Almost imperceptibly, winter begins to roll back north into the Canadian provinces whence it came.
One day you realize it is really gone. The feel of the warming sun and the windborne scents of the earth's richness tell you that the best is yet to come.
Winter leaves behind a stark yet dramatic scene of endless mountain ranges, deep-worn valleys, and wandering waters. Snow still buries high peaks and fills the contours of north-facing coulees, gulches, and slopes.
West-flowing drainages bristle with the promising greens of fir, spruce, and pine forests through the long winter. Blue sky east-slope landscapes are more bare. Bleak gray-brown grasslands seem to roll on forever.
They are highlighted by the last holdouts of snow in sunless folds that define their great windswept vastness. Distant mountain ranges, lonely highways, and cottonwood bottoms help frame such scenes, cutting down the overwhelming immensity of the West into a portion humans can better comprehend.
Along creeks and rivers, leafless willow thickets glow in shades of vermillion, russet, and gold. This bit of brightness immediately draws the eye streamside, where the cold water flows. Ice may still glaze the water along banks in shaded eddies. Lakes are still frozen, but most moving waters are once again running free, either muddied or clear.
Unseasonably warm temperatures can raise the silt-laden water. There's a lot of snow yet to be melted in the high country. The high point of daily activity in the valley floor at this season might be when the ranch pickup dumps another morning load of hay for the appreciative herd of winter-range cattle.
The Cycle of Life
Clear spring water calls to anglers, too. And though water temperatures may perhaps be 3440 degrees Fahrenheit, life is beginning to stir in rivers and streams across the West. Both aquatic insects and trout are becoming more active with the increased daylight and its warming effects. An annual cycle is beginning, one that may be well known (or at least known in part) to the old and experienced yet seems an insurmountable riddle to a newcomer to the stream.
The shapes of trout become visible now, holding and flitting about in the elbow pools of small meadow streams. The riseforms of surface-feeding trout become more common on rich tailwater rivers and spring creeks, where spring comes a little sooner than it does on other types of water.
Midges proliferate, and Baetis mayflies will soon be hatching. Small winter and spring stoneflies cavort along the edges of swifter mountain streams, especially on sunny days when warming rays bathe riverside boulders. Trout rise to these, too. Yes, there's much to look forward to when winter rolls back and spring greets the Rockies.
Spring hatches are few, and they lack the diversity seen later on in summer. This makes things easier for anglers to figure out. What hatches there are can be very important to fishing success, especially if you like the sight of rising fish. There are spring days, though, when a hatch is on the water but nothing seems to be feeding on it, at least on top of the water. Perhaps it's good to start out on an easy footing. It will help prepare you for the bonanza of hatches that blossom in early summer.
For the angler who prefers above all else to find rising fish, the chart shows spring hatches will be those most likely to bring trout to the surface. Nothing animates a river scene or fires the imagination of an angler like the rings of rising trout spreading across a river's surface.
© Article copyright Pruett Publishing.
Where are you going?
What do you want to do?
