Walden – Considering the degree of difficulty inherent in trying to hoodwink trophy brown trout, ice anglers might be pardoned for a trick that’s down and dirty.
Down as in bouncing bottom. Dirty as in mud bugs. That’s right, crawdads. Crayfish, if you want to be picky about it.
More than any other trout, browns love crayfish. They’re nutritious and a juicy mouthful for a fish that possesses the dentures and pugnacity to deal with them. At North Delaney Butte Reservoir, it’s a match made in heaven, at least for the first month of the ice season.
The largest lake in the Delaney triangle, it contains the state’s best population of large browns, along with a healthy supply of crayfish. Savvy ice-fishing enthusiasts don’t bother with small, shiny stuff here, at least not in the early going.
“Crayfish imitations are the ticket until around the first of the year,” said Ken Kehmeier, Division of Wildlife biologist, whose personal favorite is a tube jig on a 1/32-ounce hook. The thing about North Delaney crustaceans is that, true to their nickname, they burrow into the mud as winter progresses. With an early start to the season, that means a solid three weeks for some of the most excitement ever through a hole in the ice.
Just past daybreak Monday, when a cruel wind pushed stinging snow across the surface, Frank Meis of Kersey planted a brown marabou jig – that crayfish thing again – squarely on the bottom. Even before Meis realized he was cold, his rod bent with a 23-inch, 5-pound brown.
“The lure was just lying there, barely moving,” Meis said of the strategy that produced the best fish of the day. Every other fish that got a brief visit to the upper world also was a brown, although Meis played a large rainbow right up to the hole, just to prove that nearly every fish craves a bite of crayfish.
Effective crawdad imitations include tube jigs and even more lifelike soft plastics. All should be very small. Once the mud bugs retire to their native element, anglers are advised to switch to a strategy based on minnows.
“Try a Kastmaster with a small ice jig below it right at the vegetation line,” advises Kehmeier, who favors a Tear Drop or Fle-Fly for his closer.
Kehmeier stocks 30,000 small browns and 6,000 little rainbows in the north lake each year. The largest grow to about 8 pounds.
The North Park lakes, including Lake John and Cowdrey, froze solid nine days earlier than a year ago, the first of the state’s prime ice fishing lakes to do so.
“Lake John was fishable on Nov. 22,” said Bill Willcox, who keeps watch on the popular impoundment from his lakeside resort, which offers cabins and requisite tackle (970-723-3226).
Small jigs tipped with mealworms, waxworms, night crawlers, salmon eggs or Power Bait are the ticket at Lake John and Cowdrey, where bait is allowed. Willcox reports that the best catch so far is at Lake John – five rainbows exceeding 20 inches – was recorded by a man who used a fly; his name went unrecorded.
On Monday, ice in the park had grown to approximately 8 inches, a depth that should increase rapidly with cold that grew more biting as the day progressed. A howling ground blizzard blew sheets of loose snow across the ice. To the northwest, the tall peaks of the Mount Zirkel Wilderness peeked intermittently out of billowing clouds like something from a Himalayan photo book.
A little group of anglers hunched against the wind, dabbing constantly at the ice forming in their holes and wishing they had brought more clothes.
“I didn’t think my hole could freeze up with whitecaps on it,” Willcox said, straining to find humor in the situation.
Ten feet below the ice, thousands of crayfish could not have cared less about the weather. They had hungry trout to worry about.
Listen to Charlie Meyers at 9 a.m. each Saturday on “The Fan Outdoors,” KKFN 950 AM. He can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
