And I needed to warm up. Air temp was -5 when we started fishing at 7:30 and the wind was whipping. It was all I could do to flick a few yards of line out and stiffly rotate like a robot as I followed my indicator downstream. Hook sets were extremely delayed. Dad hooked up first and a 14" brown came up to the surface. "Ah damn it..... get off"..... Hmm... we are freezing our asses off standing in a mountain river in January fishing and we don't really want to hook a fish. Why? because the release part of catch and release will require you to take your gloves off and hold your hands underwater. I had a moment of self doubt. What the hell was I doing? Why was I fishing when I didn't really want to catch a fish (under 24")? Why are we the only ones fishing one of the most pressured tailwaters in Colorado on a Saturday?
The reason showed up before the sun hit the water. Not the biggest fish in the run but a super nice male brownie. As soon as you see a fish like that on the end of your line everything else goes away. The weather was cold but the fishing was hot. We pulled at least a dozen fish out of the Avalanche Hole before 9:30.
All in all it was a good day of fishing. We both caught double digits and we had fairly steady action throughout the day. The hot pattern for me is what I call a Grinch Egg. It's a chartreuse egg tied on a red hook with a white halo. Killer pattern all over the place.
I think we had a first on this trip. My Dad managed to switch flies in the hotel room the night before! He was rigged up and ready to go and I was tying some of my leach patterns and he couldn't resist :-)
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