Sunday, March 28, 2010

Quick Windy Outing


I made it out for an hour or so in the high winds. That was about all the time I could take standing out there being battered with no action. I hooked and fought a fish on my second cast of the day, then nothing else the rest of the hour. The wind was terrible and I moved on to scout another lake that is usually open by this time of year. It is still 100% locked up in ice. Disappointing but I will keep checking it to time the ice off fishing.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Sliver Of Stillwater

I took a beautiful walk and wade along the river greenbelt today, casting to different holes and generally scouting the condition of the iced out portion through town. There wasn't a whole lot going on fishing wise. I did talk to another fisherman that had some luck the day earlier on buggers, but I couldn't move any river fish today.

Anxious to check out some lakes for any open water, I headed to the plains and found an opening on one lake accounting for maybe 5% of the surface area. It was enough to cast into and I proceeded to get into some decent hold over rainbows starting with the first cast. The wind had picked up out here in the flat, open country but the fishing was rewarding enough to fight it and find the first stillwater trout of the year.

First open stillwater fish of the year

This poor guy had fin clips and tail damage but fought like a champ

This was the last trout of the day and perhaps the prettiest colors I have ever seen from this lake on a rainbow

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Spring and Summer Streamflow Forecasts for the 2010 Runoff Season

Here is the graphic from Western Water Assessment for streamflow forecast in 2010. This is forecasted as of March 2010 so we will have to wait and see how things really turn out but they have great info at this site. More March info can be found at the Western Water Assessment site. They have excellent reservoir information and temperature and snowpack information as well.


Figure STRM-1. NRCS outlook for natural streamflows for spring and summer in the Intermountain West region as a percent of average streamflows (data through March 1, 2010). (Source: Natural Resource Conservation Service)

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Open Water Coming Soon

I took a drive on Saturday to scout the plains lakes ice status and also check out the upper river reaches to see if spring was making any progress and opening up some of my favorite early season haunts. Ice on the upper river was still quite locked up and there wasn't even a fishable channel in the center yet, so it will be a little longer on those stretches. The plains lakes had a few candidates for breaking out this week and having some fishable water by the coming weekend. Holes in the ice and open sections were showing on a couple of them. Nothing was fishable but it won't be long now.

I went in search of some browns after scouting and picked up a couple in the nice weather. They were a little slow but enough were keying on the leech to keep things interesting.