Kremmling – The vapor rising from holes punched in Wolford Mountain Reservoir did not represent the sort of steaming action anglers sometimes expect from a place that on Saturday will hold center state in area ice fishing competition.
Instead, it signaled a steady transfer of heat from water near the freezing point to air almost 60 degrees colder.
Whether you believed the 40-below reading at Wes Bishop’s house or the minus-36 Joe Lobello noted outside his window, Saturday sunrise was a bracing affair in this frosty ol’ cow town. When a little band of anglers shivered its way to the lake toward mid-morning, the temperature soared to minus-26, then climbed 2 degrees and stayed there, as if mercury had frozen to glass.
“It’s Kremmling. What can I say?” Lobello said with a grin of a sort of perverse approval that his town at that moment just might be the coldest postmark in the lower 48.
Extreme cold means thick ice, and nobody much bothers with snowmobiles to reach the remote crannies of Wolford. With the sheet approaching 2 feet thick, simply aim your ride in the direction you want to go, even if you’re driving a cement truck.
It has been that kind of winter in Grand County, which is why Dave Cunningham, who owns the town automotive shop and tow service, hasn’t spent much time on the lake. Diesel engines jelled up. Collisions with deer. Vehicles stuck in snow.
“I’ve been busy,” Cunningham said, partly in lament.
So, too, has Lobello, who fled Silverthorne 13 years ago to relocate his American West Taxidermy studio, one of the sponsors of the annual Wolford Ice Fishing Contest.
“Kremmling is the place for a taxidermy shop. They don’t like taxidermy shops in Summit County; they love them here,” Lobello said of the 40-mile-wide gulf between the chichi resort crowd and the really hard-core hunting and fishing folks.
Bishop, a stone mason, has been equally occupied on the town’s new mercantile building, a barometer of progress anchored in large part on Kremmling’s claim as a sportsman’s paradise.
Now, with the big tournament a week away, Lobello and Bishop sped off for their first real day of practice, with Cunningham and his son, Blake, in hot pursuit.
Ploughing through a foot of fresh snow, the locals drove to a spot a mile up the lake where a steep shoreline marked the creek channel. Although most Wolford anglers don’t stray far from the boat dock, Bishop favors the higher oxygen content of the moving water toward the inlet.
Dan Murphy, who operates the Fishin’ Hole shop, another tournament sponsor, touts the deeper water around the dam.
“That’s where I find my biggest fish,” Murphy said of a reservoir that recently experienced difficulty growing large trout.
Wolford suffered acute drawdown from the 2002-03 drought, when forage was in short supply. Suckers command a high percentage of the biomass, further reducing the food supply.
The Division of Wildlife stocks splake, a lake trout-brook trout hybrid, to control suckers; these predators now are the biggest fish in the lake. Rainbows, seldom large, make up the bulk of the catch. A lucky angler occasionally lands a lunker brown and kokanee salmon are among the recent plants.
These Kremmling fellows are no fair-weather ice anglers, disdaining the shelter of sissified ice shacks for fishing in the raw. Of course, holes bored almost up to the auger handles iced over every couple of minutes in the extreme cold. But by midday, a warm sun glinting off the snow created something that an optimist might have taken for warmth.
Fishing, alas, did not heat up. The group landed a few modest rainbows on a broad assortment of jigs tipped either with meal works or night crawlers. Offerings dangled a couple of feet off bottom attracted the most attention.
Such reports from a half-day of fishing are a bit like reviewing 10 minutes from the middle of a play; what you’ll find Saturday at the big event may be completely opposite.
Who knows? The temperature might soar above freezing, which means you’ll have to bring your own vapor effect.
The tournament, which offers $3,000 in prize money, runs 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. and registration can be made either at the Fishin’ Hole in town or at a judges tent near the boat ramp just before the start. Entry costs $30 for adults. Kids may enter for free. For information, phone the Kremmling Chamber of Commerce, 1-877-573-6654.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
