Heather and the girls whimped out on their snowshoeing. So, we took the kids to ski school on Saturday and we skied from around 10 until 3. It was a good day to be skiing. It had snowed in the neighborhood of 8" from mid mountain up. It was a "powder day", so that combined with Saturday made it pretty crowded. By the time we got up there all the runs had been hit pretty hard, so there wasn't much of anything untracked. It was still great snow. Heather didn't care much for the powder. She felt out of control. I'm not even close to a good skier, but I love the powder.

The ski pictures are from Saturday. It was nine degrees on top of the mountain. I new it was cold, but I didn't think it was that cold. Not only was it cold with fresh snow on the ground, but it was snowing through most of the day. It is actually snowing outside right now. I think we are supposed to get another good snow, so maybe I'll get another chance to ski during the week. The sculptures are from outside of the big lodge (Spruce Saddle) halfway up the mountain.

The first two pictures are from a Bowling outing that Heather went on with the girls from church. They didn't have a lot of ladies going so they brought the daughters. Olivia had a really good time. The bowling alley is in Eagle and it's the nicest bowling alley I've ever been in. The seating is great, the food is great and there is no smoking. Actually there is no smoking in any of the local businesses in the area.

I think my plans for NE turkeys are about to come to an end. I already knew I would be missing the church sledding day, but I also started thinking about the limited weekends I have to try and find turkeys here in CO. On top of all that, they announced at church today that there would be a men's outing/retreat at a ranch nearby on the weekend of the 17th. I had already planned to go to the retreat, so looks like I may cancel the trip for this year. Probably don't need to spend the money anyway.

Snow for the Weekend

The forecast shows snow getting here late this afternoon. We are supposed to get 2 - 4" tonight and 1-3" tomorrow. Heather and the girls are already having second thoughts on their snowshoeing tomorrow. Whimps!!

If they don't go, I'm going to make Heather and the kids go skiing tomorrow. I won't have to twist any of the kids' arms, but Heather may want to whimp out on that too. I could just go ice fishing again.

As usual, I'm trying to work out a turkey hunt other than the one at home and here in CO. Nebraska has quite a bit of public land in the northwest corner of the state called the Pine Ridge area. It is full of Merriam turkeys and the archery season opens on March 25th. I may go scout the weekend of the 17th and hunt two or three of the weekends before we fly home to IL.

The terrain there is rolling hills with ponderosa pine, unlike the Nebraska most people think about. There is a lot of open country mixed in the rolling terrain. Hunting would be mostly from a blind w/ decoys. My blind is fairly quick to set up so I could still be fairly mobile. I've never hunted turkeys with a bow so that would be a first.

I'm currently trying to sell a bow on ebay and will probably add my bow on there as well. That will still leave me one that is left over from the shop, but I hope to get enough from the two I'm selling to mostly pay for a new bow. I don't really know what brought it on, but I have the itch to buy a new bow. I'm considering a Diamond or Bowtech. Hoyt and Mathews will also be in the running, but until I get the chance to shoot each of them I won't know. I will admit that I imediately lean away from Mathews because so many people think they are the only manufacturer. I don't care for taking everyone's word for what is the best.

Pictures of Green Mountain Reservoir and HWY 9

The first two pictures are actually of Boyd at preschool. Heather helped them out yesterday because they have lost one of their teachers. They are going to pay here to help out occasionaly and Boyd gets to go on those days for free. Since we planned to take him out once we make our trip home in April, it will allow Heather to help occasionaly and Boyd will still get to go a couple days here and there at no cost on days Heather helps.

The next four are from my Green Mountain Reservoir fishing trip last weekend. The first two are on the way from HWY 9. One is pointed north along the road and the other is pointed at the mountains to the west. This valley has incredible views in all directions. You can see it had snowed the day and night before making the roads slick.

The next picture is from the road above the reservoir. The lake also runs back to the right and behind me quite a ways to the dam. The lake was created by a dam on the Blue River. If you look close you can see a couple guys fishing in the middle of the lake.

The last picture is from HWY 9 on the way home facing the mountains to the east. The roads had cleared up pretty fast once the sun came out.

Heather will be going snowshoeing with some ladies from the church this Saturday, so I'm not sure what the kids and I will do. I could take them to ski school and go skiing myself, but I'm not sure yet what we'll do. I dont' think they want to go fishing after the last trip didn't produce much action, but who knows.

Long weekend

We had some snow on Friday that closed down Vail Pass on I-70. It was open by Friday night so I drove to Green Mountain Reservoir Saturday morning to try and catch some more of the Kokanee. It took me longer to get there than normal because the roads were slick and I had to drive slower than usual. There wasn't as many people there as last week. I 'm sure it was because of the road conditions and the wind. The wind was gusting quite a bit.

