March, 1999

3/1:  This is more or less a clunko entry for future reference.  My trip to Eagle on data gathering allowed no fishing as the river was "out" below Milk & Alkali Creeks.  Warm weather the past couple of days has resulted in snow melt and murky flows below Wolcott.  Above that point the river's fishable but has been getting heavy pressure - especially on the weekends.

3/3:  HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN!  Finally a nice couple of hours of casting.  On the way back from Aspen I stopped off at the Satank Bridge near Carbondale, hiked downstream and fished my way back up to the bridge.  Changed rigs a couple of times until finding a combination that seemed to work pretty well.   It was a dark #14 stone trailed by a #20 dark midge emerger fished on the bottom.   The stones took three nice rainbow and the emerger landed three other browns and a couple of large whiteys.  Also had a number of other fish on, but managed to lose more than I landed.  There was a large contingent of tiny midges on the surface, but only saw one fish rise during the time I was there.

3/8:  A COLD, WINDY DAY in town prompted a 60 mile drive to the No Name exit above Glenwood on the Colorado.  Unfortunately it was still cold & windy down there.  But we hiked up the bike path with the dog & did some nymphing in an off-colored, but fairly low Colorado River.  Early success on a nice brown, rainbow, and some whitefish did not translate to continued goo d luck as the weather was fiercely cold and the hands gave up the ghost after an hour or so.  Fish came to a variety of flies - prince, dark stone, golden stone, whiteback midge, etc.   It was just nice to get out of Vail for a day of something different.

3/10: Fishing remains a continually fascinating sport - there's just no accounting for such variable success rates.  Today I stopped in the Red Canyon section of the Eagle to look for a pair of sunglasses I lost on a particular run there last week.  No luck finding them, but when I drove upstream to the Trestle Rapid area, my luck changed for the better.  In less than an hour I had eight fish on, landing six of them.  All but two were rainbows (including the "got offs") - the others were a 10 and 12 inch brown respectively.  And all took a #14 dark stone - a fly that has been terrific this winter.  There's nothing at all dramatic about this stone variation.  It evolved over the years to what is now an extremely successful design both in dark and golden colors.

3/11:  Returning to Vail from Denver this morning I pulled off the freeway at a place that's intrigued me for years (a section of Clear Creek).   Obviously it doesn't get fished much as I could see numbers of trout finning throughout the pool's length.  Being bitterly cold (in the teens) I could only stand casting for a few minutes and did manage to land four browns between 6-12".  Saw several larger ones and had a number of other strikes, but didn't have the ability to deal with the cold for long.  The fish all took a tiny red serendipity and ignored the usually popular dark stone.

3/21: A long stretch of time with NO fishing came to an end today when we were able to get out on Gore Creek for an hour & a half after the ski session finished.  Warm weather lately has brought on a mini runoff, so the creek was flowing stronger and running discolored.  Casting with a new micro streamer in a deep hole on the golf course brought no results, but immediately upon changing to a black marabugger, strikes began happening in rapid succession.  The big hole yielded four browns between 12-15 inches and three smaller brookies.

Changed to the "redneck" streamer and the strikes continued.  Hooked a couple of large rainbows upstream in a long run, then landed another brook, followed by a 12" rainbow in a riffle below the large pool.  All in all these were good results for some pretty poor water conditions.

Last Logbook Entry  � for previous days.

3/25&26:  Must be living under a bit of a black cloud the past couple of days.  Fished a half mile of my favorite water on Gore Creek Wednesday with only one fish - a nice 14 inch rainbow to show for an hour & a half of casting.  A decent BWO hatch occurred, along with numerous large midges but the water was slightly off colored and that one fish was the only strike I noticed.

Today some normally very productive brown trout water down by Dowd Junction on the Eagle again produced only one fish to hand - a small brown - despite fishing upstream with various stones and downstream with dark buggers - both of which normally work great this time of year.  Don't know what the answer is.

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