Summer Colorado Trip Part 1 - Colorado River

Some might see it as desperation: driving 12 hours one-way, with the hope of doing some trout fishing. I think they’re right. But, I don’t mind being desperate—I’ve come to accept that disposition as a useful part of life. So, on Thursday of last week, I hopped in ‘ole Cindy (my beautiful green Mazda B3000), and drove from Iowa City to Denver. I had planned on spending Friday with my brother, testing the waters he had forsaken a few years back for the glory of Alaska, and then heading out to the wilderness with a few friends from Camp. And that’s just what I did.

On the drive down from Iowa, it was decided that I’d drive out and meet my brother past Vail and Beaver Creek, at a small dent in the mountains called Wolcott. It was about an hour-and-forty-five minutes from Morrison, where I was staying, to Wolcott. My green truck struggled over the passes between Denver and Vail while I prayed she’d hold together for just one more mile.

A few miles past Edwards, I exited 70 and found my brother waiting for me at the Wolcott Yacht Club. We hugged and made our seemingly perpetual plans for the “Yoder Brother’s Truck Pull-Off,” where it would truly be a David versus Goliath battle—my Mazda versus his diesel-fueled Dodge Ram. Once my few necessities were in the truck we headed for State Bridge. The goal: to float fish the Colorado River between State Bridge and Catamount.

It was interesting watching my brother adjust again to life in Colorado. You could see the frustration he had with the unfriendly guides, who wouldn’t notice you if you stuck a hundred dollar bill up their noses, and the alienating circumstances that he experienced as a result of such a long absence. He had earned quite a reputation as a guide before heading east, but his choice to leave Colorado a few years back for the Florida flats and the Alaskan wilderness was a good one. Now he’s well-rounded and experienced, but he, like I, has come to live a very dislocated life. Maybe it’s in the Yoder genes…

We dropped the boat in at State Bridge, and paid our fee ($3.50 per/person). After pushing past a few wade-fishermen and a drift boat, I started waving his Fat Albert fly in the air. I like to call it casting. Some would disagree. It wasn’t more then five minutes (in fact, right in front of state bridge) before I had hooked a tree. This one was a partially submerged trunk wedge up against the bridge-footer. It was Dave’s only Fat Albert—a fly tied with success in mind, so I dismounted his Clackacraft and waded up under the bridge for a daring retrieval. My hard work also netted two water bottles and a half-empty beer can. Always leave the river a better place than how you found it.

I still lost the fly. After a few bends in the river and a few hook-ups with brown trout, a fish broke of the grasshopper imitation. Oh well. The rest of the day was amazing. A bought of strong wind half-way through was the only interference between my brother, me, and the trout.

We drifted down the left and right banks, casting to fish holding under the cut banks, and when we came upon the large eddies created by the river’s water rushing over redden boulders, I was instructed to cast into the foam. It was a cast into the foam that coaxed the most violent take of the day. After missing and netting several brown between 14 and 18 inches, I made a quick cast into a little foamy eddy. BAM! A rainbow rushed over my grasshopper fly like a wave crashing at the beach. I let out a yell, and laughed out of joy. My brother… well, he missed the whole thing.

At one point we switched roles, and Dave became the fisher and I the rower. In a matter of minutes he had hooked three fish, with my job during that time being to row “away from danger.” I did it long enough to earn a spot back in the front of the boat.

By the time we arrived at the Catamount take-out, our stomachs were ready for dinner. We washed out the boat, loaded up the truck, and headed back to the Yacht Club for some fish tacos and beer. We spent most of the day goofing off and being brothers, and now it was time to relax and watch a bunch of twenty-year-old girls get drunk off of margaritas. The food was a good finish to a great day with my brother. And I’m already planning our next fishing trip. New Zealand? Argentina? Maybe I’ll have to find some way to spend time with him in Alaska.

And, I am pretty sure there needs to be a better job done with quality control in the world of leader manufacturing. Pretty poor word choice if you aske me!