BLUE MESA RESERVOIR — They’re down there.
Sixty toes or so beneath ice as thick as 4 Russian novels, lake trout are meandering by way of the humps and basins of their netherworld looking grounds within the waters of Blue Mesa Reservoir.
A bundled-up Chris Scott dangles a little bit yellow octopus-looking thingamajig by way of a gap he has augured within the ice. He’s hoping to tempt a kind of hungry trout to take a chew and, within the course of, to assist him repay a hunk of the almost $4,000 in high-tech tools he has collected for outsmarting fish in winter.
Scott has a number of firm on the ice on this early weekend morning when the Blue Mesa Reservoir Lake Trout Match is underway.
For the subsequent three months, Colorado Parks and Wildlife is dangling $10,000 in prizes to anglers who can catch probably the most lake trout.
This contest isn’t about nabbing the most important fish. The ice anglers as a substitute function companions in fish-population management. There are too many lake trout within the state’s largest reservoir. To stability issues out, Parks and Wildlife is asking anglers to assist — for a possible money payoff.
“It’s a win-win state of affairs the best way I see it,” mentioned Giulio Del Piccolo, an aquatic biologist who inherited the match when he walked into his new job because the Higher Gunnison aquatic specialist three weeks in the past.
The 300 or so anglers out on the ice today say fishing for bucks is just not their major motive.
“Catching fish is simply enjoyable,” mentioned Ivan Medina of Delta as he huddled over an ice gap in a hut along with his spouse and daughter. He had scored a 14-inch brown trout in his first hour of fishing. No good for the cash, however tremendous for dinner.
Anglers confirmed up in droves on a day when temperatures have lastly climbed out of the minus-30s, the infamous Blue Mesa winds have slumped right into a wimpy breeze, and the solar is making an attempt mightily to peep out of the cloud cowl.
They dragged sleds piled with gear out onto the reservoir and erected dozens of colourful material huts bearing model names like FatFish, Eskimo and Large Foot. The huts, often known as ice shanties, or “cabanes de pêche” for the flamboyant talkers, string out for miles on the frozen lake.
For some, like Medina, ice fishing means household time. Children pop out and in of huts to play within the snow whereas their dad and mom (largely dads) zero in on salad plate-sized ice holes.
Ice fishing can be all about buddy time. Cramming into fishy-smelling huts with bros who take pleasure in low-cost beer is a favourite type of togetherness on the ice. Judging by the crumpled Busch and Actual American cans across the huts, beer is to ice fishing as Earl Gray is to a tea celebration.
“I’m out right here for the sheer enjoyment,” mentioned Fue Moua, who drove over from Broomfield and spent the primary hour on the ice establishing a hut duplex with 4 associates. “Even while you don’t catch something, it’s simply good to be out right here.”
Moua didn’t know in regards to the huge tourney that has been underway at Blue Mesa because the first of the yr. However when CPW creel clerk Shane Gulliksen knowledgeable him in regards to the money prizes and the aim of the competition, it obtained his consideration.
The naturally flash-frozen brown trout exterior his hut doesn’t qualify, however Moua mentioned he would begin concentrating on some lake trout, which have a tendency to hang around at about 60 toes in depth and too favor the tube jigs that appear like mini octopi.
The tactic helps in different Colorado reservoirs, too
Fishing contests have turn out to be a way to assist handle fish populations in the same means that huge sport looking licenses are used for leveling populations of mule deer or elk — minus any money prizes.
Blue Mesa isn’t the one reservoir to carry a fish harvest contest. The thought got here from Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille, in response to Dan Brauch who began the Blue Mesa contest six years in the past. Brauch lately moved as much as the statewide place of CPW angler outreach supervisor.
Ridgway Reservoir has focused smallmouth bass. Elk Head Reservoir between Craig and Steamboat Springs has given prizes for northern pike and smallmouth bass harvesting assist. Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Wyoming and Utah border has a contest that additionally targets lake trout.
At Blue Mesa, the smaller-sized lake trout are focused as a result of they’re identified to gobble up too most of the minnow-sized kokanee “fry” — child salmon.
Kokanee are a favourite tasty goal for Blue Mesa anglers, so Parks and Wildlife needs to maintain their numbers up. In addition to being good catches for anglers, Blue Mesa kokanee eggs are collected to assist inventory our bodies of water all throughout Colorado with the landlocked salmon species.
If the division can entice sufficient anglers to assist verify the inhabitants of smaller lake trout (“lakers” to the anglers out right here on the ice), there’ll ostensibly be extra of the kokanee and extra trophy-sized lake trout In Blue Mesa. The greatest lake trout ever dragged from the Blue Mesa deeps weighed 73 kilos.
Parks and Wildlife has tried gill netting lake trout — scooping them up by the a whole lot in deepwater nets — for inhabitants management. However anglers complained. The nets have been additionally snagging trophy-sized fish.
So, in 2020, Brauch held the primary match. Within the inaugural yr, 4,055 fish heads have been turned in. The second yr introduced in 1,704.
There was no tourney for the subsequent two years as a result of the lake trout inhabitants dropped. The match was revived final yr nevertheless it wasn’t an excellent yr for ice fishing. Heat temperatures meant just one finish of the reservoir froze. The remainder had queasily skinny, patchy ice. Solely 898 fish heads have been turned in.
