At least for the next three months, the feeding frenzy has ended at Antero Reservoir – certainly for the fishermen and perhaps even for the fish.
The Colorado Wildlife Commission took care of the former, voting unanimously Monday for an emergency regulation that effectively trimmed the creel limit by half. With commissioner Brad Coors leading the initiative, the policy body approved a 90-day measure allowing two trout daily of any size, effective immediately.
What happens after the emergency period expires in early November is anyone’s guess. By then, the first vestiges of winter will have gripped the high-elevation impoundment south of Fairplay, with ice-fishing season just short weeks down the calendar.
A quick-step process has begun to establish a more lasting regulation, to be considered at the October commission workshop. This progression will include public testimony, perhaps wildly conflicting, at a number of meeting sites.
The core issue is how dramatically productive waters like Antero – which grows trout an astonishing 1 1/2 inches per month from May to October – should be managed. Speaking on the side of protection, some compare them to top-quality elk units. Others argue in terms of world-class waters that become tourist attractions.
But before these more esoteric debates get resolved, there is the odiferous matter of prize trout, some as large as 22 inches, floating belly up. Many observers blamed the previous rule allowing four trout, only one over 16 inches, as a root cause of a situation that left the lake surface and shoreline littered with dead fish.
Denver Water, which owns the property, expressed particular concern at the carnage, along with overcrowding, littering and trespassing in restricted areas. The water agency has the right to close the reservoir completely.
In the excitement over large, cooperative fish, many anglers showed little regard for proper care and release. A key part of this new protective thrust will be an accelerated education campaign by the Division of Wildlife.
Curiously, DOW staff on Monday made a separate pitch for a creel limit of four trout, two over 16, an even more liberal allotment than the one in force for those tumultuous first 27 days. This plan failed to consider one of the key problems with the existing reg, that of excessive handling while fish were being measured. All five commissioners in attendance rejected this proposal in favor of the two-fish alternative.
Factors that contributed to mortality included oxygen deprivation caused by relatively high water temperature and the sheer strength of trout that approached five pounds. Anglers often played fish to exhaustion, then had difficulty handling them at the point of release.
The new regulation comes at a time when the bite, astonishingly good during the early days, appears to be slowing. Reasons for the decline in action are apparent: Uncounted thousands of trout either have been kept or killed; the many that remain received a crash course in lure identification and thus became more difficult to catch.
Goose boost
The commission also stamped a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service guideline allowing an increase in the daily bag limit for dark geese to four, from three, in the Central Flyway, that part of Colorado east of the Continental Divide.
Citing a seasonal population increase, the federal agency lengthened the goose season as well, allowing the commission to add eight days for a total of 103. The additions include a seven-day span, Nov. 17-23, covering Thanksgiving week, and Oct. 8, the Columbus Day holiday.
A third waterfowl change, again following the federal decree, allows a second canvasback in the seven-duck daily limit west of the Divide.
