Heeney – It’s a thing of awe and wonder, this soft spell of spring.
With the earth oozing water and life, which nearly always comes to the same, one finds a raw sense of awakening at every step. For an angler, it’s a vibrant time of anticipation, with a great fish waiting at the end of every cast.
But such dramatic change also delivers a certain element of regret for a season passing, the end of a happy time that never will come exactly this way again. Dave Bryant knows the feeling well.
Standing last weekend on a Green Mountain Reservoir sheet turned gray with decay, the Parker resident fairly reeked with remorse.
“This will be my last day on the ice,” Bryant lamented, with the good sense to know when to say when.
At daybreak and 21 degrees, the cover glistened white while an auger groaned hard to punch through a foot of solid ice. Three snow- mobiles and an ATV sped confidently across the surface toward separate and distant spots where fish were sure to lurk.
But by noon, the thermometer soared to 50 and the ice darkened both top and bottom, a modified Oreo effect that caused a little sigh of relief when feet finally touched shore.
Bryant toils in real life as a representative of a securities firm and seeks occasionally employment each summer as a fly-fishing guide. But he finds greatest satisfaction while seated on the ice, an affliction that grips him 40 or more days a year.
“Maybe you shouldn’t write that. I don’t want to make my wife mad,” he winced.
Sheri Bryant’s loss is the supreme gain of a loose-knit cadre of ice anglers for whom his companionship transcends the bonds of mere matrimony. Like mice trailing a piper, they follow him from lake to lake, secure in the knowledge that, in the bosom of the master, they’ll catch fish.
With an innateness that echoes beyond electronics, Bryant can sniff several species of fish through many inches of frozen water. At age 44, he bounces around the ice like something made of rubber, an energy ball who keeps his friends from their usual frost-induced slumbers, therefore more likely to set the hook.
With kokanee salmon as his blue- plate special, Bryant on this day lured five true believers up from the Denver area.
“There’s a dynamite bite starting at daybreak,” he promised. “When that’s done, they seem to spread out and you have to look for them.”
From a platform atop 150 feet of water not far from the Green Mountain Dam, Bryant punched holes and waited for the salmon he knew would come. The sun still loitered behind the mountains when a bend appeared in Rhead Kinder’s rod, then sizzled like a current from tip to tip – the sort of electric action one often finds when a school of salmon sweeps through.
When the wave finally subsided, 26 salmon pocked the ice, having fulfilled the key element in the recipe for fish dinner.
Of equal note, these kokanee served as a harbinger for what should be a fine season. Primarily 2-year-olds about a foot long, they reflect a statewide increase in stocks that rebounded from a shortage caused by drought and other mis- fortunes.
If winter success at places like Elevenmile and Green Mountain prove indicative, this resurgence in numbers will translate to a good summer for kokanee enthusiasts.
Alas, Bryant will not be among them. With his world melting all around him, the iceman goeth.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
