Work Sucks, I'm Going Fishing

Spots!

I have spring fever. It's too early to have it but I do. We've been getting some nice days here in Colorado and I always get excited when we do this time of year because I know spring is not far off. Not far off but not really that close either.

Friday was a nice day except for the wind. And the wind was terrible! I couldn't help it though. Like I said I have spring fever. I starting thinking about fishing about 10 minutes into my work day. Terrible... Like a bolt of lightning a thought hit me. Wrap things up early and get your ass to the Blue. I didn't fight it one bit.

I cranked through my email, made some calls, hit up my Account Manager to see if anything was hot and then another thought hit me. Who's coming with me?

Back on the phone. The Old Man had a meeting he couldn't get out of. Ben was slammed. Marty's arm is giving him hell. Damn.... This was going to be a solo trip.

I packed up the White Buffalo and was on the road at noon. I was feeling great! The sun was shining, it was Friday afternoon, Soundgarden was cranked, and I was heading for trout water. The only drag was the damn wind. And it was getting worse. It was hard keeping the wheel straight.

By the time I got to Silverthorne the wind had died down some but it was still pretty gusty. Gusty enough to blow all but a handful of dudes off the river so I had my pick of water for the most part. I decided to hit the run above the gauging station since it was open. 

This is a great run to develop your fish spotting skills. Why? Because you can just about be guaranteed that there are fish in front of you. You just have to scan the water till you see a sign of one. There is a ton of material to help you with this but in my experience two pieces of advice have helped me most. One, don't look for a fish. In other words if you are looking to see a perfect outline of a fish you probably won't get it. You'll need to look for a sign of a fish and then stare at that area. Two, try to unfocus your eyes and look through the bottom of the river bed. This is the best way I have heard it explained and it's helped me.

As expected there was plenty of red moving around in the water. One was an easy eight pounds. I'm always torn between going light on tippet and hooking up more or going heavy and hooking up less but having a descent chance to land a pig. The fish in this river absolutely lose their minds when they are hooked and a beast on 6x or 7x will put you in a tight spot fast.

Big bow in the recovery room

This trip I decided to go heavy and rigged up with 4x flouro since it was fairly cloudy. I didn't do much for the first two hours but as the sun dropped I think the 4x became less and less important. Ale eggs and Mayer's Mysis started getting hammered hard. These were NOT light takes. I had 15-20 minutes of hooking up every other cast. Totally made the trip worth it. Didn't hook any pigs but I did land a nice 21 incher.

All in all a great trip up to the Blue. Any time you can have that river pretty much to yourself it's a good thing. May have to make a habit of these Friday evening Blue trips!