Good Trip.....Sad River

I just returned from a few days on the San Juan with Larry and John.  We were graciously loaned Taylor's new Hog Island Drift boat to take on the trip and stayed with Chris at the Fishead's Lodge.  Chris's place is, in my opinion, the best place to stay on the river, with the best accomodations, best guides and definitely the best food around.  Stay with these folks just to eat the red or green chili on their monster burritos or anything else you want to slather it on.
I've been fishing the San Juan for a little over 40 years now. I first went there when I was in college with my Dad.  He and I fished the Juan a lot until his death in 1987.  I have lots of memories of sitting on a small Island in the Braids talking about flies, whisky, ex wives and a myriad of other stuff.......decades of other stuff interupted by rising fish which were always beautiful 17 to 22 inch Rainbows that would, in the old days take a dry fly and run away with it.  Nymphing always ruled on the San Juan from the days of the original San Juan Worm, which is nothing like the ones used now, to the size 24 midge larvae of current day.  We used to see killer BWO and PMD hatches on the Juan with size 16 adults and midge larvae that were also size 16.  Those days are definitely gone, but the river has always held an attraction for me.  The fish were still nice, though battle scarred, and the bugs were smaller but what the hell.  It's the place where I learned to really fly fish. 
This trip was different.  All three of us guys are fairly decent fishermen.  We do kinda know what we're doing even though we tend to not like to deep nymph fish, we still will do in Rome as the Romans do.  Over three days of fishing the upper three miles, we caught, between us, less than 10 nice fish that I would consider "San Juan fish".  The couple of hundred or so others were stockers from 6 inches to 13 inches, depending on what month they were stocked.  Stocked fish were everywhere and would beat the nice fish to your fly, top or bottom.  Huge pods of stockers worked the deeper pools and runs.  Why so many of them?  It seemed biologically out of whack.  The Diddy Mo Algae is intense.  Perhaps that has something to do with a loss of fish.  Perhaps it's the fishing pressure.  Perhaps it's both.  A single drift with a double nymph rig would result in a #22 midge larva being the size of a quarter with rock snot attached.  I have seen the algae for the past few years, but not like this.  I'm told it's better after the high water releases in May, but it must return in an awful big hurry.  Nasty stuff that makes you fall out of love. 
I don't know if I'm over reacting or if the businesses on the San Juan are under reacting.  Lots of things are not what they used to be but this is rediculous.  I going to pray for the San Juan, but as long as no one there thinks there is a problem, it won't be fixed.  I guess I'll give it a break and when my little island in the Braids starts to call, I'll go back with high expectations.

Here's a little something to take away the late fall chill:

 

 

Carne Adovada Pork Chops

This dish was made famous by Sadie's in Albuquerque.  It is their house special.  My version has smoked pork chops.  I smoke center cut chops with Mesquite or Apple wood.  You can buy pre smoked chops in most good food stores, so you could do that, but they're not as good.  Several issues back, I passed along my Carne Adovada Ribs.  Do both and totally crush a tailgate party. 

Six 1/2 inch center cut or rib chops                                 5 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon black pepper                                                  1 tbs cumin                                    

1 teaspoon sea salt                                                           4 cups water

one dozen dried red chilies (Pablano or Big Jims) hot as you want

2 sweet onions  

Reconstitute peppers by steaming them in 4 cups of water until they are soft.  Remove the stems and place pepper in a food processor or blender with chopped onion, garlic, salt, pepper and cumin.  Reduce to a paste.  Add the water you steamed the peppers in and blend until you have a salsa like texture.  Place a layer of chops in a baking dish and spoon some Adovada sauce over them.  Continue with the other chops but save the majority of the sauce to pour over the top.  Cook at 275 degrees for four hours.  Serve over pinto beans and rice with a side of flour tortillas.

First Real Day of Fall

Yesterday was my day off to fish and I had great expectations of blue wings hatching in the cloudy weather.  As if often does in Colorado, however, the cloudy day quickly turned into a cold drenching rain that never subsided all day.  So, instead of drifing #20 BWOs, I quickly changed directions and went with a extra fast sinking leader and a nice stinger hooked streamer called a "Slap n' Tickle".  I seriously love that name and by the way, fish liked it too.  My first take was a 20 inch Brown that literally tried to tear the rod from my hand.  He rolled up to the surface below me and showed me the fly.  The perfect take for streamer fishing.  The next couple of fish were more tame but only a little smaller.  Then street runoff from the rain in Canon City dominated the rest of day and my BWO hatch never really happened.  As I sat on a park bench drinking Larry Kingrey's single cask MacCallan from his flask, I watched a small fish slap at a single BWO.  Just remined me of what I came to see.  All in all, it was a great morning.  Good fishing for about an hour with a good friend, drinking his whiskey.  After all, the best single malt is somebody else's.  When you make that decision, you know you are a true Scottsman. 

