Leadville – Among the several angling oddities that might have been expected to creep out of the high-mountain darkness, a bat wasn’t part of the plan.
Yet here it was, fluttering wildly with Skip Lee’s fly attached, adding an element of the bizarre to an evening that already had its share of phantasm.
“We expect to catch multiple species here, but not phylum,” Mike Conlin admonished his friend from the opposite side of the creek as Lee struggled to find new meaning in the term “fly by night.”
Conlin, a Leadville resident of scientific bent who actually knows what a phylum is, had volunteered as tour leader for this strange day’s journey into night. Just how weird, nobody really knew for sure.
As Conlin explained it over a steak, medium rare, at one of those antique Leadville eateries that makes you think you’ve wandered into a 19th century time warp, the notion was to catch lake trout that sneak up from the depths of Turquoise Lake into the Lake Fork Creek inlet in the fading light.
As the ultimate oddity, we still were chatting happily over dessert as the clock hands turned toward 8 p.m., still 10 miles from the lake. Not to worry, Conlin assured us. Nothing much was going to happen before dark.
The interesting part, he said, is that we not only could expect to catch lake trout on flies, but also get them feeding on the surface. Anyone can get mackinaw to take bait or lures, Conlin opined. Even streamers are no big deal. But to get these piscivores to take an insect imitation dry, well, that’s something worth staying up late for.
So was the light show.
A towering thunderstorm rolling across the Arkansas River Valley to the east captured the sun’s fading rays in grand billows of pink, a pulsing panorama that might have been choreographed from outer space. When the clouds parted, the lights of Leadville twinkled in the distance like something from a fairyland.
But the real cause to plod blindly through a willow bog, for Lee to cross a runoff-swollen creek by foot Braille, was a fishing opportunity Conlin promised we would not soon forget.
Most everyone knows about the bumper crop of lake trout in Turquoise, central storage unit in the far-flung Pan- Ark water collection system. The 1,650- acre impoundment is chock full of small-to-medium macs – so much so that Parker resident Dave Bryant has been making twice-weekly pilgrimages all season.
Bryant, who pursues lakers summer and winter with the sort of avidity usually reserved for gold-seekers and similar obsessives, reports boating up to 70 fish a day in 40 to 45 feet of water where the creek shelves off into the depths.
“These fish are taking advantage of the cool, moving water and the food it attracts,” Bryant informed.
He recommends white tube jigs with sucker meat or a rabbit-hair bait. A plain drop-shot rig with sucker meat is a “no-brainer,” Bryant said.
Trouble is, if you can call it that, nearly all range from 17 to 20 inches – not bad for nearly every Colorado species that isn’t a lake trout.
It’s also a nice size for a fly rod, particularly for surface feeders in the dark. Considering the natural benefits of an angler’s rich imagination, everything looks big in the dark. As light faded quickly in the shadow of Mount Massive, Colorado’s second- tallest mountain, Conlin knotted on a small Zonker streamer, size 14, tied with squirrel hair. The lakers loved it.
Then, when a moonless night turned blacker than a vampire’s cape, he put on the full-court press. The 18-inch lake trout that sipped his dry in a softly dimpled rise then added another twist to a night of profound strangeness. It jumped. A lake trout actually left the water under semi-voluntary circumstances, tripping briefly across the water on its tail.
Prospects at the Turquoise inlet actually will improve as summer progresses, Conlin said. Warmer nights in late July and August will provide more insects and more lake trout slurping them in the darkness.
But don’t get your hopes too high. You probably won’t get another one to jump, and you might not catch a bat.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
