Never one to hide his intentions, Phil Small popped a digital scale from his tackle bag and gave it a little tug for effect. In what may have been pure coincidence, the readout flashed 1 3/4 pounds, just enough to measure a Colorado record for grayling.
A catch-and-release man to the core, the Fort Collins resident had certified the scale for accuracy and now was prepared to put it to good use. His plan was simple enough: Row his pontoon boat across the broad expanse of lower Big Creek Lake to the place where a creek poured in cold snowmelt.
If not right there at the inlet, he expected grayling to have run up this fast-flowing link between the upper and lower lakes on their annual spawning mission. He planned to track them down, catch the biggest one and claim it as the state release record.
Certainly Small had come to the right spot. First transplanted from Joe Wright Reservoir to Big Creek Lakes in 1994 and again in 1998 and 2003, grayling rather quickly grew to trophy proportions. The current state record, 1 pound, 10 ounces and 17.25 inches, was caught at the lower lake in 2002 by Derik Drinnen.
Division of Wildlife biologist Ken Kehmeier has captured considerably larger specimens in his nets and believes it’s merely a matter of time before one turns up at the end of an angler’s line.
Small figured it might as well be his. To do so, he either could comb the lake at random, hoping for a bite, or target the spawning run when grayling congregate at the creek.
For the latter, timing is everything. First there’s the uncertain matter of ice-out, when grayling typically make their way toward moving water. Then there’s the considerable matter of snowmelt and when Jackson County officials plow the road leading to the complex about an hour’s drive northwest of Walden.
Too early and you’re stuck in a snowbank or caught up in a tedious post-holing trek around the lake. Too late and the fish have retreated to the lake, back to square one.
Reaching the creek, Small quickly went on the prowl, searching for patches of gravel that might attract spawning grayling. He found precious little of this among a tangle of logjams, now turning to each dark run where fish might hide.
Finally, where the creek left the upper lake in a series of deep meanders, he found them.
“There’s a bunch down there, and they’re pretty big,” Small said excitedly.
Several casts later, he set the hook on a fish that ran powerfully downstream, darting this way and that before finally pushing its nose into a net. When Small attached it to the scale, the readout flashed 2 1/2 pounds. Alas, the fish was a rainbow trout, not a grayling.
Those elusive fish of the north country, with that dramatic dorsal sail and floral spots, were nowhere to be found. Kehmeier believes they already had come and gone.
“As soon as the lower lake opens up, those fish will be hitting the inlet,” the biologist opined. “They run sooner than one might expect.”
Relatively few Colorado anglers have caught a grayling. Among those are Jack Osman and Mike Antonini, who came all the way from Colorado Springs to try. To reach the inlet, they walked around the lake through wet meadows layered with blankets of marsh marigolds and over jackstraw tangles of deadfall.
“Never seen one, never caught one,” Antonini said as he launched a cast to the place where the surging creek met the lower lake.
His indicator dipped with remarkable regularity, but each fish that came splashing to the surface also was a trout.
While the outing produced not a single grayling, let alone a record, it did serve to point up the overall beauty and productivity of Big Creek Lakes.
The best lie hidden beneath the surface, creatures of the deep that come in all shapes and sizes. The biggest are tiger muskies, notable for a 35-pounder caught and released last summer. Lake trout come next on the pecking order. Kehmeier has handled a 27-pounder, but few are larger than 18.
Kehmeier finds lots of lakers from 18-22 inches, along with numerous rainbows that were planted at 5 inches and grew up wild. The upper lake, smaller and not as deep, is notable for a population of brown trout.
It’s a lovely place to visit, a setting Small likens to Rocky Mountain National Park. The veteran angler promised to try again for the grayling. He’ll bring along his scale.
Charlie Meyers can be reached at 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
