San Diego is a favorite conference spot and no wonder. It has great facilities, restaurants, beaches, weather, airport, and museums. But it also has a chance for some fly fishing before you get back to the grind.
Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach, a short hop north on I-5 has a bait and tackle that makes it easy.
You'll be fishing with a spinning rod but Jimmy Barrick, 858-568-3025 will fix you up with a pre-rigged set of 6 of these flies for the ever present Walleye Surfperch.
I tied the rig to the swivel with a good old Duncan knot.
And what do you know, Jimmy was right. For a complete breakdown, get the $1 iGuidepro.com guide for San Diego - Crystal Pier from the iTunes store.
If you want this kind of experience, you have to make your way on a less traveled path. The fish are smaller, the hiking is tougher, the roads are dirt, but the outdoor experience is breathtaking. 
A day after the foothills near Denver got a foot of snow I headed up Coal Creek Canyon Road (RT 72), turned right on Crescent Drive, then right on Gross Dam road (dirt) 
to an unplowed pulloff just past Gross Dam. 
Down a couple hundred feet on a trail, carefully avoiding the cougars to South Boulder Creek that was running at a respectable 106 cfs for the past 10 days. Water temperature was 40 degrees at 1:00PM. I dropped a bead egg below a pheasant tail and worked the far side of this pool slow and deep.
A little while later, in the same pool, this rainbow also chose to ignore the pheasant tail and went after the egg. Both hook-ups were very clean outside the jaw, as predicted by Clint Packo who taught us how to rig this egg pattern. 
It's not easy to entice trout at 40 degrees but the quiet beauty of a healthy Colorado stream in the winter is reward enough.
