Weeks of 6/17/24, 6/24/24
by Nick
Posted on July 4, 2024
I've been pretty busy the last few weeks so have been trying to update my weely posts and do some extra writing but have honestly been too tired and running too much. So today is July fourth and i am playing catchup. Today we are drining to see Alee and Alex in Red River for the july 4th parade. I am going to do two weeks in one post. For Fathers Day Ryan and I took the families fly fishing in the Jemez. We had a pretty successful trip. We were after Cutthroats in some of the smaller streams on the Cuba side of HWY 126 while we didnt catch any cut throats both Ryan and I caught a few brookies. Then Thursday we left at noon to go to the gunnison river fly fishing. Thursday night we stayed at Kendall campground just outside of Silverton Colorado. The drive between Durango and Montrose is probably the most beautiful drive I have ever been on. We packed up camp and made the rest of the drive to the Gunnison. It was an especially nice drive first thing in the morning with the sun coming up and the clouds low over the mountain top. The smell of the previous nights rain in the air and the sun casting light through the green mountainous summer landscape. It was one of those moments that you hope to remember forever. Your family healthy and happy on a trip together without the typical day to day concerns.
We made it to Montrose just in time for Ed's Fly shop to open up. Its a pretty well outfitted fly shop in the historic looking downtown area of montrose. I was primarily looking for a pair of waders since I didnt have any and We were going to be fishing the Gunnison which Ryan had told me was fairly deep so I thought that I could use some. Walking in the store I had held the door open for a tall thin blonde guy in flip flops who looked like he would have been a surfer if we were on the beach instead of in the mountains. He was pushing clothes racks up to the shop. It turned out he was a patagonia sales rep bringing stuff into the store. One of the guys on the floor was an employee who was small young and dark haired who asked me if I needed help finding anything. I told him what I was looking for and he began to show me the wader options. The Patagonia rep was clearly a salesman who gave me the pitch on the patagonia waders - lifetime satisfaction guarantee, and some of the features including the ability to quickly raise and lower the abdomen protion of the wader. I ended up getting the more expensive version of what they had which came out to $799 for the Swiftwater Expedition which is more than I wanted to spend but hopefully these are going to last me a while with the Patagonia warranty/support and heavier material. Waders had been something that I was holding off on for a while because I wanted to get some that were going to last for many years. The premium ones also had heavier fabric which was attractive to me since I tend to bomb through bushes rather than search around for established trails. They are likely going to be a bit hot in the summer but I wanted something that was going to be very versitile as well and stand up to duck hunting. They didnt have the size in stock that I needed so they had to be ordered. The owner of the shop came out sometime during all of this and offered to let me borrow some rental waders they had which was super convenient since i needed them that weekend and it was Friday. They also gave me a few recommendations on spots to fish which I ddnt end up using and helped me pick out some flys. I also bought some 9' 5X leaders and some floatant. I made my purchase and was out the door with my loaner waders.
It was raining its ass of by this time in the morning. We needed to buy some new batteries for the trailer since ours had run dead the prior winter and were only holding about half a charge. We found an interstate battery shop on the way out of town and the guy brought the batteries out in the rain and offered me some tools to help change them. I got the batteries in the camper while Tiff and Mitch stayed dry inside the truck and were on our in only 20 mins or so. Still raining with no end in sight we made our way to the place we were going to be camping at the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area.
Between the highway and the conservation area much of the area looked like a junkyard. I expect that the landscape with the clay hills wasnt very conducive to any type of agriculture and with very few trees was probably cheap land. Many of the pieces of property in the area looked like junkyards full of old cars, falling apart trailers with tires and tarps on the roof, and other random junk scattered around. I began to worry what we were getting ourselves into as the trashed places seemed to keep coming as we drove towards the river.
The exposed clay soil with little to no vegitation looked like a rainy day on the moon, Tiff and I both commented on how strange of a place it was. The road was getting very slick and we were wondering what back county camping was going to look like in this muddy landscape. We continued our way down the muddy "gravel" road to where the GPS was taking us. We didnt have any cell service so couldnt call Ryan or Hannah to make sure we were on the right track. After about half an hour of this the road teed we ran into Ryan, Hannah and the girls heading towards us. Ryan stepped out of the driver seat in the pouring rain and was aggressively waving both arms away from himself. If you imagine driving down a muddy road in the pouring rain pulling a travel trailer with your wife and kid for thirty minutes past places that looked like literal junkyards, not quite sure if you are going to the right place or not, with no cell service to see Ryan headed the other way aggressively waving his arms in the backup motion you can imagine how I felt at first. I stoped for probably 30 seconds trying to process what was happening. I looked to the left and could see boat ramp and the river and realized he was signaling me to take the left side of the fork instead of the right side that thay had first gone down. We both drove down to the boat ramp which had a nice thick gravel parking lot. We stayed at the parking lot while we waited for Ryans Cousin Stefan.
