It’s not particularly unusual for an angler, particularly one with a hankering for big fish, to pack a weighing device in his tackle box.
But the digital scale that Troy Coburn keeps within close reach comes with a difference. A small piece of tape attached to its face bears a simple inscription: 5.75.
That’s the pound weight of the Colorado record for smallmouth bass, a fish taken in 1993 from Navajo Reservoir, near the New Mexico border.
Coburn, a 34-year-old Aurora resident, believes the record will be broken soon, probably as early as this year. He hopes to be the one to do it, possibly as near to home as Aurora Reservoir.
“Either Navajo or Aurora,” said Coburn, who of course opts for the latter, only minutes from his house.
He’s been close before. Last season he missed the mark by a scant 2 ounces with a fish that pulled the scale to 5.63. Still another Aurora bronzeback measured just 3 ounces off the record. Further, he saw a fish last year swimming beside a 4-pounder he’d hooked that dwarfed the catch.
He’s already taken two fish over 5 pounds at Aurora Reservoir this year and gets a kind of tingle every time he casts a lure into the impoundment on the southeast edge of the city.
On this particular day, Coburn has launched his boat at Chatfield Reservoir, another metro hotspot where record-size smallies also might lurk. At 6 a.m., the sun has yet to clear the top of the dam. Coburn is first on the lake, a distinction that pleases him immensely.
“I love getting out this time of day with the quiet and calm, even though the fish often don’t bite well for a couple hours,” he said of a state park setting that, with the chill of early May, hasn’t yet succumbed to the roar of water frolic. “That’s the thing I like about Aurora Reservoir. No jet skis.”
The stillness is broken only by the honking of geese; to the north, a squadron of hot air balloons lifts above the horizon to catch the sun in a dazzling flash of color.
Coburn, a tournament regular with Denver Bassmasters, has chosen a place near the west end of Chatfield where a series of old gravel pits prescribe a latticework of dropoffs to form the sort of rocky structure smallmouth love.
“These pits drop from 7 to 25 feet,” Coburn said, scanning his sonar. “Early in the morning, bass are likely to be spread out up top. Then, when the sun comes up, they’ll edge back down deeper. This changes later in May when the big females come up on top later in the day to warm up before laying their eggs.”
He begins casting a half-ounce Rat-L Trap lure across shallow flats to attract what he hopes will be early risers.
“I believe they like larger lures early and late in the season. In the summer, I switch to smaller stuff to match the shad that just hatched.”
When the bass don’t respond, Coburn changes to a rig that’s standard for any smallmouth situation.
“I like tube jigs in natural colors, brown or green,” he said of the popular crayfish imitation. “When it comes to smallmouth, crayfish is mostly what I do. During prime times, I throw a crankbait to cover the water. But once I locate the fish, I switch to a crawdad.”
Coburn theorizes that crankbaits work best during the first half of April because crayfish haven’t become active in cold water.
“The crawdad bite picks up when the water temperature rises to around 46 or 47 degrees.”
He favors smaller tubes, either 2 or 2 1/2 inches, on the theory that bass prefer not to contend with the sharp pincers of large, mature crayfish.
When the fish continue to ignore his offerings, Coburn assumes the conventional role of angler optimist.
“You can go a couple hours without a fish here, then catch a dozen in an hour,” he postulated. “It’s a couple weeks before spawn. They’re still schooled up.”
At precisely 8 a.m. – the exact two-hour lag he’d predicted – the first bronzeback grabbed a tube jig. The plump 2 1/2-pounder came from along the steep, rocky side of a pit, again as Coburn prophesied. Among the several fish caught over the next three hours was a smallmouth that might have nosed past 3 pounds and a couple walleye in the 17-inch range typical of Chatfield.
But Coburn has bigger fish to fry – or at least to catch. With the big smallies just a couple weeks from their spawning beds, he’ll turn his full attention to Aurora Reservoir.
“I’ll be out there beating it up on Saturday,” he declared.
You can bet he’ll have his scale handy.
Listen to Charlie Meyers at 9 a.m. each Saturday on “The Fan Outdoors,” radio KKFN 950 AM. He can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
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Troy Coburn makes his choices of the best waters and tells the reasons why:
1. Navajo. Although a minority of this southwest impoundment on the San Juan River lies in Colorado, Coburn still ranks it as the finest water in the state. “An incredible smallmouth fishery, ” he says.
2. Chatfield. This southwest metro impoundment doesn’t hold the biggest fish or even the most. But for a combination of the two, it can’t be beat.
3. Horsetooth. The numbers at this reservoir on the rebound can be tremendous when conditions are right. Coburn reports that a friend landed 70 fish one day last April.
4. Pueblo. This longtime smallmouth haven has taken a downturn in recent years. Is this the result of extremely low levels and often muddy water? Or have the fish simply suspended out in the lake where anglers can’t locate them?
5. Aurora. For sheer quality, this is tops. Want proof? Coburn has taken five fish over 5 pounds the past two seasons, once missing the state record by just 2 ounces and on another occasion by 3 ounces.
6. McPhee. A lot of fish, but seldom very large.
7. Trinidad. Again, good numbers, but 15-inchers are hard to come by.
