It’s a brutal choice for a fishing enthusiast to make: Either refrain from the double fill-up at the pump for that first can’t-live-without-a-trout-fix trip of the season or break the bad news to junior.
Sorry, kid, but you’re stuck with community college instead of enrolling at Princeton, as we’d always planned. Nasty break, but, hey, when the trout are running, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
But wait! There may be another way. There’s this place, right here close to home, where our terminally conflicted angler can have his trout and an Ivy League grad, too.
This compromise is waiting almost at your doorstep, particularly if you happen to be holed up in the southwest metro not far from where the South Platte River makes its regularly scheduled stop at Chatfield Reservoir.
Here, only a gallon or two away, you’ll find an early-spring migration of trout up from the reservoir into several miles of public stream. Most of these rainbow runners are good size, 15 to 20 inches.
Occasionally, an old mossback will sneak into the process or even a trophy brown. Several years ago, I found a monster brown trout up on the shore a short distance from the lake. Something, most likely a raccoon, had gnawed away at the back. It measured 27 inches long.
More recently, I watched a teenager catch and release a succession of rainbows from a run not far from this same spot. The biggest was a deeply colored 19-incher.
Most years, the run begins in late February, but there now seems to have been a slight delay. A visit late last week found few fish in the river and a scattering of ice fishermen still on the reservoir at a date when Chatfield almost always is ice-free.
Look for rainbows in the river very soon, perhaps as early as this week. You also can expect company from other anglers. An opportunity this close to home attracts lots of attention, particularly from the weekend crowd that flocks to Chatfield State Park.
The good news is that the fish travel a considerable distance upstream, spreading the action along an extended stretch of river that somehow maintains a wonderfully natural character inside a busy park.
In mid-afternoon, a small herd of mule deer waded the river just a few yards from where anglers twirled fly lines; an ouzel trilled a mating concert that announced its own passion for spring.
Yet another aspect of the season awaits anglers who keep a sharp lookout and a willingness to shift tactics. Later in March, walleye attracted by moving water also run up into the Platte, where anglers often catch them on flies as well as conventional tackle.
Thing is, the regulation that requires kept walleye to be 18 inches or longer in Chatfield Reservoir doesn’t apply in the river. Anyone with a hankering for a tasty dinner can keep whatever they catch. Most of the river walleye seem to be undersized males that never find their way into the creel during the primary reservoir season.
This also serves to remind that the Colorado Division of Wildlife walleye spawn-taking operation is about to begin at Chatfield, Cherry Creek, Pueblo and Carter reservoirs. The area along the dams where biologists set their nets will be closed to all activity starting March 15.
Charlie Meyers: 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com
