Walden – The scene that unfolded in serial fashion across the empty expanse of four popular reservoirs was enough to restore one’s faith in humankind – or at least that part that has to do with common sense and self-preservation.
Here, with tens of thousands of eager trout squirming beneath a healthy and growing ice sheet, not a single fisherman had laid auger to ice.
Amazing what the coldest weather of the season will do to an angler’s perspective.
On a white-knuckle drive in darkness up from the city, a slightly deranged outdoors writer watched the thermometer reading in his vehicle plunge from minus-17 atop Berthoud Pass to minus-32 in Tabernash.
By the time he skated up to Lake John Resort, at the popular impoundment near Walden, a veritable heat wave had swept over the land. This blowtorch effect sent the temperature skyrocketing all the way up to minus-9. No matter that the reading wouldn’t reach positive numbers all day. Bill Willcox and Mike Seris were ready for fishing, even if nobody else was.
Actually, it should be explained that these otherwise sane individuals had agreed to do this at the behest of a Denver writer chafing to get started on an ice-fishing season that has taken off at an early gallop.
Safe ice has formed at numerous locations across the high country, launching little ripples of enthusiasm among those intrepid souls who get their kicks sitting on a slab of ice.
Willcox and his wife Tish, who operate the restaurant and tackle emporium at Lake John, welcome hordes of ice anglers each year to a trout-rich complex that includes the three Delaney Butte Lakes. They put out the word early last week that the ice, and the bite, were on.
What no one – least of all those haggard souls who are paid to guess at the weather – calculated was how bitter cold this storm would be.
Not that it mattered much to Seris. A retired Greeley schoolteacher, he considers it a sacred duty to fish at least four days a week, whatever the season. A couple days earlier, before the weather turned insane, he had landed four large fish just off the boat ramp at Lake John, including a monster rainbow estimated at 25 inches.
Armed with his special fly, Seris was eager for a rematch, even more anxious to puzzle out what this ice season will hold.
“Last year was really weird. The fishing was terrible early on and just kept getting better,” Seris said, describing the reverse of a normal ice scenario.
In a typical cycle for shallow lakes, fish are frisky when ice first forms, then grow progressively more lethargic as decaying vegetation removes oxygen from the water.
If Seris’ success is any indication, this season should return to normal. Or maybe it’s just that his strategy with an old familiar pattern, the Muskrat nymph, jibes perfectly with the current dietary rage at the lake.
A stomach sample of a 2-pound rainbow he caught Thursday revealed the plump fish had been gorging on snails, of all things. The size 12 nymph, when wet, bears some resemblance to the l-inch snails. Seris ties the fly with tungsten wraps on the hook shank and a tungsten bead head to make it sink quickly without any other weight assist.
In Thursday’s admittedly limited test, this single, simple fly outfished the usual assortment of ice jigs, mealworms and night crawlers.
When our frosty trio switched venues to North Delaney to try for lunker brown trout, the bite went as cold as the air. The notion here is to capitalize on a brown’s craving for crayfish at a time when the crustaceans remain available.
North Delaney crawdads burrow into the mud as the temperature drops and generally are unavailable after December.
North Park waters, which now have 5 to 6 inches of ice, typically are among the first of the popular destinations to freeze, with South Park locales such as Elevenmile and Tarryall soon to follow. Fishing is good at Georgetown Lake and the kokanee salmon ice bite is on at the Snake River inlet of Dillon Reservoir.
Ice should continue to grow steadily as the current cold snap continues. But there’s got to be a happy medium there somewhere.
South Park closures
A growing ice cover has caused Colorado State Parks to close Spinney Mountain Reservoir for the season and end boating activity on nearby Elevenmile Reservoir. Ice covers 75 percent of Elevenmile, but senior ranger J.W. Wilder cautions against ice-fishing at present. Three inches of ice has formed near the inlet, but the surface remains flimsy around most of the lake. “I’d give it a while,” said Wilder, who recommends using all the standard precautions during early season on the lake.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
