My guide, Matt, drove our Ford F250 to Munn Lake. We arrived there during a moment when the water looked like glass, and it reflected Ash and Vermejo Peaks. I cast a Chernobyl Ant before anything else, then changed to several different patterns during the next hour or so.
Something on my neck, crawling and feeling moist, distracted me from my fly. I reached behind my neck and took between my thumb and index finger the little insect that had somehow come to my neck. It was a Blue Damselfly nymph. I showed it to Matt, who then tied on my tippet a damselfly nymph pattern, and then the trout began to bite. I had seen cruising around me two Palomino trout, so when I saw one again I cast at it. After a third cast it took the damselfly nymph pattern. I had said to Matt, "We should try to catch one of those," referring to the Palomino, which is an un-godly cross between a Rainbow and a Californian Golden trout.
"We should catch any trout," he replied.
Across the lake, while I tried to identify a clump of brown as a beaver house, I pointed at it for Matt, who right away, with his trained eye spotted a Cinnamon bear several yards from the clump of wood. For the next hour or so we glanced up at the bear as it made its way around the lake. Eventually, though, it decided to turn around and walk around the lake to disappear into the woods at the foot of the small mountain called the Wall.
Another bear, a much smaller one, sniffed a bear catcher near the trucks. It frightened a woman who fly fished along the bank with tall weeds. In a panic she flung her fly rod into the tall weeds, removed hastily her fly fishing vest, and began whistling madly at the bear. The bear, startled, began to move away from her. At the same time, Matt sprung into action – he ran toward the bear yelling, "I'm going to tree it! I'm going to tree it!" He ran towards the startled bear waving and yelling. If I were a bear, I would run away, but it lept into a large Ponderosa pine and climbed it half-way. Matt still rushed toward it, and the woman still blared her whistle in between saying, "BEAR! Won't have any of that!" "BEAR! Won't have any of that!" The bear climbed the tree farther up the trunk. I approached feeling distraught about the bear. Obviously we had caused it some distress by harassing it up the tree. I did, though, lower myself to aim my 80-200mm f2.8 to photograph a bear in a tree – and took a couple of bad images. We climbed into our truck and left to find a stream to continue my fly fishing. I do not care to know what people did to that bear after we left. I hope they left it alone to climb down from the tree and continue its routine sniffing for food somewhere far from humans.
At Costilla Creek I fly fished for the Rio Grande Cutthroat trout. I used a small hopper pattern successfully. The trout are beautifully colored.
We drove farther up the mountain. Our mission was to reach the top above the tree line. Since the road is less travelled, we were thrown around in the truck, sideways and upwards. We saw perhaps three to four hundred elk on our way up there. The skyline looked stormy over Colorado, and lent interest to photographic images.
I felt exhausted when I phoned my Mr. Mallory, but my loving interaction with him re-energized me enough to present myself at my dinner table, set for one, and enjoy a good meal before collapsing in bed for a deep sleep.
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