Rio San Antonio - Valles Caldera

May 29, 2009

I took off work for a few days to go fly fishing with my wife and my grandchildren and do some household chores. Well, there were more chores than spare time but I was still able to go fishing. The last time I went fishing was October 2008 with my wife Ella and Brandon and Kyra, our great-grandchildren.

I set up a spot on the Rio San Antonio on the Valles Caldera for Friday May 29th. I picked reach 3 which is about 2.9 miles of water. We left home at 4:30 am and arrived at the main gate at 6:00 am. The valleys were thick with fog and the temperature was 30 degrees. We were there about 10 minutes and an employee opened the gate for us. This year you can drive out to the fishing reach rather than in a van to your spot. This is nice for a number of reasons.

I was excited to go fishing with Brandon and also anxious to try out my new Sage fly rod and Ross reel. This year is the first year Brandon fished with his own rod while I fished with mine. We were on the water about 8:00 am to make our first cast. The water was a little off-color but this is not such a bad thing…the fish do not spook nearly as easily.

We each started with a Prince nymph and after about 3 casts I set my hook in a nice brown trout. We fished for awhile longer and I tied on an elk hair caddis and fish it for a few casts to no avail. I fished at the edge of the water where the water was clearer and still nothing. I put the Prince nymph on my line again and got another fish immediately. We set up our lines with a strike indicator about 18 inches up from the fly and that seemed to be the best.

We fished all the riffles and long runs but most of the fish were in the deep bends of the stream. I was up to my 9th fish and Brandon asked if he could bring it in and of course "yes" was the answer. That got him fired up a little. He had yet to catch a fish. I used to set the hook in a fish and let him bring them in and last year he caught his first fish on his own so I decided this year was time for him to cast and catch fish on his own with his own fly rod.

By 11:30 it was time to eat our lunch...peanut butter and jelly, of course. At this point Brandon had not caught and landed a fish on his own. Well, that was about to change, big time. While eating our lunch we traded war stories and I was explaining casting and other techniques to help him.

The first cast after lunch for Brandon was the beginning of a great day for him. I noticed he was gaining more confidence in his casting and it was evident with his setting the hook and landing more fish. He and I seemed to catch fish for the remainder of the day almost in unison.

We both caught and released a lot of fish. We quit counting after awhile. If we would have only fished to the pockets of water in the bends of the stream we would have covered a lot more water and caught even more fish. I am very proud of Brandon for his improvement. The first time I took him to the Valles Caldera he was 7 years old. He is 12 now and this was his first year needing a fishing license which is an important milestone for him. It is very gratifying to see all the improvements in his fishing technique over the last few years.

We had a great day of fishing but just being together, as he told me, is just as important.

…tight lines…Phil