As you know, on a cold and cloudy day, my thoughts turn to something with a lot of chili in it for dinner.  Try this recipe on for size.

 

Carne Adovada Pork Chops

This dish was made famous by Sadie's in Albuquerque.  It is their house special.  My version has smoked pork chops.  I smoke center cut chops with Mesquite or Apple wood.  You can buy pre smoked chops in most good food stores, so you could do that, but they're not as good.  Several issues back, I passed along my Carne Adovada Ribs.  Do both and totally crush a tailgate party. 

Six 1/2 inch center cut or rib chops                                 5 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon black pepper                                                  1 tbs cumin                                    

1 teaspoon sea salt                                                           4 cups water

one dozen dried red chilies (Pablano or Big Jims) hot as you want

2 sweet onions  

Reconstitute peppers by steaming them in 4 cups of water until they are soft.  Remove the stems and place pepper in a food processor or blender with chopped onion, garlic, salt, pepper and cumin.  Reduce to a paste.  Add the water you steamed the peppers in and blend until you have a salsa like texture.  Place a layer of chops in a baking dish and spoon some Adovada sauce over them.  Continue with the other chops but save the majority of the sauce to pour over the top.  Cook at 275 degrees for four hours.  Serve over pinto beans and rice with a side of flour tortillas.

Where Have I Been?      

That's an excellent question.  The answer is working in the Fly Shop and fishing.  No excuses, but I am an old fart who should use this media much more and simply forgets and goes to the river instead.  My son just reminded me that If I didn't start blogging more, he was going to take down my blog from the web site.  So, here's a novel idea, maybe I'll start blogging more.  I find social media such as blogs, facebook, twitter and the like extremely interesting, but I fail to use them.  Why is that?  An old sociology professor should be able to answer that question with some degree of wisdom.  Why does a certain age group not naturally gravitate to new ideas?  My answer is..."I don't know"  I'm too old to care.  I think when we reach the last 20 possible years of our life, a genetic code kicks in that tells us what is important to our well being and our place in the social structure.  What is important to me is my friends, both of them, my son and his new wife, Molly, our dog Kvichak, single malt scotch, cold Dos XXs, and fly fishing....   That may have left out a couple of things, but it's close enough.  I find scientific research, sales demographics, and social media extremely interesting and I am excited for the future they hold.  I am not one of those angry old men who hate computers, hate anyone younger than 50 and hate the government.  I dislike the government on any given day, but I've pretty much given up hate in general.  It is a gross waste of time and never accomplishes anything positive.  And, as I said before, I simply don't have time for it.  About the only thing I hate anymore is nymph fishing.

Speaking of fishing, I have been doing some.  I went over to the Frying Pan last week with brother John and got skunked.  We threw up our hands, turned around in a circle three times and went to Aspen and got drunk.  I've fished that darned river for nearly 40 years and I can't remember wearing a stripe.  First time for everything.  I blame it on the Federal Government.  It's not their fault, I just blame them......seems appropriate.  The Pan was very crowded and there are probably lots of reasons I didn't catch fish, but I haven't really fished anything but dries and emergers there for the last 20 years or so and now is not the time to start.  If I had gone to the bottom with a Green Drake Nymph and a Caddis pupa, I probably would have caught fish......or at least I think so.  When I was at the Pan two weeks before that, I railed fish on big attractors for three days, so maybe I was simply paying for that. 

I have been cooking a lot, so here's one of my newest recipes.  This is a green chile salsa that has really good feedback.  There's lots of warm afternoons on the deck left in 2012, so try this one out.  I think you'll like it.

 

Green Chile Salsa

This is a great summer salsa recipe for all us chile heads.  Try it on your chorizo omelet.

1 lb. chopped green chilies                                                            1 bunch of chopped cilantro

1 chopped white onion                                                                   1 tablespoon cumin

4 cloves minced garlic                                                                   salt and pepper to taste

2 chopped  jalapenos                                                                     

3 tomatoes, seeded and diced

You can serve this chunky like a pico or run it through a food processor for a finer texture.  Either way is great.