GUNNISON, Colo.--Sometimes you can drive through a place a half-dozen times and never see it, then one day you stop and you really take it all in for the first time.
That is how I was with Gunnison, Colorado. I've been through this town too many times over the past 25 years to count them or remember any one trip. I've even fished here before. My most memorable fishing trip with my two kids involved Gunnison 15 years ago when I was driving my daughter Jamia and my son Chris back to California where they lived with their mother.
It was the end of the summer and Blue Mesa Reservoir, just a few miles west of Gunnison, was too inviting to pass up so we stopped at one of the turnouts. After stringing three spinning rigs, we sat down on the bank to do some bait fishing and talk about the summer we'd just had, and the summers we would have in the years to come.
Before we had gotten too far into our conversation one of us had a serious bite from an unseen trout, and within a few minutes that fish was put on ice and another one hit, and then another, and another. The kids and I talked it over and decided to fish for the afternoon because none of use was eager to see the summer end.
We were late getting to the kid's grandmother's house in California, but she quickly stopped complaining about my irresponsibility when I handed several large, chunky rainbow trout, cleaned and iced down.
"We'll, I was worried," she snapped.
"We were fishing," I said.
"What's more important?" she demanded.
"Fishing," I said.
Then I hugged my kids, got back in the pickup and headed for San Diego to do some surf fishing and see an editor. The fishing was more important but I needed the money from the editor.
After that my only visits to Gunnison were passing through as I drove to someplace I thought was important. I should have stopped. At the Outdoor Writers Association of America Annual Conference in Duluth, Minnesota, last June, the Gunnison Chamber of Commerce and other local promoters were busy passing out literature and telling the writers about Gunnison. I picked up their material out of a sense of loyalty to another Colorado community.
At home my wife and I started investigating places to research fishing articles. We were planning to take a Jayco camping trailer and spend the days combining fishing with work (including some columns for All Outdoors). The plan was to fish in the morning, write in the afternoon, and then fish in the evening. I figured that is about as close to the perfect lifestyle a person is going to get in this lifetime, even if it is only for a few weeks of the year.
A True Rod and Gun Mecca
There are a lot of places around the country that claim to be some sort of sportsman's paradise, including where I live--Canon City, Colorado--which it is not.
But Gunnison is. In the first two day's of fishing around this western Colorado town I've used a fly rod, spinning rod, bait, lures, flies. I've fished catch-and-release trophy trout waters, where the fish are big enough to break a wimp rod, and I've sat on a sun-warmed rock on the bank of Blue Mesa and with my wife Gail and talked about dreams, while we scratched our dogs' ears, and bait fished for stocker rainbows that have turned wild and chunky in the cold, clear depths of the lake.
We fished Taylor Reservoir, a high-mountain reservoir famous for producing huge Mackinaw lake trout that also has reproducing populations of browns and cutthroat and is stocked regularly. We fished the Taylor River which has monster trout in its catch-and-release waters.
There are more lakes and streams than I could fish in a month. The Gunnison County Economic Development Corporation has a fishing committee which has published an 11-page Gunnison Country Angling Guide, to help people like me find places to fish. This excellent little guide lists 25 lakes and 53 streams or rivers open for fishing in the Gunnison region! There are at least 26 camping areas listed and several times that number of picnic and day-use areas.
Don't Forget the Autumn
A number of years ago I made several trips to this area to hunt sage grouse. My grouse hunting partner died about the same time my springer Grettel was killed, so I haven't been back to this area for the bird hunting. That is going to change this fall.
We always had good luck on seeing the birds (less luck on hitting them) and reports are the populations are still very huntable. There is a long-term study underway to determine if the summer recreational vehicle users are disturbing the grouse nesting grounds and causing a population decline by driving their infernal combustion machines off the designated roads and into nesting areas.
According to locals and the Colorado Division of Wildlife, there are still lots of birds in the area and there isn't any cause for alarm. There are, however, plans to restructure the season dates to insure there won't be a problem in the future. I'll study the dates, load up my new springer Jenny, and head for Gunnison country this fall.
One of the reasons we hunted sage grouse around Gunnison was that in the middle of the day we could put down our shotguns and go fishing in one of the local streams or lakes. Later in the fall--when the waterfowl, deer, and elk seasons are open--Gunnison takes on a whole new flavor as the blaze orange crowd invades the countryside. I've never hunted the area for big game, although I've talked to people who hunt here each year and claim it is one of the best regions in Colorado. That may be true.
On this trip Gail and I pulled the Jayco camper trailer into the Gunnison KOA campground. We opted to stay in the KOA because it is centrally located, we know what the standards are for KOAs, and it is close to the fishing. Staying here in midweek allowed us to miss most of the day-drive weekender campers; all our neighbors have been people who are here for the fishing and recreation because they wanted to come to Colorado.
It's been quiet, and at night we've taken our dogs for walks on the pet walk around the campground's trout fishing pond. During the afternoons, I have been sitting under the trailer's rollout canopy working on my laptop while the kids have played in the nearby playground. The most noise has been the occasional truck on the highway. The campground is clean, quiet, and perfectly located to give me quick access to whatever fishing waters I want.
Gunnison Proper
In travels around the country I've been in towns where the cowboy's attitude is king. If you're not wearing boots and a baseball cap with some manufacturer's name on it, then you were one of "them."
On the other hand, there are places like Vail, Colorado, where I have had to seriously wonder if the residents were really from the same planet, and fly fishing is a fashion statement and hunting is a four-letter word.
Somewhere between the two extremes is a real world where gourmet coffee shops co-exist with general stores where saddles, guns, and bait hooks are stocked next to fly rods and copies of John Gierach's latest collection of essays on the life of the trout fisherman. That seems to be Gunnison, Colorado. I went downtown to buy odds-and-ends and stopped in Gene Taylor's Sporting Goods, where fly fishing and bait fishing can be found under one roof. In the back of the store, the gun section was being expanded and another section was being remodeled to accommodate an expanding stock of outdoor shoes.
On Main Street there are coffee shops and restaurants that appear more suited to being in the upscale Boulder Mall than on the Main Street of a town where fishing and hunting are an economic pillar. I went inside one gourmet coffee shop and there were four New Age types at one table, two cowboys at another, and a guy wearing a fishing hat was browsing the book shelves. That was when I decided there is a little bit of Bohemia here in Gunnison, Colorado, and it is something that I like and want to come back to.
The folks from this town who took the time and expense to attend the Outdoor Writer's Conference and promote their part of the world knew what they were doing and why. Gunnison, Colorado is worth the effort to get here.
If you want more information on the Gunnison area write the following: Gunnison County Economic Development Corp., Dept. GLG/AO, Gunnison, CO 81230, or Curecanti National Park Recreational Area, Blue Mesa Reservoir, Dept. GLG/AO 102 Elk Creek, Gunnison, CO 81230. Be sure to tell them All Outdoors sent you.
Time to go fishing in the Gunnison River.
Best,
Galen L. Geer
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