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.