This last Sunday, I finally made it over to the West side of Rocky Mountain National Park. I set my eye on catching a few Colorado River Cutts and I read that North Inlet Creek above the Cascade Falls would be a good bet.
I headed up there with Jason Klass of
TenkaraTalk and Joe Egry of
Dragon Flyfishing early Sunday morning but it was a bit farther than anticipated, so we didn't get to the trailhead until after 8am. Thank god there was still space in the parking lot, I would hate to have to change fishing plans just because we got late to a full trailhead parking lot.
Cascade Falls are about 2.3miles from the trailhead and for some of us, it was torture not to start fishing when we first saw the creek down in the meadow. I was somehow able to talk everybody into continuing heading further up the trail and past Cascade Falls but wondered at times how long it will take us to see the creek again. Especially one of my fellow anglers was getting increasingly inpatient and frustrated.
That being said, once we got to the Cascade Falls I was pleasantly surprised of the awesome pocket water.
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| Jason (downstream) and Joe working their pools |
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| Joe |
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| keeping the profile low... |
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| Jason with his signature hat and - shocker! - a fishing vest! |
Once I started fishing, I quickly got into a number of brook trout that took my sakasa kebari. I even think that I probably had a Colorado Cutty on but lost it - a yellow instead of a white and orange belly is what I think I saw. The brook trout up there were just gorgeous, little jewels of white, orange, green, red and blue.
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| those colors are just stunning |
Just a little upstream of Cascade Falls the valley widened and we found ourselves suddenly in a combo of meadow and forest with a low gradient and slow water.
You probably guessed it already, but the day yielded "only" brook trout, no Colorado Cutties. I guess next time, we will have to venture even further upstream, get up earlier and maybe even camp out overnight.
One of the highlights of the day was our hike out where we encountered 5 (!) moose, two of them only maybe 30ft off the trail. Those guys were sure impressive and we made sure not to disturb them.
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| Fall is approaching... |
Days on the water: 26
