Pueblo's Arkansas River Tailwater: Parting With Winter

“Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.”  Rilke

March is a strange transitional month for me. I have the option to ski or fish and both can be wonderful.  This past weekend my wife and I had plans to head west to Breckenridge and carve tellemark turns on the slopes but I then felt the urge to part with winter and fly fish.  My wife also has an ache for winter to be over. So, instead, I suggested we head south to visit the Arkansas River below Pueblo dam which has emerged in recent years as  a quality tail-water. My wife would run along the trail and then sit in the sun and read while I fished. We would both be ahead of winter, as though it were already behind us.  

We woke up to a thin layer of snow on our deck in Manitou Springs and headed south through clouds and fog and spitting snow. I tried to reassure my wife that it would be warm sun bathing weather in Pueblo. She was not convinced and neither was I, but as we headed farther south the clouds eventually started to separate as we slowly parted with winter.

When we arrived at the Pueblo Nature Center my wife went running along the river on the trail system. I geared up and fished just behind the nature center and was quickly in to a good number of  fish right from the start. I ended up landing a dozen feisty rainbows mainly in the 14 inch range, with a few larger fish up to 18 inches. I pulled the hook out of two that were 20 inches. I fished a 2 fly nymphing system with an apricot egg on top and a size 18 bead head pheasant tail as the dropper. As the morning progressed I changed the dropper to various small emergers such as size 22, RS2’s,  and Cheeseman emergers and all these caught fish. 

My wife met up with me and sat in the sun reading on the nature center deck and enjoyed a brief reprieve from winter while I fished a little more. The fish and the sun would come and go but overall it was an enjoyable parting from winter.

Next week,  I don’t know if we will head back south or west. I have options.