Late July 2023

For some of my earlier trips on Grape Creek, see: http://hooknfly.com/2022/08/05/grape-creek-comeback/

Grape Creek near Westcliffe, Colorado, is one of my favorite waters.  Flowing some 20+ miles in a remote canyon between DeWeese Reservoir and Canon City with only five public access points, over the past decade it has proven to be a great brown trout fishery plus providing an occasional thrill of a big rainbow.  But like most rivers in the West, Grape Creek has faced a series of threats including a huge gold mine in its watershed and wildly fluctuating water levels caused by irrigation demands and drought that have left water levels so low as to almost dry up the stream in summer.  More recently a series of catastrophic floods in 2019 scoured insects and fish from the stream, leaving it a mere shadow of its former self.

I experienced firsthand the deleterious impacts of these floods when in 2020 I led a visiting fishing buddy from Florida on an expedition into the canyon, having promised him hungry fish, only to narrowly avoid being skunked after six hours of flailing the water.  Two puny, malnourished brown trout helped avoid that ignominy.  Fortunately, by my next outing on the creek in the summer of 2022 with the same buddy my reputation was restored–we fooled a couple of dozen brown trout, including a leviathan of 18-inches, in addition to a surprisingly good number of smaller rainbows.

Later that fall I returned and found the rainbows outnumbering the brownies on the same stretch.   It started me wondering what was up. Was this natural recovery and reproduction by those rainbows or had some fish escaped from DeWeese Reservoir miles upstream or migrated from the Arkansas River below? Maybe some stocking going on, although these rainbows didn’t have the bland colors and frayed fins common with hatchery trout.

Now it’s fast forward to 2023, and I am embarking on my first trip of the year to Grape Creek, a pre-birthday celebration as I turn three-quarters of a century old tomorrow!  The weather is perfect as is the water level which has been a steady 23 cfs the past week.  I have bushwhacked down into the canyon several miles below the lake. 

I am using my TFO 4# rod with a #16 Chubby Chernobyl in anticipation of a major hopper hatch with a #18 Tung Teaser to imitate the scads of mayfly nymphs I find scrambling around when I pick up a rock from the streambed. 

I strike out in the first pool, but the second and third produce some smaller rainbows and browns.  Not the hot action I expected.  I check the rocks again and find far more caddis cases and larva, so switch the dropper to a #18 beadhead sparkle caddis larva.  That proves to be the ticket. 

Now the action is fast and furious.  In a run below a short stretch of rapids I fool a couple of muscular rainbows, one almost 14-inches. 

Next pool I get more rainbows and one 13-inch brownie, most on the dropper. 

That pattern continues as I net another dozen fish by lunch in addition to several long-distance releases. But surprisingly, the rainbows predominate as I catch four bows to every brown, a remarkable turnabout from the years before the floods.

I again mull over the mystery as wolf down my lunch and quaff my RC Cola elixir.  Natural reproduction?  DeWeese or Arkansas River migrants?  Stockers?  I soon head downstream to test the various hypothesis with some serious piscatorial research.  Now the hopper hatch is in full swing, and the Chubby Chernobyl excels as I work back upstream. 

I come to a favorite pool created by a giant boulder about 10 feet below a shallow rapid. 

I catch a rainbow and brown in the pool, then am surprised by a big rainbow that smashes the Chubby as it bounces down the rapids above.  As soon as he feels the sting of the hook, pandemonium breaks loose as the feisty finned creature goes shooting downstream right by me.  I do a graceful pirouette while issuing some choice expletives and then give chase.  But just as I catch up with the rascal, he shoots back upstream past the boulder and actually climbs through the rapids into the pool above, much like a wild salmon would do.  I reverse course and fortunately catch up when he decides to take a little rest.  I finally slide my net under a beautiful, strapping 15-inch rainbow! 

In the next pool downstream, I coax a 14-inch neon rainbow to strike as well as a respectable 13-inch brownie.  For the next couple of hours I fool two or three trout in every pool or decent run.  Overall for the day, I catch and release over three dozen fish with a 4:1 ratio of rainbows vs. brooks—almost just the opposite of the pattern before the floods.  What gives??  The bows look and act wild with freckles all over their faces, sleek, perfect streamlined bodies, and plenty of spunk. 

Several weeks later I navigate the rough, narrow 4wd road down to the creek at Bear Gulch, one of the few public access points.

The creek here flows through a large spectacular Bureau of Land Management wilderness study area.

I saunter up the stunning canyon, taking time to enjoy the abundant wildflowers, butterflies, and groves of giant cottonwoods along the creek.

I have another excellent day catching and releasing a couple of dozen fish. The rainbow/ brown split is about 50:50 compared to my past forays when the browns outnumbered the rainbows nearly 10:1 in this stretch. Most of the fish measure 10-14 inches, although I see a few larger finning in the depths of some deep pools.

https://videopress.com/v/c2WwkFim?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

Now I am really flummoxed.  So I make a mental note to contact the Salida office of Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) to see what they think is behind the rainbow resurgence up and down Grape Creek. 

When I called the next week I am lucky to connect with Alex Townsend, the helpful, knowledgeable aquatic biologist for the Arkansas River region, and he gave me the real skinny.  Rainbows, a variety of which had been stocked throughout the creek since the late 1980s, were virtually wiped out by the floods of 2019.  He tells me the brown trout seem to persist well in this system, bounce back better with natural reproduction, and are already showing some population growth, albeit slow.  However, the flooding gave him a chance to stock a new whirling disease-resistant strain of rainbow trout that is a cross between a Hofer from Germany, that is naturally resistant, with rainbow from the Gunnison River.  The Gunnison rainbows seem to have some natural resistance, are strong, wild fish, and have shown reproductive success.  He hoped that stocking these rainbows would give them a head start over the browns that seem to do well on their own.  He added that because the browns and rainbows have a somewhat different forage base and habitat, while there may be some competition, they don’t fully overlap.  Also, they do not use the same reproductive habitat during the same time of the year—browns spawn in the fall and rainbows in the spring.  My own experience this year and in the past supports Townsend’s point—I have caught many rainbows in faster, shallower water than browns which seem to favor deeper pools and slower runs.

CPW began stocking the hybrid rainbows from the Mt. Shavano Fish Hatchery near Salida in 2021 to the tune of 15,000 per year in 7-8 locations from the confluence of Grape Creek with the Arkansas near Canon City up to below DeWeese Reservoir.  He added that the stocked fish were about 2”-3” in size with an annual growth rate of about three inches although this is highly dependent on habitat and forage. Some fish will grow faster and some slower, he explained.  (The 15-incher I caught must have been feasting on those new steroid-infused hopper flies you can get at Ark Anglers.)  Townsend noted that next year he will be evaluating the population through electrofishing to determine if natural reproduction is occurring.

After hearing this explanation from Alex, I felt a bit like the inimitable Mr. Watson having just been educated by a piscatorial Sherlock Holmes, Townsend having provided a cogent explanation of the curious case of the resurgent rainbows. Quite elementary my dear Mr. Watson!!  It also gave me an even greater appreciation of the fine, hard-working folk at CPW like Alex.  Kudos to them for protecting and enhancing our rivers and streams.  They have created and maintained a wonderful fishery in Grape Creek with a vibrant mix of rainbows and browns. With climate change, habitat loss, and myriad other pressures our waters face, I am more thankful than ever for their efforts.  If you have some spare time, Alex and his CPW colleagues are periodically looking for volunteers to assist in their important projects—give them a ring at 719-539-5520.