For weeks, the sun-soaked days of mid-March had been tempting me. Thoughts of the ice on mountain lakes cracking open and colossal trout gliding along shorelines haunted my dreams.

I couldn't take it anymore! I tossed my gear into the truck and headed for the hills in search of open water.

Winding into the Rockies, I found snow piled all over the hillsides. Snow blanketed the rocky shoreline as well, but the lake was half open, and some of its gigantic residents were making themselves very visible.

A firm hookset sent the large rainbow into an underwater frenzy. Line peeled from my reel as the 22-inch monster struggled for freedom. After releasing the fish, I cleaned the ice from my eyelets, took a satisfying breath and got ready to do it again.

GENERAL OUTLOOK
With angler satisfaction rates soaring near 80 percent and thousands of miles of fishable water, plus a hearty trout population, it's no wonder Greg Gerlick, Colorado Division of Wildlife's fisheries chief, is predicting a favorable trout forecast in 2009.

"Trends across the country show a decline in the angling population, but Colorado has remained stable," he told Rocky Mountain Game & Fish.

"For the past five years, we've been averaging between 600,00 and 700,000 licensed anglers."

Recent surveys indicate that nearly 80 percent of those licensed anglers prefer trout as their species of choice.

"Most Colorado anglers are generalists," Gerlick said. "They prefer to fish in areas where there's a blanket four-fish limit on trout, and we have plenty of those. Most don't seem to care what species of trout is tugging on their line, as long as they can put a few eaters on the stringer."

Now let's get down to the specific regions -- and inside their boundaries the fishable waters -- where you can expect success in 2009.

SOUTHWEST
You can't travel through the southwest without tempting a few browns on the famous Rio Grande. Its trout-infested waters provide heart-stopping angling action, and there's no shortage of public access.

Tom Knopick of Duranglers Fly Shop said that the Rio offers fantastic fishing upstream and down.

"It's a thriving brown-trout fishery, with a few rainbows sprinkled in," he said. "An average-sized fish will typically stretch the tape to the 14-inch mark, and there's the possibility to nab some real giants."

Knopick said that the Gold Medal section, on the lower part of the river between the towns of South Fork and Del Norte, is a productive fishery that receives a lot of attention. But anglers shouldn't overlook the upper river near the town of Creede.

John Alves, a CDOW aquatic biologist in the region, shed more light on the present conditions and future of this fabulous trout fishery. (Continued)

He said that in the mid-1990s, whirling disease really took its toll on the river and knocked rainbow numbers way down. Currently the state is crossing Colorado River rainbows with the Hofer strain, which is disease-resistant. The CDOW hopes to restore rainbow populations not only in the southwest, but also across the state.

"However," Alves said, "we have a thriving population of browns. On the lower river, surveys are showing 185 fish over 14 inches per linear mile."

Browns currently make up 95 percent of the Rio's trout population. "But this past year, we stocked 37,000 Hofer-strain rainbows in the Gold Medal section and we have high hopes that the future will show 100 pounds of rainbow trout per acre."