MFL Red in Shirley

[Clif]

any one done this area lately? Fish page talks about upstream a few sections. Yesterdays level 6.8 could be a tad higher but plenty good south of Shirley. Were hiking in that area and got several good looks. Would be good for big buffy boats or rafts but there were some strainers.

So would be interested in Shirley down. There are a couple of spots that have county road access. Gonna do some more exploring on topos and in the real world. May start running into GFL a tad.

any info? any interest?

[ieatcrayons]

i am interested. i have always wanted to do from Leslie to the lake..... but ahh... thats a lot of nothing back off in there =)

[Clif]

from what i see/read.... leslie to Shirley has some long shoals that are known to be strainer filled rapids at higher water. Just above shirley much of that part migt be scoutable from the old rroad.. still a road. Uses the old rroad bridge at Shirley. Arlberg-Lexington area has a road that accesses. I can put some coords later. That would be quite a one trip stretch.

The Leslie and above areas could be interesting also. But I was thinking big boat family trip. S'posed to talk to a guy that has done down from Shirley on fishing trips

Saw several tires, Coop

[gma06001-]

I am also interested! I've been working up on the Archey Fork in Clinton but we sampled fish on just about all of the major forks of the Little Red and they are beautiful. Quite a few county roads and low water bridges for access. Dropping down to the Middle Fork on Angora Mountain Road (Arlberg) has some of the most impressive blufflines I've seen in this state. Also the gauges seem pretty far off for some of the other forks at low flows. All the runs for Archey and South Fork are extrapolated from the Middle Fork gauge I believe. I check every time I'm out there and a lot of times there is plenty of water to float and the gauges say they are too low. I'll have to do a little more research on that.

-mitch allen

[Shark Attack]

http://southwestpaddler.com/docs/whitear14.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm game for some exploring

[Roger]

Just a quick look at the Google map shows a stream with many sandy features interspersed with large pools along with some narrower sections. Would think that depending on access availibilites, this might have some potential for at least some canoe-powered overnighters along with some fishing.

Minimal miles and maximum time on the stream!

You can bet that someone else has been down that river with the same intent!!

Something to look at in the future.

[Clif]

Thanks for that! Exploring that road/rail grade is what got me started.

[Cowper]

Yes, I'm interested too. Debbie and I drove around "road scouting" the Middle Fork once, but never got around to floating it. A lot of the accesses seemed to be on private land, we more or less just wandered off checking out other things instead and never made it back.

Mitch, there are several new gages on the South Fork now. The OWP bases on the South Fork at Clinton, which is so far downstream that it doesn't always let you know what you need to know, when you need to know it. But there are now better gages further upstream, located right in the sections we like to float.