May, 2008

Last Logbook Entry  é for previous day            

5/3:  We arrived back in Vail just in time to enjoy another eighteen inches of snow the past couple of days.  The storm finally departed (thank god) early this morning.  Enough with winter!

Thought about driving over the pass and then down the Blue to the inlet point of Green Mountain Reservoir, but given a lack of knowledge about how that stream's flowing and its coloration, decided to stay closer to home.

So after lunch drove out to the (snow covered) golf course and made a few casts in both Gore Creek and the golf course ponds.  Several of those stillwaters are ice covered to this day attesting to the nasty spring weather Vail's had this year.  But open water in the largest pond looked inviting despite a strong west wind howling across the snow.

On the way to the pond I tried my luck with nymphs in Gore Creek and was shut out completely.  Probably the issue was not getting deep enough as that's always been one of my failings while nymphing.  However, the flies did get hung up a couple of times on the leftover willow stems that beavers had cut to construct their winter reservoirs, and which the yet to begin runoff had not scoured the creek bottom.  So annoyed at the lack of success and the loss of four good flies, I shifted to a smallish black streamer and headed to the ponds.

Some success came almost immediately with several brookies between eight and twelve inches showing an interest in the streamer.  

 

Mouths seemed to be pretty soft still as most hookups resulted in long releases, but enough fish were unhooked to make the author happier.

 

Only one twelve inch brown trout broke into the release column of nothing but brookies.  It was, however, always nice to have a little bit of life on the line again.  

Tomorrow we head to Denver where I'm flying out on Monday to visit mom in Oregon.  After getting home the following weekend, there should be a trip to either the Green or Lake Powell on the agenda for the following week.

 
 

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