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Deer Creek

Sometimes You Find Something Good

story and photos by Ron Dungan

Found in: | Outside | Fishing | Fly Fishing |

A darkness gathers in the valley. Storm clouds, slate gray and full of rain, roll across the meadow, where a stream carves deep channels with cut banks. The meadow pinches into a canyon, the creek tumbles through a granite chute that drops into the forest, where brown trout take dry flies drifted over riffles and pools. White cumulus clouds press in and thunder rumbles until the storm unloads. I pull on my rain jacket and fish my way back to camp.
Deer Creek lies somewhere off the beaten path in south-central Colorado, just over the pass from Chama, N.M. A tributary of the Conejos River, it doesn't get a lot of pressure. A guide once told me that more people fish the San Juan River in an afternoon than fish the Conejos all spring. The best fishing at Deer Creek, not its real name, requires hiking 3 to 6 miles or more.
There are hundreds of miles of trout streams in the Four Corners, but a lot of people pass them up to fish the San Juan, where a perfect storm of steady hatches, good habitat, and cool water temperatures produce big trout. The big trout are nice, but the San Juan can be a crowded and technical place to fish. After a few days of dodging drift boats and anglers, of nymphing rigs with small flies designed to catch trout that have seen it all, sometimes I need a little solitude. Fishing trips become layered adventures, with time on the San Juan and time on mountain streams.
All you have to do to find a remote stream near the San Juan is point the truck north or east to higher ground, away from the high desert's rippled badlands and muddy water. You sift through maps, memories and lies told in fly shops, strap on a backpack or car camp your way across the high country. Sometimes you find something good - a brook trout stream with a pool of risers, a lake with a nice view, a river with rainbows and browns. The miles go by, the mountain air cools my desert bones. Fish on alpine streams are usually small, and a 13- or 14-inch fish can make your whole trip.

The rain passes, but the clouds keep swirling. Jill comes out of the tent, we have lunch and go watch the light change across the valley. The stream meanders through a series of meadows, each one a little higher and deeper into the mountains, a little more remote, with fish that don't see many anglers. But meadow trout spook easily. The water is clear and slow, the fish accustomed to their surroundings. Footsteps, fly lines, the thump of a hopper and movement send them diving for cover. The mere act of casting sends these fish darting about before your fly touches the water. I finally started to kneel and drift my flies downstream, without casting, shaking the line out, but even then I seemed to get only one or two shots at each riser. The stream seldom carried the fly to just the right spot, and when I recast, the fish stopped feeding. Finally, I gave up and went to the fast water, to catch a few fish that weren't quite as spooky.
Now I'm back at the meadow, looking out at the glassy water. The storm clouds have triggered a hatch, bringing trout to the surface. Mayflies. The bugs float downstream, their sailboat profile passing, their flesh too good for even these trout to pass up. In the fast water, I could try an Adams, but my guess is that the meadow fish might want something more precise, a small comparidun with a tailing shuck, perhaps. All mine are in my San Juan box, miles away in the truck, but I find one in Jill's fly box - she is not fishing today - and look out at the rising fish. There is a fish along the cut bank, behind a small tree. I will have one shot at this.
I move slowly, behind the brush. I dap to him, swing my fly around the tree and drift it along the cut bank. Seconds pass. I wonder if I have spooked him. The water boils and I set, the line goes tight, the fish is on.

It starts simply. We go to a small lake or stream, throw a woolly worm with some awkward casts, take a few small rainbows. As we get drawn deeper into it, our simple hobby becomes an obsession, the obsession becomes a way of life, the way of life a layered progression of seasons and travel, a movement from one thing to the next: Stream fishing, lake fishing, pond fishing, steelhead fishing, salmon fishing, streamer fishing, bass fishing, saltwater fishing, urban fishing. Soon our closets and garages are full of float tubes, kick boats, rods, reels, fly boxes. Small fortunes can vanish into black holes of plane tickets, boats, guides and arsenals of gear.
But it has to start somewhere. For many of us, it's a small stream in a forest, an alpine lake with risers, a quiet place where you can forget about the things that complicate life for a while. You can get too worked up about overly romanticized images of the sport, but it's always good to get back to places like that.

The fish tore off downstream, where other fish had been rising. He fought like big browns do, racing everywhere, diving for bottom. I let him run, then slowly brought him in. He was about 16 or 17 inches, a good fish for an alpine stream.
On the third day, we fished our way downstream for a while. We landed a few fish, then put the rods away. It's fun to hike with a rod strung up, but you don't get very far, and if you're not careful you wind up coming off the trail at dark. Sometimes that's OK because you plan it that way, or tell yourself you did after the fact. Other times, you're beat up, hungry and tired and wondering where the day went. So I started walking, pushing a little to cover ground and get in shape for an upcoming hike in Grand Canyon. We made pretty good time once the rods were put away, stopping briefly to watch a doe browsing along the trail and then to have lunch. We drove over the mountains and into Chama Valley just before sunset.
We found a small cabin along the river that didn't cost an arm and a leg, and I started to grab my gear to fish before dark. Then I remembered that I didn't have a New Mexico license, so I put the rod away and grabbed a beer instead, went out to watch the last light on the river. Fish rose on the water. Everywhere, there were rings, rippling out over the glassy flow. Caddis fluttered in the air, and a chill moved into the valley. Autumn. The colors were not turning yet, but change was coming to the high country, and the trout ate their fill.

RON DUNGAN is a Phoenix, Ariz.-based writer who spends his non-work time fly fishing, backpacking or bird hunting.