They said it couldn’t be done. So, naturally, Nathan Zelinsky just had to prove that it could.
The result is a newly discovered smallmouth bass bite through the ice cover at Chatfield Reservoir that might warm the hearts, but not the feet, of everyone who loves those wonderful ol’ brown fish.
What got Zelinsky going was a lot of Internet banter about how smallmouth supposedly couldn’t be caught through the ice, a sort of angling wives’ tale that gets repeated so often, many anglers accept it as fact.
“My reply was that they have to eat. No matter what anyone says, they’re catchable,” the Bailey resident declared. “Everything is catchable, else they’d starve.”
A still-water guide (303-947-8327) who spends more than 280 days a year on Chatfield, Antero, Elevenmile or Spinney Mountain reservoirs, Zelinsky can be forgiven a bit of ego when it comes to catching fish.
“I took it as a challenge. That comment kept eating me up.”
So, after bidding goodbye to a group of Chatfield walleye clients one recent day, Zelinsky took a stroll across the glossy dance floor looking for smallmouth.
“I found them almost immediately. They’re holding very tight to all the steep structure — the road beds, the gravel pits, the river channel. They’re often so tight on the walls, you can’t see them on the graph, so most people don’t fish it.”
Unlike other popular Chatfield ice species such as walleye or trout, smallmouth appear to move very little.
“You have to find them, then put your lure right there,” Zelinsky said. “You have to cater to them.”
His contact zone has been off the dam face at depths ranging from 22 to 45 feet. Most of the action occurs between 28 to 33.
On this day, Zelinsky has chosen a location off an old roadbed at 28 feet. He arrives at daybreak, with the thermometer shriveled to the low teens, and announces that the best bite begins around 10 a.m. and lasts about four hours.
Just as he predicted, actions starts slowly; the only early catch is a fat walleye, about 17 inches.
“The walleye started showing up just last week and they’re holding tight to structure until ice off and they start their spawning thing.”
Zelinsky offers a broader caveat for Chatfield ice anglers, even the majority who try for trout.
“There are so many shad in the lake this year. The fish fill up so quickly, they can be hard to catch.”
Despite a couple of hours without a bass, Zelinsky sticks with his spot. He is rewarded with a 10-inch smallie, than another a bit longer.
“Little rat schools,” he calls them.
Then, as if the fish were lined up in reverse pecking order, he pulls out a progression of larger ones, the best a 14-incher that puts a deep bend in a slender ice rod. Most of his smallmouth have ranged to the smaller size. The biggest measured 18 inches.
To get them, Zelinsky uses a combination of spoons, mostly Northland Buckshot or PK in one-half to three-quarter ounces. He sweetens these with a Berkley Gulp twister, using either a teasing twitch or a more aggressive snap jig when the fish turn aggressive.
“I try to let the fish tell me what they want.”
Zelinsky often baits a second line with a live minnow. This day, the bite was split between this and a PK spoon tipped with just a minnow’s head, twitched slowly. Once, using both kinds of rigs, he scrambled to set the hook on a second bass while playing the first.
Any smallmouth lover keen on joining the fun will be encouraged by the best ice conditions in years. Hard and clean, it measures a foot thick and should last awhile — certainly a lot longer than that lie about smallmouth through the ice.
Charlie Meyers: 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com
