Buena Vista – These are the golden days for the Arkansas River, a time when the color of leaves and sparkle conspire to lure anglers like treasure seekers – which actually may be the same person.
At a place where the river throbs its autumn timpani over a sounding board of rocks, all the things right and good about fall angling can be found among deep runs and gleaming ripples.
This is the season when the river’s largest fish nose into the shallows in search of grasshoppers and other opportunistic meals. It’s also when the autumn cycle of baetis mayflies, popularly known as the blue-winged olive, brings brown trout to the surface for the final major insect hatch of the season.
All this occurs against a backdrop of tall mountains and seasonal hues conjuring up magical images that too soon will fade beneath the monochrome of winter.
When Stuart Andrews wades into the river in late afternoon, it seems as if he is moving through a ribbon of gold foil. Overhead, birds become black etchings against a canvas of unrelenting blue.
Andrews, a Buena Vista resident, divides his attention between work as a fly-fishing guide for the ArkAnglers shop and a painter of landscapes, a symbiosis that frequently brings him to the same places.
He is an artist at both. Rod and brush dance with a practiced rhythm that captures those dual attractions of the upper Arkansas: scenic beauty and willing trout.
“When water temperature reaches about 60 degrees, the BWOs start to emerge in late afternoon,” Andrews said of a delicate balancing act in which the small insects perform best beneath cloud cover.
Thus an angler prays for warm sun for much of the day, followed by the afternoon clouds that trigger the best hatches.
The Arkansas River is most famous for its blizzard hatches of caddis flies in late April and early May, an event that sends both fish and fishermen into a sort of crazed frenzy. But veterans such as Andrews know it is the BWO action of the shoulder seasons before and after the caddis that provides the most reliable, and enduring, action.
In autumn, anglers can add the exclamation point of grasshoppers, particularly on those days punctuated by wind.
“In the morning, larger browns come into the shallows, no more than 2 feet of water, to look for hoppers,” Andrews explained.
This phenomenon lasts longest farther downstream, in the reaches below Salida, where autumn wages more stubborn resistance to the inevitable wave of winter.
Even then, there’s fishing to be done. On warmer winter days, midges flutter on the surface, attracting the occasional trout. And always there is the prospect of taking fish keyed to the ever-present midge larvae and pupae.
Andrews’ favorite autumn rig consists of a Stimulator as a dry-fly indicator trailing what has been the season’s best subsurface producer, the Hot Wire Prince nymph.
This revision of the standard Prince features a ribbed abdomen of extra-fine wire, alternating red and yellow, an arrangement that sinks the fly deeper while flashing a beacon of seduction.
Andrews prefers it in sizes 16 and 18 in keeping with the smaller insect sizes of the season. In winter, his midge sizes run much smaller, sizes 20 and 22.
For now, those periods between storm surges keep the lure of surface activity and the colors of autumn. It’s all pure gold.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
