Small Water Week Rolls On ~ Browns From The Arkansas Headwaters 16Aug24

For the next leg of "small water week" I headed down to Lake Co to fish the headwaters of the Arkansas River today; it was about 50 min house to river. I chose to stop at the first bridge over the Ark headed south, despite one car already there. This is a permanent easement for fishing and the first better stop south of Leadville. I never made it to Kobe or further south; I just ran my normal pass here by fishing upstream for about a mile and then hiking back to the car. I was there from 10:30am - 1:30pm and caught a dozen German browns 10"-14". Only one took the chubby; the rest were on a Perdigon or a merc head FBPT; none on the caddis either, weird. I only saw modest bugsign, but it was pretty windy. That's the key reason I fired the Rodfather True 3 (still very light) as opposed to the 1 weight today. It was a very nice day otherwise ~ the wind did create some wind knots for me and the flows of ~150cfs are a little heavier than I like for this section. I saw the couple, likely in the car there ahead of me, leave as I was just 30 min in so it was clear sailing. Fun mid-day on the Ark... the headwaters valley beneath Mt Elbert & Mt Massive is cool.