I spent yesterday editing my fishing log entries, adding photos and posting the resultant product to this web site. I added all the fishing outings prior to when I began using the WordPress site as pages as I did not want older fishing blogs to appear in front of the more current entries from late in the season. Consequently you will see quite a volume of links to pages in the black section at the top of my web page.
As I read and edited all my fishing outings, I thought it would be fun to select my best days of 2010. So if you don’t have the desire or time to read all my entries (I can’t blame you), here is my ranking of the 2010 fly fishing season:
Nice Brown Landed
1. Arkansas River – 5/4/10 – You’ll find this one in the black page section. The pages are listed alphabetically. After years of pursuing the fabled Arkansas caddis emergence, I succeeded. This day above all others stands out as my favorite of the year.
2. Frying Pan River – 9/5/10 – My favorite Colorado River and success with green drakes make this number two. My comparaduns failed me on Thursday, but after purchasing green drake imitations, I discovered that my comparaduns outperformed the store bought. Vindication is sweet.
3. North Fork of St. Vrain River – 8/2/10 – Based on number of fish and rediscovering a stream I’d forgotten about, the NF of St. Vrain ranks third. Add in the fact that I caught a couple lake trout and some fish that were quite large for the size of the stream fished and this was a fun day.
4. White River – 9/14/10 – Hot rainbows in a remote environment with no other fishermen around adds up to a great day on the White River. A moose sighting was icing on the cake.
5. North Fork of St. Vrain River – 9/19/10 – A remote outing with my son to a beautiful place with lots of fish puts this day in the top five. Dan landed 14 fish, and I was very proud. Of course Dan offering to carry my heavier backpack on the steep hike out of the canyon was also a nice gesture.
6. Arkansas River 5/14/10 – A second caddis hatch, albeit not as intense as the first, in the same season places this in the top ten. Catching fish when others aren’t shouldn’t affect my thinking, but it tends to. This one’s a page in the black section.
7. Brush Creek – 7/10/10 – The outing at dusk was probably the best hour of fishing I had in 2010. Thank you Dave Gaboury for allowing me to experience this. This post is in the pages section.
8. Frying Pan River – 10/1/10 – My most successful BWO experience of the season, but the general elevates this to top 10.
9. North Platte River – 9/16/10 – Discovering new water that I’d never fished is a factor in ranking this in the top 10. The setting was beautiful. I could have caught more fish, but this was an R&D day.
10. Fooses Creek – 7/17/10 – Another fun rediscovered stream and proving that I can still contort my body and make challenging casts in tight quarters place this in the top ten. This is another page link in the black section.
For 2011 I will be using WordPress from the first day of the season until the end, so I will continue to add new entries as posts. Once I’ve used all the alloted free space, I’ll likely begin deleting pages as I add new chronological posts. The alternative will be to purchase additional space. I have quite a bit of free space remaining, so I’ll have some time to address this.