Durango, Colorado - Destination Home Base

We arrived to find perfect weather in Colorado.  We were ready for some serious exploring and some physical activity in the mountains.

Durango is a quaint small town, nestled in and around the beautiful Animas River Valley and surrounded by the majestic San Juan Mountains.

 










The Animas River—El Río de las Animas—runs through the center of town and offers excellent fly fishing waters.  This time of year the snow melt is nearly over but earlier in the year it is and popular for whitewater rafting, kayaking and canoeing.

We fished both the mountain lakes and the rivers as well.  Since it was late in the season, the rivers and streams were not full, in fact, they were quite low in places.  The goal in trout fishing is locating water that could hold fish.

River Fishing:

Most important---- It is a river’s pools that provide the trout with a combination of fast and slow-moving water that it seeks most. 


 

Pools in a river or stream are fed by a boiling ‘rapid’. A rapid is the fast, shallow, aerated (sometimes called ‘white water’) water at the head of the pool.

In most rapids, a river drops a meter or more on its course towards the sea. Rapids flow over large boulders and of course contain a steady supply of super energy food for trout like mayfly, stonefly and caddis nymphs – especially when a hatch is occurring.

Usually a rapid is concentrated by the rock formation of the riverbed into a major serious narrow V-shape as it enters the head of the pool. The fast white water runs directly into the pool from the rapid and creates a stretch of quieter water, smooth really cool water, on either side of it. It is this quiet water, HOT WATER----- that lends itself to being described as a  super charged ‘pool’.

Some rapids enter at a sharper angle than others, thus creating some major cool slack water on only one side of the fish laden pool. A well-defined pool is the TROUT's river favorite....... feeding station.

Pools give a big trout a concentrated super hot supply of food directly contiguous to, are u ready------ slower-moving water that doesn’t require much energy to occupy. 

Do you get it ?

Trout habitually "Hang really......Hang in this really super cool quiet water, watching for...FOOD." insects as they come cruzing down in the fast water.  All, I can say is....."Lets get hooked up" !!ll

Thanks for your time and I’ll see you in the Wide Open Outdoors.

Dave