I just knew I would catch a lot of fish, but it wasn't so. I drilled a lot of holes trying to find fish. I fished for quite a while near the dam in 100 ft of water. The dam is supposed to be good kokanee fishing, but the fish were really fickle. I had a couple hits but could not hook them. There were two guys within 20 yds of me that were doing pretty good, so I walked over and talked with one of the guys about what he was doing. He was definitely seeing a lot more fish on his finder than I was, but he could also see his jig on the finder. He was catching them around 40' or so down. At that depth, my finder could not pick up the jig. The fish were barely striking the jig, so he would drop the jig to the level the fish were at by watching it on the finder. He then could see the fish move toward it. He would jig it a couple times then set it down. He had a wire strike indicator on the end of his rod that was really sensitive. When the indicator moved he would set the hook. Even then he was missing most of the strikes. The whole trick was to watch the fish finder, and then watch the strike indicator once a fish moved in.

My finder will pick up the jig if the water is no deeper than about 50', but deeper than that and the sensitivity drops off due to the range increasing to show the full depth. Needless to say, I eventually moved and thanked the guy for the info. I drilled several more holes in various locations but did not mark hardly any fish. I ended up skunked for the day. I believe the slow bite was due to the front that had just passed through.

I did go home and read my instructions more and found a way to manually adjust the zoom on my finder. I can zoom a certain window of water then adjust say a 40' window to view depths from 20 to 60 feet. That should increase sensitivity to allow me to see my jig and watch the depth window that the kokanee are usually in. I also plan to get my hands on some of the wire indicators.

The kids and I also fished today (Saturday) at the Gypsum Ponds. The fish were biting really light there also. I caught three bows and Isaac caught one. Boyd reeled one of mine in, so Olivia was upset she didn't get to reel one in. It was all I could do to keep all three of them fishing. Boyd was more interested in the fish laying on the ice that we had caught. I don't think ice fishing is for Boyd and Olivia unless they are really biting good. I also don't think taking all three at one time works very well. I want them to enjoy it so me being uptight dealing with all three isn't going to increase their interest.

I'm not sure what we will do tomorrow. I think I will take Boyd to preschool, but Isaac and Olivia are off and Heather has to work in the morning. We all want to go skiing, but the kids just got over being sick. Heather said I could go by myself if I want, but I prefer to do something with them since I was gone all day Saturday.

I did take some pictures while driving Saturday, so I'll try to post them soon.

We made it out fishing today. We did not get out as early as we had hoped. Eric had been up with his sick daughter part of the night and he overslept. We made it to the lake by about 9:00 a.m. We went straight out to the channel and redrilled some holes that had been drilled earlier that morning. The water was 195 ' deep. We fished at about 25 to 35' deep. We only managed to catch eight fish between the four of us.

The boys were always tough to deal with. We spend as much time keeping them going as we do fishing, but I think our inexperience here and our timing minimized our catch. There were a lot of people on the ice.

I was the lucky one today. I caught five of the eight fish and Isaac, Ashton and Eric each caught one. One of my fish was pretty small, but there isn't a size limit and it made a good fillet. If we had been catching more fish I would have let it go. I don't know what causes it, but these fish bleed like crazy after they have been caught and lay on the ice for a little while. The fillets are a bright orange, typical of any salmon and some trout that I've seen.

We would have stayed longer and tried for some Lake Trout (Mackinaw or Macks) and Rainbows, but Isaac and Ashton both wanted to go home. Isaac may be getting sick, considering Olivia was up all last night with a fever around 103, same as Eric's little girl.

The hat Isaac has on is Eric's hat. One of the guys at work went to China for about 3 weeks with a local hockey team (highschool age). He brought eric the hat back. It is incredibly warm, but I had to laugh at it.

Ice Fishing tomorrow morning

I shouldn't be up right now because we are going ice fishing in the morning. Isaac and I are giving Green Mountain Reservoir a try tomorrow along with Eric and Ashton.

The lake is a man made reservoir located northeast of us. Eric and Ashton will be here at 6:00 a.m. We will take I-70 east to Silverthorn then drive north on HWY 9. It will take about an hour to get there. The valley that HWY 9 runs along has some incredible views so the drive is actually a great drive.
The plan is to be fishing by a little after 7:30 to try and catch Kokanee Salmon. I've never caught them or the Lakers we may try for also. Eric has caught them both, but not through the ice. The Kokes run in schools chasing bait fish suspended over the lakes channel in 180 to 200' of water. Water that deep under my feet is a little unnerving, but the ice is running at least 13" thick.
The plan is to drill 4 or 5 holes in a location over the channel and fish about 30' down with kastmasters, sweedish pimples, and Krocodiles, which are along the lines of a spoon. The lures are shaped to fall in an eratic motion like an injured fish. We will tip the treble hook with meal or wax worms and jig the lures. The lures have a lot of flash and attract the schools in. Since they run in schools, once a school comes by it sounds like the action can be pretty fast and the faster you get a lure back down to them the longer they hang around. Four of us fishing ought to keep something flashing at all times. I'll use the depth finder to watch for them coming in and check their depth.

