Riding Out the Flood

I get to Clear Creek when the cold retreats for a few days. The warmer temps bring rain and I come in just after the rain quits.

I start upstream. The river is beautiful here, obviously scoured out by the recent spate.

This is what it looked like last year. Someone must have gone in and taken the wood out.

Now there are fishable runs on both banks.

I fished both sides, but I must have gotten there before the fish after the flood. This sand bank is still under construction. I waded it, but there are still soft spots.

I waded out and headed downstream past the bridge to the long slow bend I like to fish.

I rested a minute up on the berm of the old railroad tracks where the bridge abutments stand.

Looking down I could plainly see that the flood was indeed a flood, laying down an alluvial plain of sand far up into the woods.

When I climbed down to the water I saw that the long bend was still flooded. I waded in but the soft and yielding sand all along the bank forced me to retreat.

Farther downstream I was able to lay out some casts and get some swings in, but nothing came to the fly.

I climbed the bank into the dunes and hiked back to the truck through the woods. The high water mark was a good hundred yards from the stream.

So no fish at Clear Creek again. I did find one living thing in the river: a turtle that must have ridden out the flood.

For the past few days since I was there it has been in the teens during the day and single digits at night. I hope the turtle was able to ride out the cold, too.