Time: 12:30PM – 2:30PM

Location: Large turnout after third tunnel heading west

Fish Landed: 2

Clear Creek 11/16/2013 Photo Album

I am admittedly a chronic numbers guy. The weather forecast for Saturday called for highs in Denver of 60 degrees so I decided to make a quick trip to Clear Creek Canyon in an attempt to build my fish count number late in the season. Jane was scheduled to spend the afternoon in the office working, so I had some unexpected time to myself.

I prepared a lunch and headed out the door by 11:30 and arrived at a pullout toward the western end of the canyon by noon. The temperature in the canyon was 53 degrees, but I was concerned by the strong wind I was observing while I munched my lunch in the shelter of my car. Once I pulled on my waders and rigged my rod I decided to wear my ski hat instead of my wide brimmed hat for warmth, and I concluded that I’d be fishing in the shadow of the southern canyon wall most of the time thus not requiring a hat brim.

I walked down the highway a bit and then angled down the steep bank to the water just above a spot where the creek narrowed and churned through a chute. I tied on a Chernobyl ant and a beadhead hares ear and began prospecting the water along the right bank, but didn’t meet with any success until twenty minutes or so elapsed. At this point the Chernobyl dipped and I hooked and landed a small seven inch brown.

I continued moving along the bank next to the road, but I wasn’t seeing any more fish or attention to my flies. What I was seeing was ridiculously strong gusts of wind that prevented me from casting or even facing upstream. I turned my back to the wind and waited for extended periods for the wind to subside before resuming my ineffective casting. My wet hands became extremely chilled by the evaporation and in truth I began to think more about the warmth of my home than the prospect of continuing to fish in these adverse conditions. After another 45 minutes fighting the wind and intermittent fruitless casting, I flicked a short backhad cast to a pocket behind an exposed boulder and once again detected a pause in the Chernobyl and set the hook and landed a nine inch brown trout.

9″ Brown Was Best Catch of the Day

It was somewhat gratifying to catch another fish after battling the elements, but I now decided I wasn’t really having fun, and wasn’t the goal of fishing to have fun? I resumed my progress upstream for another half hour or so, but the gusts of wind became more frequent and lasted longer so I reeled up my flies and hooked them in the rod guide and returned to the car. I opened the side door of the Santa Fe to rest my jeans and shoes and socks on the seat while I removed my waders. Several times I had to chase down my socks and even my waders as the wind picked them up and moved them away from the car.

When I finally returned to the tailgate I removed my glasses from their case and placed the case on the floor of the car while I switched my fishing sunglasses for my regular wire rims. Just as I did this, a monster gust came along, and when I reopened my eyes, I discovered that the case was no longer in front of me. I searched every corner of the car and can only assume that the wind swept the case through the car and out the side door and deposited it somewhere in Kansas. Later I realized that my Texas Rangers ball cap was also missing, so it must have met the same fate as the sunglass case.

Needless to say it was a frustrating fishing outing and certainly discouraged me from making future fishing outings in Colorado in 2013. The weather will need to be considerably nicer before I venture to another stream, and the numbers can remain where they are.