There was a little bit of fishing done this past week. On Thursday Jess and I hiked in and fished a river close to town. We headed out after I got released from work around 10am. Between the drive over and hiking in we didn’t start fishing until around 1:30, towards the end of the “bite window” that I was told this river had. The weather was in the mid 20’s and sunny when we started and stayed consistent for the next hour and a half in the bite window. The fish were definitely active during this time. We saw fish in faster moving water feeding and fish rising on the surface of deeper eddies and pools. We caught a number of fish on nymphs and a couple on streamers towards the end of the window. Once 3 rolled along the fish activity dramatically fell off and the weather took a shift to cloudy and sporadically snowing. Jess stopped fishing around this time but I continued fishing hard until sundown. I only moved two fish and caught 1 in the last 2 hours of fishing but it was one of the nicer fish of the day.
On Sunday I had the day off so I spent the morning skiing and catching up with Katie from Fish Untamed. We talked mostly skiing but we brought up fishing here and there. We are making plans to try to do a Ski Slam this spring when the days get a little longer and the water opens up more. Ski Slam as in ski in the morning then try to catch a brown, rainbow, brook, and cutthroat trout before the end of the day. Should be fun!
I broke off from the mountain around noon, grabbed my fishing gear, and hit the road to a new piece of water that I hoped to explore. I knew that this tailwater is closed from October 1st – December 31st but when I got there I read another sign that said that there is another closure on this section of river from November 15th – March 15th for bald eagles. I think that to have a public fishery that contains fish that our tax dollars go into closed from October 1st – March 15th is a little overkill.
Trout Travels 