Pueblo
Whatever tried to make off with my very best lure wasn’t even a fish.
The most immediate suspect was a cottonwood, at least 10 feet tall and submerged all the way up to its twigs. But it might have been an overly aggressive willow, eager to get to the bait first. A tamarisk struck next; the determined shrub buried the barb and required long minutes to subdue and release.
In the course of the struggle, the angler had spooked several husky largemouth bass, one estimated at 5 pounds. Other fish splashed nearby.
Such is the heavenly state of affairs at Pueblo Reservoir, where the best water conditions in a decade have produced a wonderland of submerged vegetation. Every cove at the big impoundment on the Arkansas River just west of Pueblo is thatched with a thicket of brush grown tall and dense during long years above a deeply receded shoreline.
The immediate beneficiaries will be bass, crappie, yellow perch and bluegill that promise to pull off the best spawn anyone can remember. Fishermen will reap their reward in a year or three.
The best warmwater reservoir in Colorado is about to get better. Already heralded for its rich population of wiper, walleye and smallmouth, Pueblo is set to roll out a royal flush.
Flooding all that delicious spawning fabric is one thing. Holding the irrigation water long enough for the eggs to hatch in what lately has been a situation of volatile drawdown is quite another. But even that tricky condition appears to be spinning right.
“With all the rain and early runoff, it doesn’t look like they’ll be pulling into storage very soon,” said Jim Melby, area biologist with the Colorado Division of Wildlife. “I think we’ll get through the spawn OK.”
Melby says perch, smallmouth and spotted bass already have made a successful contribution to the next generation. Largemouth and crappie, struggling species through the recent drought, are poised for a major rebound.
“Life is considerably better than it was,” Melby said.
Disrupting the slumber of assorted irate birds, two anglers much earlier had pushed off from the dock in darkness to participate in Colorado’s most exciting fishing event – the surface feeding of wiper at daybreak. Large fish push gizzard shad against the surface in an explosive frenzy that causes grown men to tremble in anticipation.
Hitting it just right seldom is easy. Although it might occur at any time, a wiper boil is most likely during periods of low light, when the sun-sensitive shad move up from the depths.
Kevin Treanor, who lives short minutes from the lake, knows this better than most. On a day in late March 2004, his insomnia paid off with a 26-pound, 15-ounce wiper, a state all-tackle record and the largest of this white bass-striped bass hybrid taken on a fly.
His quest is to find those places where wandering bands of wiper, hopefully big ones, converge with shad schools just below the surface. To do this, he is willing to push into the darkness five mornings a week during prime season, casting various flies of his own creation. His biggest catch this year is 12 pounds.
“It’s hit or miss. Some days you get several nice fish, others none at all,” Treanor said.
During spring, wiper target shad hatched from the previous year, 4-inch long morsels with mobility. To catch them, wiper sometimes launch completely into the air. Later, when tiny young-of-the-year shad have hatched, the rises are subtle, sometimes lost in waves or even a stiff chop.
Worst of all is dead calm, which is precisely what we got all day. With nothing to hide the fraud, these fish often followed the fly but refused to take – except for a large fish that abruptly broke Treanor’s line.
The most efficient way to catch wiper is to go deep, where they spend much of their time. A Lindy Rig bounced along bottom is particularly effective. Melby reports catches of 30 fish per boat with this method, most no longer than 16 inches.
The biologist added a dour prediction.
“Tackle sales will be way up this year. There are a lot of limbs to grab your lures,” he said.
Maybe so, but not without a fight.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
