December, 1997
12/1: GORE CREEK'S FROZEN over much of its length with just a few open spots in some of the deeper holes where the fish all "hole up" during the winter months. I was lucky enough to catch three 12 inch fish - one cut and two bows - today by deep drifting a small red midge in one of those pieces of open water. It was fortunate I was above the fish on the bank and could see the takes, as the hits were so subtle, I could not feel any of them.
12/4: TODAY'S TRIP TO ASPEN was another busy one. And it was colder than sin. Temperature was below zero when I headed out on my morning run before leaving on the trip. But coming back, I did have a chance to stop at the No Name rest area on the Colorado just upstream from Glenwood Springs. Started out in the big eddy as usual and after fifteen minutes or so, had landed a couple of medium sized whitefish on the red emerger midge. Interestingly there were lots of tan midges flying near the surface in both of the slack water areas I fished.
After another half hour of no action I switched to a black woolly bugger and had only one more fish on - a 13 inch brown that fought surprisingly well, despite the frigid water conditions. And that was all for the day.
12/19: LAST ENTRY FOR THE YEAR. Tomorrow I start 15 straight days of ski teaching, so this will be the end of fishing for 1997 for me. In retrospect it wasn't the greatest of years. The Roaring Fork was very spotty all season long and the rains in the Eagle Valley probably caused at least 30 days of dry fly action to be lost in the heart of the summer. I've been out on Gore Creek a couple of times this week with virtually no success. Just don't know what they want right now and there's so little open water that it's tough just getting a fly down to the fish. We'll hope for a more prosperous 1998.
Back to Vail OnLine , the Main Fishing Page, the 1997 Diary, or check on stream flows.