November, 1998
11/1: Sue's quest to catch a trout in Colorado every month of the year leaves only one month to go. A trip down to the water below the (sewer) plant on Gore Creek produced only one fish for each of us, but that sure counts. Nymphing was the rule again. Hers came to a small bwo nymph and my only rainbow to a #20 black midge emerger fished deep.
11/3: A quick hour of casting on Gore Creek near the golf course produced a lovely cutthroat, a larger rainbow (14"), and two smaller brookies from one of the ponds. All fish took tiny bwo or midge emergers and all were down deep.
11/5: The Eagle ran gin clear today and twice as cold. Two hours of casting nymphs brought only three rainbows to hand - they ranged from 13-16 inches. Fish are sluggish and difficult to feel, much less hook. They all took a red variant - either midge or true egg fly.
11/10-11/13: Absolutely nothing comes easy this time of year. We've had several days of stormy weather, and it's now turned very cold at night. The fish are completely somnolent. If the fly doesn't pass within a few centimeters of it's head, no strike occurs. And the few strikes that do happen are so subtle, hookups are rare. Various patterns work - small stones, bead head stones, egg flies, red midges, and tiny bwo emergers fished on the bottom. It's really not been much fun lately fighting ice in the guides, frozen fingers, etc.
11/15: A beautiful sunny day with the morning devoted to skiing, allowed us three hours of the afternoon for casting on the middle Eagle. The warmer weather brought some discoloration which increased hourly as we fished. Strikes are still difficult to detect - particularly since we've continued to not use indicators - and that's inevitably a mistake. But we did have a number of noticeable hits and I landed a couple of 14-16 inch rainbows along with a 12 incher of the same breed. Not much of a day compared to the summer, but still better than nothing. The fish took either a cross cut scintilla egg fly or a tiny black winged bwo emerger - fished together and deep.
11/17: How do you spell SKUNK? It's been at least two years since I suffered one, but the Blue River below Silverthorne kicked my butt today. I cast for a good four hours and can't even claim a hint of a strike. Don't know what I did wrong if anything. Tried virtually all the flies that generally work this time of year, but no success. Happily it was a nice sunny day.
11/28-29: Very little snow - or in the forecast - on the mountain suggested a camping trip was in order as opposed to waiting around for a ski booking. So the three of us - male, female, and puppy - loaded our gear into the VW vanagon and headed for the upper Colorado. Boy did we fish hard and boy was it sparse. Cast off the bank of Williams Fork Reservoir for pike, lake trout, or anything else that might wander by and came up blank.
Then a drive to Hot Sulphur Springs on the upper Colorado drew another blank in a spot that's always yielded at least a few fish. Another stop on the Colorado below Parshall resulted in two fish on with no landings - plus a good dunking for me on the slippery bottom. So we drove down the back roads to the Pumphouse put-in area below Gore Canyon, had a nice dinner with lots of wine and called it a day.
The next morning we cast a bit about the camp area, again with no success, then drove to Radium and parked on the far side of the river and hiked upstream a half mile or so. Sue finally got into some fish in a nice pool and landed three good browns to 16" on a stone. I continued to have mishaps in my off-handed casting and came up empty. So much for November.
Back to Vail OnLine , the Main Fishing Page, the 1998 Diary, or check on stream flows.