Lake Dillon - September 18-20, 2009

22 inch brown trout taken on a shad colored shad rap trolling in 40 feet of water in the middle of the afternoon on Lake Dillon just out from the Frisco Marina.

Lake Granby - September 5 - 7, 2009

We spent most of our fishing time pursuing trophy lakers but as you can see we were skunked. The last morning we were low on gas so we stayed close to camp and trolled Arapahoe Bay where first mate, Steve, caught rainbow after rainbow (all released) on a small Blue Fox silver spinner. I only caught a few on a silver Kastmaster. Steve's last fish was a nice Kokanee that we brought back to the campsite and ate for breakfast (mmmm salmon).

Notice the campground has had every single tree cut down due to beetle kill. This was very sad since we have camped at this site for years and enjoyed the shelter of the many huge Ponderosa pines and Douglas firs.

Lake Lewisville, Texas - July 6-7, 2009

Steve, David and I caught 50 plus white bass (we cleaned 31 of them) in two days of fishing on Lake Lewisville. Biggest was only 15 inches but they were healthy. We were lucky enough to get into a couple shad feeding frenzies which was really cool. Follow the birds! Almost all were taken on mepps shad spinner or black/white rapala (original and x-rap) trolling and some casting. Bimini top is required in Texas.

Yellow Whitebanded Crab Spider - June 28, 2009

Here is a very large yellow spider in our garden. We are pretty sure it is a whitebanded crab spider which is NOT poisonous. Click picture to see this guy up close and check out the hairy legs.

When I first saw him I thought it was the sunflower starting to bloom way too early. I checked back a few hours later and it was sitting in the top of a different sunflower seedling. I now think this may be a hunting strategy. Make yourself look like a yummy flower to other bugs and then when they check you out, you EAT them!

Turquoise Lake, Colorado - June 20, 2009

Caught one lake trout in the morning and Zoe caught a cutthroat trout (she didn't want to hold it). The rest came during the afternoon rain. The bigger lake trout came on the rigger at 20 feet with silver/red krocodile spoon. The others came on a rainbow rapala x-rap and one from a bright pink rooster tail spinner. Between 3 of us (Greg, Steve & me) we also caught 12 cutthroats, but only kept the ones that were badly hooked (Steve was draggin' a treble hook, worm and split shot).

There were hundreds of swallows flying just above the water. You can see some in the picture of cloudy Mt. Sherman (14,036 feet). I saw one swallow go for the same bug a trout went for. It looked like the trout was going to eat the bird.