High Mountain Creeks in Southwestern Colorado with Chelsey Christy (Ep. 196)

“The river seems to always give you a reason to come back.”
Chelsey Christy

In this episode we WadeOutThere with Chelsey Christy, from Denver, Colorado. Chelsey started fly fishing on Colorado’s South Platte River and immediately caught the fly fishing bug. She was spending so much time fly fishing and in her local fly shop, that they asked her to start guiding.

Chelsey soon began searching for a way to connect with nature and the river on her own, further from some of the pressured waters of the front range. Her searching took her to Southwestern Colorado’s many mountain creeks and streams that she now enjoys exploring and fishing on her time away from guiding.

Chelsey is also an artist, and balances her time between guiding and painting. She has made several fishy designs for Colorado Trout Hunters Guide Service, where she also guides.

We discuss the importance of your local guide shop when starting out, tips and tactics for high mountain creeks in Southwest Colorado, and how Christy embraces the beauty she finds in nature through her paintings.

Chelsey shares a deep connection with the mountains and rivers that she explores while guiding and while fishing alone. That connection can be seen in the way she expresses herself in art, but also in the way she takes her love of fly fishing off the beaten path. Heading up into the mountains of Southwestern Colorado is a trip that doesn’t always bring back a lot of fish. At least not at first. It’s that persistence in her pursuit of new adventures and experiences in fly fishing that reminds us that we can all go exploring when we find our waters more pressured than they were before. I know, this conversation has motivated me to do just that.

You can listen to the show on the podcast player below or anywhere that you enjoy podcasts. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I enjoyed talking with Chelsey.

VR,
Jason