Pueblo – Apart from an occasional pang of disappointment, what’s the penalty for dreaming big?
Take, for example, those 6 miles of the Arkansas River immediately downstream from Pueblo Reservoir. This place where cold water spills into warm air last year received a dramatic boost in its ability to sustain trout. Question is, can it be far better still?
An improvement project completed last May placed dozens of rock clusters, weirs, J-hooks and various other bank and channel enhancements into the river below the dam.
The immediate result was to create a continuum of fish-holding places where blank, shallow water once held sway.
“The initial idea was to create holes for trout survival during periods of low water and to provide places where anglers could work the fish,” said biologist Jim Melby, who supervised the project for the Colorado Division of Wildlife. “But we found it also works great during high water as well.”
In short order, Melby watched the stretch fill up with anglers, particularly fly-fishermen hungry for a close-to-home spot to wile away a few stray hours. Build it, and they will come.
“During the winter, we’ve got hundreds of anglers on the river, a fly-fisherman in every hole,” Melby said.
The reason, Melby said, is Pueblo, with its southerly location, is something of a banana belt where ice seldom forms on flowing water. Which is precisely the point at which an optimist might start to dream.
What’s to keep this reach of the Arkansas from morphing into at least a miniature version of the famed San Juan River fishery below Navajo Reservoir in northwest New Mexico?
Similar climate near the edge of the desert. Constant water temperature beneath a dam. Same hatches of midges and mayflies. Even the matching appearance of rivers winding through a landscape of bluffs and tall cottonwoods. Imagine the impact, economic as well as social, of a world-class fishery in the midst of a sizable city hungry for a tourist boost.
In the case of the Arkansas, there’s even a budding warm-water fishery just downstream in pools designed for kayakers as part of the city of Pueblo’s continuing greenway development. In addition to a trout-stocking program that plants tens of thousands of catchable fish each season, Melby stocks fingerling saugeye to complement the smallmouth bass, wiper, perch and crappie that escape the reservoir during peak water releases.
More recently, a shift in management of the upper section to Colorado State Parks – requiring a parks pass – improved access to the adjacent Valco Ponds, a further boost to warm-water enthusiasts.
But it’s the surge in fly-fishing that has the town buzzing.
“Compared to this time last year, there’s three times as many fishermen, including lots from Denver,” said David Jones, who manages the ArkAnglers Fly Shop (719-543-3900), near the junction of Interstate 25 and U.S. 50, the route to the river.
On a recent excursion, Jones watched an afternoon emergence of blue-winged olive mayflies join the usual assortment of midges in what will, with progressively warming temperatures, prompt remarkable late-winter action on dry flies.
“This is one of the last undeveloped tailwaters. It has tremendous potential, particularly with some form of kill protection,” Jones said, echoing the general sentiment of the fly-fishing community.
Melby isn’t certain restrictions are called for, at least not yet. The biologist remains skeptical this tailwater can quite measure up to the San Juan, in part because Navajo Reservoir is larger and deeper than Pueblo with a more favorable outflow temperature.
“It looks as if this should be a trout mecca, but that’s not necessarily so,” said Melby, who indicated he’s willing to try a test of fly-and-lure regulation. “The question is which section and how big.”
While an occasional large brown is corralled by anglers or DOW crews, trout growth remains sporadic. The catch consists chiefly of stocker rainbows, spiced by an occasional infusion of brood fish from the adjacent hatchery.
“Brown trout aren’t making it,” Melby said after analyzing the results from stocking many thousands of young fish. “There’s no reason to think that catchable rainbow will do much better.”
A second, larger reason involves water volume, something of a quandary for the Arkansas while various water users wrangle over flow regimes and diversions as epic as the planned 66-inch pipe transporting water from the reservoir to Colorado Springs.
Melby spent 90 minutes Wednesday on a conference call with various water officials during which he pushed for flow alterations to benefit fishing.
“We’re looking for a no-harm, no-foul solution, but nothing is easy,” said Melby, who reminds us the new and improved Arkansas already is a “pretty nice winter fishery.”
As for the San Juan comparison, Melby thinks such a thing actually might be possible given another decade of water negotiation.
Meanwhile, we all can dream.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
