I recently got back from a short return trip to visit with my family in Monument, Colorado. While I was short on time my father managed to help me fit in some of the best fishing i’ve experienced yet. Not a lot of fish mind you, but the settings and relaxed attitudes that prevailed our day trips more than made up for the sparse bites.
Day one found us in an area that my father and his friend CJ spend more time in than any other, the famed Eleven Mile of the South Platte.
It’s mind numbingly beautiful. It’s also beyond me, how a stretch of river like this with a dirt road running directly along it’s banks ferrying fishers to and fro can remain so seemingly untouched and unspoiled. Possibly it’s the mental disposition of the Colorado fisher. Possibly the work of many unseen volunteers or forest workers. Or possibly it’s just the rose tint we tend to view the unfamiliar through. Regardless, it is everything i love in a river. Moderate flow, large boulders, towering mountains, and pine trees galore.
No those are not dust spots on the lens. Those are thousands of the unamed insect.
Unfortunately i am a bass/sunfish/catfish fly-fisher because of my geological condition, and my father usually has his budding entomologist friend (CJ) along. So when the fish were rising on the water en masse, we went slightly insane trying to figure out what they were going for…BWO, PMD, Emerger, Trico, 18, 12, 24. We tried them all, and never figured out what they were taking. And it was disturbing, the fish were swimming in schools within two feet of our bootied feet. In and effort to take a breather from the frustration we headed down stream and right into a SWARM of…well…something. I was pretty sure they actually were PMD’s, but as i said, i’m a bass man.
It wasn’t long after splitting away from my father, so we could hopefully improve our odds, that i ended up under a massive cliff with a deep pocket. It was here that i caught and landed my one fish for the day. There were quite a few that took the hook but because of various deficiencies of mine made a break for it at just the right time. I didn’t need to catch him, what all the beautiful surroundings and comradery, but it sure made the day just a little rosier.
Later that day we drove up to the “Dream Stream” simply because as my dad put it, “You just HAVE to see it.” To make a moderately long story moderately short, it was breath taking. I’ll admit that i didn’t love it the way i did Eleven Mile, no trees, cliffs, boulders, etc.
Into the "Dream Stream"
But it was incredible, ever stretching, high prairie flanked by mountains that apparently ached to become part of the sky. And in the middle of this vastness, a small, meandering stream with old, dilapidated barns that sprung up around it like mushrooms after a rainstorm. As we fished the banks with thunder clapping along the mountains spines i wondered about the name. Was it a simple description, named at face value because of the size and quantity of fish, or was it something more? A description of the mindset incurred by the simple act of contemplating this “scene”. My favorite description of life has always been.
“Row, row, row your boat,
gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.”
Was THIS, that stream? Was THIS that dream. All the sights around me seemed to move together in a slow, gentle movement. Almost representing a stillness in their fluidity. The scene seemed so serene, yet with rough hewn edges of unfathomable wildness lurking under the corners of the “pages”. I’m not sure if i ever have felt so at peace while at the same time having the hairs on my back stand on edge. It was calm and ferocity tied together in a gunny sack and tossed into a valley by a god for the sheer excuse of seeing what might happen, what strange nature might unfold. It was after all, the Dream Stream.
Whoo…to deep probably. So here is a counter balance. A photo of the evening gridlock heading out of the prairie, surrounded by wild Donkeys freed from the surrounding gold mines!
