January, 1999

1/3:  No fishing yet.  A quick trip to Aspen on Wednesday may provide an opportunity to wet a line on the Roaring Fork.   The temperatures are bitter right now, so it's tough to predict if any success will follow.

1/6:  Hooray - the first fish of the year.   My god but it felt good to get back out on the water.  The Aspen trip was cancelled for a variety of reasons, but this afternoon with temperatures finally above freezing for the first time in at least two weeks, I waded the Eagle below Dowd Junction for an hour or so.  Obviously it's all nymphing now, and I left on the same rig already set up on the rod.  It was a double fly system of a #12 golden stone trailed by a #20 crosscut egg fly.

Wonder of wonders, those flies evenly split four nice browns landed between 13-18 inches.  Had three others on and at least 4-6 more definite strikes.  Guess people must not have been after these wary fish for a while as they were very eager to strike.  One important thing I forgot to do was to update my license for 1999.   Happily there were no wardens around, but I'll remedy my misdeed by this weekend.

1/11:  The monthly trip to Aspen was a complete bust as far as fishing goes.  Too little time prevented trying different approaches on either the Roaring Fork or Colorado.  I had fifteen minutes casting both places.   In the big eddy at No Name a little peckerhead eight inch rainbow took the #10 dark stone and that was it.

1/18: Drove down the Eagle to Wolcott & fished both above and below the Trestle Rapid Bridge.  Ice is growing from the banks again making wading and even hiking on that surface not only difficult, but occasionally terrifying.  But we did have modest success.  Hooked a whitey on an egg fly and then landed a handful more mixed bag of browns and rainbows below the rapids.  Fish came to either a large dark stone or the trailing egg imitation.  Suspect it's simply whatever passes closest to their mouths as they certainly aren't active at all yet.

1/20: ASTONISHINGLY good fishing in the same area we fished a couple of days ago.  In the space of one hour (which included 20 minutes of walking to the spot) I had eight fish on, landing four.  Smallest was a 12 inch bow and the largest a pig of a rainbow at a good 18 inches.  Had one on that was probably larger still.  As before the combination rig of a #14 light stone trailed by a #20 cross cut scintilla egg fly worked the magic.  Fish were all grouped in 2-6 feet of water that had only modest motion.  But they are hungry now, so when the ice clears even more, we should have lots of success.

1/27:  Some quick comments on stream conditions.  Warm weather lately has allowed much of the ice on both Gore Creek and the Eagle to recede, presenting the fisherman with more access than has been the case so far this winter.  The red canyon section of the Eagle is still pretty much closed up, but the rest of the river is at least marginally fishable.   Same thing applies to the Roaring Fork and Colorado.

Last Logbook Entry  � for previous days.

1/31:  Well, the pressure's back on for Sue.   Her last day of the month to catch a local trout was successful (she landed two 10" bows before her hands froze).  Until today she had almost hoped not to catch any fish this month and thus avoid the temptation to do a repeat of last year's challenge - namely to catch trout every month of the year.  So here we go again.

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