The reports I have been reading on Coloradofisherman shows that they have been wearing them out lately. The limit is 10 each and I think they average from 12 to 14" with some running 16" or so. Reports show two guys averaging around 40 fish with each keeping their limit of 10. They aren't averaging real big, but the rumor is they are biting really good in the morning and they are supposed to be really good tasting fish. If we can find them and catch a limit or the bite stops, we will probably move in to about 50' of water to try for Lake Trout. The lake also has some good rainbows and browns in it that would be just fine.

I'm looking forward to catching something other than the tiny rainbows that we caught a couple weeks ago. Hopefully we will have a good day and catch a lot of fish in a variety of species. We'll see. If "The Wood" was here the fish wouldn't have a chance. I think he could catch fish out of a bathtub. The only person I know who might give him a run would be DL Stokes, the river otter, but that would be stream fishing in Arkansas.

I'll be sure to get some pictures up if all goes well, and if not, I'll just post more pictures of the mountains and a frozen lake.

We made it out skiing for a couple hours today. It was a beautiful day except for the wind. It was terrible up toward the top of the mountain. The wind was more than the kids could stand. It was a mistake on my part to take them up to the top today. Isaac and Olivia did want to go back up for a couple more runs on the lower slope, but Boyd had endured all he could. We decided to go on home and beat the masses to the bus ride down to the parking lots.

The pictures show the Gore Range on the skyline to the north. The mountains up closest in the background are just above town and you can see how they don't have much timber on them down low close to town. I'll probably elk hunt next season in some of the timber that can be seen in the background since it is fairly close to town.

The building in the pictures is a little more than half way up the mountain. It is called Spruce Saddle Lodge and is a big restaurant with cafeteria style lines. They have quite a few different selections of severa types of food. It is the same place I got the $18 cheeseburger/fries and coke. It is pretty good food but too expensive for us to stop in and eat. We packed peanut butter crackers and granola bars in our coat pockets along with bottled watter.

I've been invited to a SuperBowl Party with some of the guys from church, but Heather didn't sound too excited about me leaving them to watch football. I'm not too interested in the game anyway. Besides, were planning to take a drive tomorrow to Leadville to check gas mileage and distance to a couple places. We may take the fishing equipment and give Turquoise Lake a short try for some rainbow and lake trout, but I don't think it can be a very serious fishing trip with the whole gang along.

X Games and Sledding Pictures

Here are some of the pictures I took at the X-Games. They aren't very good pictues, but they are all I could get from our location. The sixth picture is of Isaac trying out a snowboard on a simulator.

The next four pictures are of Boyd and Olivia sledding during the church family sledding day while Isaac and I were at the X-Games. Someone from the church was taking the pictures and gave us a disc that included these pictures. The hill isn't very big, but they get moving pretty fast on it. Boyd is hard to recognize in the last picture flying through the air and cloud of snow. The only way anyone knew it was Boyd in the picture was the green neck gaitor with eyes and teeth that he was wearing.

Pictures won't go through

I'm not sure what is going on, but I tried to post pictures and they won't load. I'll get them up eventually. The Xgames pictures aren't that good, but the pictures of Olivia and Boyd sledding with the church that day are really good.

I really want to go fishing this weekend, but I really want to go skiing too. The kids all want to go skiing Saturday, so maybe I'll make it out fishing on Sunday afternoon. I had hoped to get out tomorrow for a couple hour break from work, but it looks like I probably can't. I have too much to do. I'm trying to get the civil design engineers we hired to complete our construction plans and contract documents for two separate capital jobs. They have one mostly complete, but the other has been rather slow going. I'll be taking the one they are behind on in front of the Planning and Zoning Commision next week and the Town Council the following week. There probably won't be many questions, but who knows. Both need to be advertised for bid so we can get a contractor nailed down.

I also have another project that we are negotiating a price with a contractor right now. He isn't moving as fast as I would like, but we'll get there. It's obvious that we will be way over budget, so explaining that to Council should be fun. I'm glad I didn't develop the budget for the project. Norm has a way with the Council even if he won't admit it, and they look to him for a lot of guidance. I'm learning a lot about how Avon does business. I like being busy. It makes the day go by faster. I'm getting more comfortable here and don't mind fielding the occasional question. I expect to get plenty of calls from upset citizens about traffic delays this summer.

I'll try the pictures again later.