Wolf Creek Ski area closed for the season yesterday with 10 inches of new snow, and a 112 inch base! The year to date snow amount was 397 inches, about 50 - 75 inches short of normal. Still with around 10 feet of snow on the ground, we are going to have a good spring run-off.
As the temperatures start to warm run off will begin, and make many of the streams and rivers un-safe for wadding and discolored. We have 2 rivers that fish very good during run off, and of course we offer trips on Navajo Lake.
Yesterday I was out with Ron Hedrick. He was here hunting turkeys and wanted to get in some fishing as well. We went to the Blanco, south of Pagosa Springs. The air temp was 31, the water temp was 42, and it was partly cloudy with no wind.
We climbed up huge cutbank, and checked the stream for fish. From our overlook we spotted two areas of larger rainbow trout on spawning redds, and higher up the pool we spotted feeding fish. Ron and I left the spawners undisturbed, and chased the fish that were not interested in the spawn.
The fish were pretty hungry. They ate every pattern we threw; we even got one on a Royal Wulff! They dug the hear's ear and micro egg the most. All they wanted was a good drift. The dirt road we came in on is closed to traffic, until May 15 each year. We hiked in about 1/2 a mile before we started to fish. The fly's we offered the fish, were most likely the first fly's they had seen since the road closed in Oct. We ended up 12 trout and several misses for the afternoon. Now Ron has to try for his turkey.