Stefan showed up with his mid 2000s four door duramax and drift boat on the back. The rain had stopped by this time and the sun had started to come out. The river was a fairly thick light brown by this time due to the runoff from the surrounding clay hills. After meeting Stephan, his Daughter, and lab/boxer mix Link we moved our campers around to try and take up less room on the large gravel parking lot and decided to camp there for the night since it there werent many others around. Shortly after we put on our waders and started fishing the shoreline from the bank. The river was fairly wide and deep which made it difficult to fish due to some pretty heavy shrubby trees and russian olives along the bank. Not knowing what to throw I put on a leech that I had got from the fly shop and missed a bite within the first few casts. I switched over to pretty much everything that I had and ended up catching a a couple of fish on dry flies. Stefans wife had son had showed up by this time and the kids were playing around the sand boat ramp using it as a beach and the sun had come out by this time.
We started dinner early for the kids. We brought burgers and the Keislings brought brats. A lightning storm started to roll in. Ryan, Stephan, and his daughter had taken the raft for a drift down the river and they got abck just before it got close. I was putting my waders on to go back out as they were getting back. I fished for another hour or so up river from the boat ramp and caught another fish or two that werent of any size worth mentioning. It was still lightning fairly close and sprinkling rain which made the fishing a little more exciting. The kids were playing in the campers most of the evening staying out of the rain and lightning. After the rain cleared up we had a campfire and made some smores and threw some large streamers on my 8 weight in the river in the dark just before going to bed without success. We went to bed shortly after to get ready for fishing in the morning.
The next morning we got in the truck andmade our way up the road that was impassible in the rain the day before. We had decided to change plans and fish the tailwaters further up river. We parked and put on our waders. After a fairly short walk we were on much better water. We could see fish surfacing as we walked along the trail to a point that there was a trail down to the river. It was a jump over the concrete canal gate dam to get to the river. Some cattle were along the trail and a small black cow tried to stand in the path and intimidate me to turn around. I shooed him along and found a narrow cattle trail along the path that led toward the river. I came out in a spot that had a nice fast narrow chute that opened into a slower riffle. I tried a few dry flies and then some nymphs on my dry rig without success. Aluminum boats with jet outboards were ferrying fishermen upstream Ryan and Stefan were a little further upriver in an area where the fish were surfacing consistently but it took a while to figure out what they were hitting. The ticket was small elkhair caddis. I was having trouble getting hookups at first and figuring out how hard to fight them since I wasnt sure how much the 6X tippet could handle. We all ended up catching quite a few fish and left them biting. We went back to the boat ramp parking area and everyone was playing down in the river.
We packed up the campers and moved camp. We played with the kids in the river and had lunch then Ryan and I went back to the same spot and fished until dark. We had some amazing fishing. Fish were surfacing all around us and it was a fish every cast as it got closer to dark. When we got back to camp the mosquitos were pretty bad so the families stayed in the trailer. The following day we slept in and got back on the road around nine for the long drive back home to New Mexico. We stopped in Pagosa Springs to let the kids play at the park and made a leftovers dinner on the grill on a side street. We got back home around Sunday evening around 10. I had a flight to Virginia the following day. I spent the week at Newport News for work.
Impactful This Week
- Patrick Bet David on Lewis Howes #271 | Money Expert: If I Was Broke Today, This is EXACTLY What I'd Do!
- 1:21 If you had to start all over what would be your first three moves?
- Make a list of 10 people and 10 circles you want to be in.
- Guys you like and admire, how they carry themselves.
- Work for someone who is a killer and can get you behind closed doors.
- 4:00 Get into planning meetings you can use for training.
- 13:00 Your Job is to serve your customers. Example - Disney providing content that parents dont want
- 23:30 Were getting away from the lives of the rich and famous. Personal thought, how much do you need to be happy
- 41:00 What holds people back from making money
- Whatever you hate/dont respect you arent going to get. You have to admire success to attract it.
- There are many ways to make money outside of entrepreneurship
- Learn skillsets that are evergreen to every industry. Leadership - The market pays great leaders no matter what industry you are in (sales, negotiation, conflict resolution). Building relationships, winning people over. Bring people together. Challenge people, have tough conversations.
- You have to increase your value to the marketplace to get to the next level. Ask yourself what do I need to do to recreate myself and get to the next level.
- Becoming the person that you need to be to attract what you want
- When considering someones advice looks at what results they have achieved
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