 As a group, anglers are a lazy bunch. They (meaning those anglers other than you) choose the path of least resistance, opting to drop a line in water closest to the road, closest to the trail, near the campground and nearest the parking lot. Even more industrious anglers don't walk far enough away from public access points, giving up to the lure of the water after only ten minutes of walking. This gives you your first few identifiers for a secret trout hotspot.
Look for where the trail or road leaves the river. Often, a hike in of only fifteen or twenty minutes will put you water that hasn't seen an angler all season. Where is the river difficult to access because of the lay of the land? Are those canyon walls as steep as they look from the road? Sometimes a little legwork will show you another way into those tough spots. Tough-to-reach water means that the fish haven't been bothered, poached and should be bigger and less-spooky.
If you want to get away from the crowds and find your own secret spots, all you need to do is combine a bit of studying with a willingness to do a bit of exploring. It all begins with maps. So get out a national forest map and a topo map, spread them on the table and get ready to discover your own secret trout spot.
This summer, I visited the Conejos River, a popular nice-sized river in southern Colorado. The river fishes well enough even with all the pressure. Like most North American coldwater streams of its size (15 to 40-feet wide), many feeder streams drain into it along its course.
The Conejos is blessed no less than four quality, medium-sized tributaries in a forty-mile stretch, and a couple of them aren't much smaller than the main river. Each of them sees a fair amount of hikers hiking loop trails with most of the trails having been constructed to run past alpine lakes and beside the feeder creek. Let me tell you this --- few hikers and backpackers fish, and fewer still fish the streams. These loop trails get the most foot and horse traffic and there's your clues to some basic secret-spot finding clues: Don't always assume that heavy hiking pressure means heavy fishing pressure. Even on heavily-fished streams, there are sections where the public fishes less. Find spike trails off the loop trails leading to lakes and streams. Look for waterfalls. Waterfalls have pools that hold big fish . Waterfalls also often mean that the water above is difficult to reach. Concentrate on streams flowing into and out of lakes. Many anglers fish lakes and ignore the productive water of the creeks. Look for unnamed lakes (but check with a government agency to see if it has been stocked during the season). Look at the headwaters and feeder streams.
I fished one of these feeder creeks (it is our secret spot after all, so I can't name it) but did not fish the first meadow (where everyone who does hike in chooses to wet a line). Meadows often come out of canyons and I like fishing canyons. By walking only an hour more upstream, I was able to camp and fish for two days without seeing but one other angler. How did I know about the other meadows and canyons above the famous first meadow? I can read a map.
I can't tell you how many hours I have poured over national forest maps, BLM maps, DeLorme Atlases and topographic maps in search of that one stretch of river that most anglers either perceive is too high up or inaccessible. That chore is made easier nowadays since topo maps for any section of the United States are now on CD-ROM.
Let's assume you know how to read a topo map. Green means thick vegetation, blue means bodies of water and so on. Contour lines are drawn in brown, in regular intervals and give an idea of the shape of the terrain. The closer the contour lines, the steeper the terrain. Either a 7.5 minute or 15-minute map will do.
When you see a blue line (a river) flowing through a tight group of brown lines, the river is moving through a canyon. Study closely though. Do the lines open up along the way? Do the brown lines go from a straight pattern to a wavy pattern, leaving a greater distance between the contour lines? If so, this could mean the river slows up enough to have some good holding water. Often times, even if the meadow is smallish, the beavers can build some amazing dams.
Blue lines can be running through v-shaped brown contour lines and if the lines are fairly close, be assured the water is running swiftly down the mountain. So look for where the V's widen out a bit, the contour lines are a bit farther apart. That can mean a flatter section.
Many lakes are off the trail, have no established trail to them. Look hard at the topo map (or CD-ROM). Often glacially-formed lakes will be in groupings of several lakes. Most likely, only two or three of them will be large enough and popular enough to demand regular stocking but at some time the past, I promise, all those little lakes had fish planted in them. And many of them will be stocked every so many years. A tiny alpine tarn can hold some nice fish, especially if the lake is lightly-fished. Most anglers would rather toil away at the big-name, bigger lake than hike a few hundred yards or one mile to a lesser-fished lake.
Even fast-flowing streams have sections that hit level ground and the river slows and widens. Fast-flowing streams can be slowed by beaver ponds. Beaver ponds can hold big fish even if the impounded stream is tiny. Even if a tiny stream rushes down the mountain, if the beavers have made their homes, the water is deep and fat enough to hold some nice fish. Look for contour lines that open up into a meadow. Look for springs and incoming streams. The river gets more water and can increase in size and have better water quality. Inaccessible places aren't always. Canyons can usually be accessed at some point. Non-traditional trails, like a livestock driveway, can lead to good water. Bushwhacking where there is no trail can lead to surprise trout water.
Government agencies often stock a lake one year and not the next. If the lake didn't endure winterkill, the holdover trout may have grown to braggin' sizes. Contact the agency to see if they stocked the lake in question. And while you're at it, most agencies have booklets which list all the available trout water in their state. You'll be amazed to find streams listed you never knew existed. Those are prime candidates for exploration. I found the Dry Cimarron River in New Mexico (a sweet spring creek) and Lake Dorothey in Colorado this way.
Four-wheel drive nuts like to drive their vehicles. For them, it's usually all about the four-wheelin' and few take the time to fish while they are in these hard-to-access locales. I found another southern Colorado stream this summer, let's call it MyNewFavorite Stream, where the only accesses were downstream, where the stream hurried down the mountain like it was being poured out of a spout (and the hike up was murderous) and upstream, where the only way in was on hairy, turnpin narrow logging roads fit only for a small Jeep. No guidebooks ever mention this stream as a viable fishery. To quick, too little, not enough fish. Few locals even knew about MyNewFavorite Stream.
A friend of mine had been studying the map and we got together when he found that this quick little creek hit a long meadow somewhere in the middle of its downstream course. The Jeep ride took an hour and it was bumpy but when we reached the meadow, we knew we had found the motherlode.
We caught three species of cutthroat. The trout averaged twelve inches but we each caught fish bigger than that. And the one that got away was --- well you know the story. So here are a few more words of advice: Don't always believe what you read or hear about a river or lake. Fisheries have a way of changing over the years. Beaver ponds can be added, river courses altered, fish populations can increase, people lie (yep, it happens), sections of a river can lie unfished for a long time. Look for water where the access is by way of lesser-used trails, old logging roads and four-wheel drive only roads. And don't forget that you can always ride horseback on certain trails to make a long trek a lot more endurable.
This is a hit-or-miss science. Sometimes a prospective stretch of stream that has a poor reputation lives up to the reputation. But when you do your homework and you find a secret spot so rich that you won't share the location with anyone but your spouse or your pastor, then it makes the effort all worthwhile.
Click here to
view the archived articles.
Click here
to send comments or feedback on this
article.
Click
here to check out a river near you.
|
