January, 2002

1/8:  With what appears to be a pale version of our annual January thaw in effect, I drove the dog to Glenwood in hopes of maybe catching a quick mid winter olive hatch or at least get a chance to throw some midges on the Roaring Fork.  The cloud cover predicted for today never materialized and neither did any hatches.

But we have another new favorite casting activity - that being throwing rabbit buggers and sculpins at the river.  It's clearly not as much fun as dry fly fishing but the end result may be better, particularly at this time of year.

Before lunch we had an hour of fairly excellent streamer fishing.  Below the Sunlight Bridge, we caught two nice rainbows in the 14-16 inch range on an olive copper cone head rabbit bugger.  Working our way downstream we had another half dozen fish on and landed four decent browns of the same size as the rainbows.

After a quick bite at Sue's streamside condo my hopes were high for some better success on the far side of the river, but it didn't happen.  Changing patterns didn't seem to make much difference.  Had a handful of fish on both a gray sculpin & an olive one, but only managed to release an ambitious ten inch brown which tried to swallow a four inch sculpin - not an easy task.  Tomorrow we try the Colorado on our way back to Vail.

So much for the Colorado.  Another cold front passed through Glenwood last night & the day dawned gloomy, colder, & windy.  I pulled off I-70 at the Grizzly Creek rest area & made a few halfhearted casts behind some boulders with only one strike to show for the effort.  With a trip to Whistler coming up on Thursday, this is probably the last fishing for another week or two.

Last Logbook Entry  � for previous days.

1/24: Today was my last free one until late February due to ski instruction commitments.  The dog & I headed to Glenwood in hopes of doing some casting on the Colorado below its confluence with the Roaring Fork and then upstream on that latter river.  No luck.  The temperature was -11 when we passed through Gypsum & it stayed low through mid morning in the Springs.

Both the Fork & Colorado were clogged with masses of flow ice to the point that it would have been impossible to get any kind of fly through the surface film.  Such is life.  Maybe the end of February will be more kind to us.

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