worm on this area and caught most of my fish on the San Juan Worm but the biggest on the midge. It was cold, rainy and kinda miserable so we retired back to the tent for good grub! I forgot my net and Travis, who met us down there, brought it for me from Durango, what a guy!
On Sunday we had to come back to pick up our friend at Durango Airport. We stopped by Pastorus on the way back to check the condition of the ice after the rain, it was still solid. There were some folks fishing over by the boat ramp where it can't be much deeper than 3 feet. I wonder if they caught anything? Our visiting friend Rob brought us some cool gear from the fishing apparel company Dedicated Ten and some fun jigging rattle traps and blade spoons for Walleye attempts. We headed to Vallecito today and found at least 6 inches of watery slush on top the ice. It was fairly unpleasant. Note to self, I need waterproof boots. BETTER waterproof boots that is, mine let water in but they sure don't let it out. We didn't fish for long, the weather was miserable. We tried a different spot than usual it was shallow, blah blah blah, in general it was just a crappy day to be out there. I know that I usually flaunt the virtue of fishing this type of weather but today was just a tad nasty. Oh well. A better day awaits us tomorrow!
Fortunately, the dude does not mess around when it comes to camping. Avid hunters tend to have warm dry camps in the worst weather and when your tent is enormous and has a woodstove in it, well heck that's warm and dry. We set up the massive wall tent at Cottonwood Campground just in time for the rain to start. We fished a bit at Simon Canyon before dark, I caught 1 decent fish and a bunch of smaller fish, nothing too exciting. When the darkness made it impossible to see our flies or indicators we headed back to camp, treated to Elk Bratwurst and Whiskey. We were joined by Seth of Durango Custom Rods and the amazing photographer Brett Henderson, making the grand total of sleepers in the tent 5. Josh from Wines Of The San Juan was along too but of course his bed was just a couple miles down the road. I've never been some comfortable camping in my life, and it's raining like crazy in January on the San Juan. The moral of the story is.. I'm getting a big wall tent, they're awesome! The fishing was pretty good on Saturday, although the storms did nothing to reduce the crowd. Our plan to run through the braids early before it was too crowded failed miserably, possibly due to the aforementioned whiskey, so we headed straight up to the Cable Hole area, just below the dam. I used a small midge below a San Juan Worm on this area and caught most of my fish on the San Juan Worm but the biggest on the midge. It was cold, rainy and kinda miserable so we retired back to the tent for good grub! I forgot my net and Travis, who met us down there, brought it for me from Durango, what a guy!
On Sunday we had to come back to pick up our friend at Durango Airport. We stopped by Pastorus on the way back to check the condition of the ice after the rain, it was still solid. There were some folks fishing over by the boat ramp where it can't be much deeper than 3 feet. I wonder if they caught anything? Our visiting friend Rob brought us some cool gear from the fishing apparel company Dedicated Ten and some fun jigging rattle traps and blade spoons for Walleye attempts. We headed to Vallecito today and found at least 6 inches of watery slush on top the ice. It was fairly unpleasant. Note to self, I need waterproof boots. BETTER waterproof boots that is, mine let water in but they sure don't let it out. We didn't fish for long, the weather was miserable. We tried a different spot than usual it was shallow, blah blah blah, in general it was just a crappy day to be out there. I know that I usually flaunt the virtue of fishing this type of weather but today was just a tad nasty. Oh well. A better day awaits us tomorrow!
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