After 4 hours of driving in darkness under miraculous stars we arrived at the lake where the sun briefly stalled with its arrival. The back half of the lake was still covered in ice.
We met up with Kevin and Swizz and started working all around the lake in hopes to spot cruising, spawning bows. No such luck concerning visual fish activity. By the middle of the day all four of us had shook the skunk, but it was pretty slow going and the wind was unrelenting.
This trip was from two weeks ago when there was no still-water opened in Colorado. As Vaughn said, the trip served as a primer for the still water season to come.
My first open water fish of 2009, a healthy hen:
One of many of the other guys' browns:
Some of Colorado's premier reservoirs have since opened up enough to fish including Eleven Mile, Antero, and, as of tomorrow (3.27.09), Spinney.
The past week of very warm weather broke the camel's back and opened up large portions of ice on said reservoirs. Spinney always opens for fishing as soon as it has reached near complete ice off. I read in the Denver Post that this is only the second time that Spinney has ever opened in March.
I was going to be there to fish Spinney tomorrow, but we are currently getting hit by a snow storm. It's the most snow we've gotten in Boulder of the season. Both Nick and my jobs got shut down for the day. The roads are in disarray, and Friday is predicted to have a high of 29 at Spinney with -11 windchills accompanying snow drifts galore.
As I was finishing up this entry Jason alerted me that 285 is closed from Kenosha to Fairplay, effectively blocking our entry to South Park. Even if we wanted to go, it is no longer physically possible.
I think I will wait a few days for the storm to clear out and hopefully encounter some temperatures upwards of 40.
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I have to ask: What was the purpose of starting the trip at 3:30 AM? I thought waking up painfully early was for botched deer hunting trips...
ReplyDeleteSeveral reasons.
ReplyDelete-Sometimes the best bite of the entire day is within the first hour after daybreak.
-The winds can be merciful earlier in the day; "can" being the key word here.
-When driving for 8 hours in one day, it's nice to have the option to fish all day if the action is hot, or to leave and be home at a relatively reasonable time if it's not.