Fishing Report July 20 2011

Summer time brings on vacation time and BWS and family headed west for the first time for most of the family. Renting a home in the Rocky Mountains near the town of Canon City, put us in some gorgeous scenery as well as close enough to fish a well known trout river, the Arkansas River.

The Arkansas River is primarily a brown trout fishery but there are some rainbow trout mixed in certain locations and when caught is a nice bonus. Since spring time we had been watching the water flows for this river as CO had a high snowfall this past winter and that is dumping a lot of water this late into the season into the river. By now the water flow should be at summer rate but it was still flowing at almost spring rate yet.

The conditions are getting better as each day passes but another week or two and that would have setup for a prime time to be fishing this river. As with any family vacation, fishing will come second hand to the sightseeing and family activities that are planned. Went out one night in Canon City and tried a few locations but was unable to find any slack or slow water compared to the ripping flow. These trout hang where fast water meets slow water, seam area, but in Canon City there wasn't any of these seam areas.

My son wanted to try his hand at trout fishing, as he has never fished for them before, so I had decided to take a drive and go on the other side of the Royal Gorge. We found a boat landing area that had an island in the middle of the river and the main flow was on the backside and there was a small shoot on the near side that created exactly what we were looking for.

Didn't take long casting the Egger's Spinners at this seam area and I had caught a 19 inch Brown Trout that was a real fighter and didn't want to come in. I lost a couple of smaller Brown Trout as they took to the air and threw the lure right after getting a good look at them. My son yelled that he had a fish on and after his battle he had caught a nice 15 inch Rainbow Trout and his excitement was unbelievable. He had lost 1 or 2 other Brown Trout as well and for the short time we were there, it was a very fun trip.

I had driven back to this location one other night and lost 2 small Brown Trout to their acrobatics after setting the hook. All in all it was a productive trip out West, just wished the flows were lower and that would have offered a much better scenario for this fishing trip but it was great to be back in the state of CO and definitely going to have to make the trip back once again.

July 2 2011 Report

Holidays are a great time of year as this gives you that extra time to enjoy fishing and camping at the same time. We spent the long weekend in New Hampshire and even without the big boat, brought the kayaks along to be able to get out on the water.

I started the day searching for some of the smallmouth that live in these waters and fished deep points as well as shallow rock shoals. I tried one deeper point that had numerous large boulders but just couldn’t seem to find the smallmouth. So change of gears was made and started fishing shallower water looking for largemouth instead.

I fished a main back cove that has a lot of different types of structure from rocks, mud, sand, gravel to weeds as well. As the morning went along more and more pleasure boaters were coming out and fishing off of the main lake was getting very difficult. So a move was made back to the arm that the campground is located in as this area is a no wake zone so the waters aren’t so rough.

The water depths in this area are all about the same from 5-8 feet deep and have a fairly dense weed base as well. Decided to stick with a jig and pig and work this bait through the weeds in search of fish. Didn’t take long and the first fish was hooked and was a nice 2 pound largemouth. Continued to move around and fan cast and work the jig through the weeds and all in all had a pretty good success doing that.

The technique was making long casts and slowly work the jig back through the weeds and if it got hung up in there, give the rod a quick and fast jerk to break it free. By doing this I was able to catch 6 largemouth throughout this area with the biggest pushing 3 pounds. Never had a lot of confidence in the jig/pig but by forcing myself to fish with it, I will be throwing this bait a lot more in the future.