Our Colorado Parks and Wildlife Program Coordinator, Emily Orbanek, reflects on what spring means in Colorado.

Spring is harbinger of fresh starts – Rockies opening day and all the hopefulness of an 0-0 record, mild weather for spring gardening, and the start of a new fishing calendar. 

Every spring I make a visit to my local fly shop to buy my new fishing license (in Colorado all licenses expire at the end of March). It’s an annual tradition that warrants taking stock of last year’s highlights and trophy fish – the monster brown trout on the Yampa River that I caught with my dad and boyfriend; the small brook trout that rose to dry flies in an alpine lake in the Holy Cross Wilderness during my annual ladies’ backpack adventure with a lifelong girlfriend; and the last fishing trip with my yellow lab, Bridger.   

A new fishing license is also a time to look forward to the fish the coming summer months are bound to hold – a Saturday on the Yampa river with family before I run the Steamboat marathon; a weekend set aside at a remote Western Slope lake to dust off the belly boat that I haven’t used in ten years; and an afternoon on a mountain stream before the wedding of a childhood friend.  

While fish are central to all of these memories and future plans, it’s ultimately the time on the water and around a campfire spent with friends and family that make them meaningful. So buy a 2016 fishing license, grab someone to share a stretch of river with and head outside to make a memory. 

Buy your 2016 fishing license here. 

Learn more about fishing in state parks and across Colorado here. 

Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO) invests a portion of Colorado Lottery proceeds to help preserve and enhance the state’s parks, trails, wildlife, rivers, and open spaces. GOCO’s independent board awards competitive grants to local governments and land trusts, and makes investments through Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Created when voters approved a Constitutional Amendment in 1992, GOCO has since funded more than 4,700 projects in urban and rural areas in all 64 counties without any tax dollar support.