Creede, CO - Fly fishing the Rio Grande

The Antler RV park view up the Rio Grande

I left Farmington, NM on the San Juan River early morning for the 3 hour plus drive to Creede, CO. Now a town of artists, entrepreneurs and working folk providing services to campers, fishing buffs, and Summer Stock Theater goers. Creede was a 19th Century mining town situated on the Rio Grande. Today Creede Repertory Theater mounts contemporary and classical theater productions at several venues both indoors and out. I visited there with a friend 20 years ago at the 35th anniversary of the CRT’s founding. What I recall most vividly is the fly fishing on the Rio Grande and for years I’ve wanted to return.

Today I took a break from driving and fished the Rio Grande. I felt relaxed for the first time since leaving Anna at the TUC airport.

 My light fly fishing tackle had not been used in several years. It took me an hour to get set-up. I found access to the Rio Grande a few miles West of the Antler RV park where I stayed. Colorado has a generous share of free RV camping spots along to Rio Grande.  

 My camping and fishing site with the picnic table appears below. I felt lucky to find an available site. Several rafts with guides rowing hard appeared; one with a sizeable trout, caught, netted and released as it floated by. I'm getting excited. Pulled a small box of #18 trout flies out of my creel. Picked what looked like a new Adams. It's challenging to tie that #18 fly to my leader... but after several failures, I did it.

 Then tossing the Adams fly into the eddy next to me, I immediately hooked up with a very large trout. In fact, initially I thought I was hooked up on the bottom. It was THAT big.  Challenged as I was to find secure footing, I was sitting on the ground, my fly rod was bent over sharply, I couldn’t believe my luck. I tried to stand to move closer to the water. That was a major multi-tasking effort as my balance is poor. The fly rod bent even further.

The fish, supposed to be my dinner, spit out the fly! The rod snapped flinging the fly up into the pine tree next to me where today, and perhaps every day for the next 100 odd years, it will remain. I never got another bite, but it didn’t matter because I discovered I still have the love of it, and some of my fly-fishing chops.

Happy Camper

Noisy but harmless Salmon fly seems uncertain of where he was.The size of a dragon fly was he.

This cow stared at the truck for a long time.

 

Looking down the Rio Grande. Beautiful here; not so much these days when it reaches the Texas border.

 

 

 

 

 

The bridge captured in the previous image looking down the Rio Grande.

                                  Moving on after three days