When poets speak of spring, the words turn to the greening of the earth, of freshets, perhaps a robin’s song. But at a series of small lakes and ponds along Colorado’s Front Range, the symbol is an object far less lyrical: the fish hatchery truck.
Rumbling, lackluster, ultimately unglamorous, the truck nonetheless signals things equally wonderful: warmer temperature, open water and the tug of a fish on the line.
This is when and how the season begins, in places where the dominant scenery is a business tower. From Pueblo to Fort Collins, these seemingly unattractive lakes and ponds help satisfy urges dormant beneath ice and cold. While many metro anglers anticipate the later stirring of favorites such as walleye and bass, most waken to 10-inch rainbow trout.
Starting next week, Colorado Division of Wildlife crews will begin distributing tens of thousands of these wriggly little silver bullets, the first installments on what ultimately will be an allotment of 188,000 catchables in the Denver area. Water quality permitting, stocking of smaller lakes will continue well into July; larger, deeper bodies such as Cherry Creek, Chatfield and Aurora received fish well into autumn.
The first week of March will find fish trucks at Adams Fairground Lake and Brighton City Park Pond in Adams County, Centennial Park Lake in Arapahoe County, Golden Pond No. 3 and Izaak Walton Pond in Boulder County and Rocky Mountain Lake, Berkeley Lake and Sloan’s Lake in Denver County. These and numerous other waters in a five-county area may be located in DOW’s “Fishing Close to Home” booklet. The agency also publishes a statewide stocking schedule.
The following week, the truck will visit Barr Lake, then the aforementioned larger lakes. Impoundments in Larimer, El Paso and Pueblo counties are in the mix for stocking forays that ultimately will plant 3.65 million catchables statewide — little fish that in many cases will grow to trophy size.
The Sloan’s plant is a sometime thing depending upon water quality, but Jim McKissick, assistant hatchery chief, said the popular lake in the shadow of the city is scheduled to receive fish this year. He said, “This gives us a jump-start in the Denver area.”
Judging by the scene last Sunday at Rocky Mountain Lake, the fix will come not a moment too soon. With the last vestiges of ice clinging to the north shore beneath a dazzling sun, several anglers already spread lawn chairs, poked rod holders into the softening earth and settled back to enjoy what for many anglers is the essence of angling pleasure. Not too strenuous. Close to home. Anything for a jiggle on the line.
After a brief refresher from working the night shift, Dennis Blackburn of Westminster rang up his regular fishing buddy Reed Haberl of Commerce City for an outing that turned out a bit more restful than bargained for.
“Until today, we’d been doing pretty well,” Blackburn said of the quest for holdovers from 2008. The duo tried soaking all the stocker rainbow candy — PowerBait, night crawlers, sal-mon eggs — all to small avail.
“It’s really relaxing,” Haberl added. “I can get out here at two or three in the afternoon, fish through rush hour and still get home at a good hour. Besides, it’s free most places.”
A few yards away, Christina Salas kept watch on son Xavier and daughter Enmelinda in a contest also being won by the trout.
“We’re out here all the time, winter and summer,” Christina said. “My son caught his first trout yesterday.”
A few springs ago, I chanced to be at a local lake just as the fish truck arrived. Figuring on a bit of sport, I ditched my bass rig in favor of a light fly rod and tossed a nymph out into the teeming mass of little trout. To my surprise, nothing happened, not on the next cast nor the next. I caught a few over the next few minutes, shiny little squirmers I hope ultimately wound up on the hook of a child. At the same time, a man standing a short distance away caught and released one after another using a bobber and salmon eggs.
Which, of course, was exactly as it should have been.