This yr, Del Piccolo is hoping for one more whopper of a harvest given the reservoir ice is rising fatter and fatter through the chilly that has had Gunnison County shivering in pipe-bursting lows for weeks.
The chilly has been so chilly that the match has gotten off to a little bit of a sluggish begin. There are particular temperatures that not even ice anglers — or Parks and Wildlife officers — will courageous.
Gulliksen, whose job entails counting and surveying anglers on the ice, mentioned there have been howling-wind, snow-whiteout days which are an excessive amount of for him and his omnipresent data-collecting clipboard.
“There have been days once I simply scan and get again within the truck,” Gulliksen mentioned.
It prices little or no to strive, however these anglers spend to win
On today, when temperatures have climbed above zero, anglers have been lured from the huts the place transportable heaters have saved issues comparatively toasty for anglers keeping track of sonar scanners to watch how deep their jigs are dangling.
Exterior the huts, almost each knot of ice anglers has at the least one different machine known as a JawJacker poised on the fringe of ice holes. The JawJackers maintain mini rods and reels and snap loudly if a fish bites. With JawJackers, anglers can strive their luck in a number of holes without delay.
Anthony Carrillo of Crawford constructed his personal model of a JawJacker from a mousetrap, a little bit of wooden, clothes-hanger wire and a tiny crimson flag. Just like the model identify ice fishing help, it alerts Carrillo when there’s motion under the ice.
Carrillo is fishing shallow water on today and that call has yielded extra bites than different anglers in his Blue Mesa hut neighborhood. Many of the anglers out right here have deemed it a sluggish day.
Carrillo snagged three rainbow trout in about quarter-hour. One which was frozen on the ice, he known as “grandma’s fish” as a result of he at all times delivers his first keepable catch to his grandmother. No lake trout for the competition, however grandma will probably be joyful, he mentioned.
Close by, Scott is utilizing his $3,700 Livescope Fish Finder sonar machine to look at what’s occurring 70 toes down and for a whole lot of toes in each path. On Scott’s monitor, the deep-water glints just like the speckled sample on a brown trout. Scott can jiggle his bait and see it clearly down there. He may see when a fish sidles by it — trying however not biting.
“It’s sort of dishonest,” he mentioned with amusing. “You possibly can sit up right here and see the place the fish are.”
He may see the place they’re headed and get there earlier than them. All he has to do is transfer his lime-green electrical augur from place to put so he can “drop a jig in entrance of their face and lower them off.”
Scott mentioned a fats money prize would assist him repay the bank card debt on his Livescope.
Gulliksen mentioned it’s potential to get into ice fishing — and into the match — with out all of the expensive gear.
For round $100, an aspiring ice angler can procure a hand-crank augur, a fundamental rod and reel, and some tube jigs for lures. However judging by the equipment-heaped sleds, the cozy huts and the sonar units, ice fishing is a kind of sports activities that borders on habit, each for snagging fish and for snaring offers whereas trolling the aisles at Cabela’s or Dick’s Sporting Items.
One angler has already turned in 143 heads
Successful bucks within the match is a little more difficult than merely yanking fish by way of an ice gap. To qualify, the lake trout have to be no bigger than 24 inches. Their frozen heads have to be bagged, tagged and dropped in particular freezers positioned alongside the lake and in Parks and Wildlife places of work in Montrose and Gunnison.
The angler who turns in probably the most heads wins $3,000. In previous years, the profitable numbers of heads have diversified from 163 to 284. To date this yr, the main angler has turned in 143 heads.
Runner-up prizes vary from $1,500 all the way down to $500. Even anglers who flip in a single head are eligible for one in every of 20 $200 prizes by way of a drawing.
The work to find out these winners takes place within the Parks and Wildlife Gunnison division workplace. In a barely heated workshop housing a hulking backhoe, Del Piccolo has carved out an area the place he’s bent over a desk utilizing calipers on piles of bloody fish heads.
He measures every head from the tip of the gills to the tip of the snout and data it on blood-speckled entry types which have the names of contestants and wherein of Blue Mesa’s three basins — Iola, Cebolla or Sapinero — they caught.
The mathematics has already been accomplished for Del Piccolo by way of earlier calculations. A head that measures about 130 millimeters was as soon as connected to a 24-inch lake trout.
Del Piccolo tosses every measured fish head right into a steel tub with a loud clang — the final cease earlier than being taken to the county dump. Every contestant has a working tab of fish heads. They add as much as 444 fish heads thus far this yr.
By state legislation, anglers should eat the remainder of the fish. Del Piccolo, Gulliksen and Brauch every extolled the gastronomic worth of lake trout.
“Lake trout are fairly good,” mentioned Del Piccolo, who likes to grill them.
“Baked or fried, it’s a beautiful fish,” mentioned Gulliksen, who loved a lake trout sandwich for lunch the day prior to this.
“They’re nice smoked!” Brauch enthused.
There are an estimated 20,000 lake trout in Blue Mesa so no contest and no variety of gung-ho fish people who smoke are going to wipe them out. Parks and Wildlife officers wouldn’t need that. They only wish to management their numbers and maintain intrepid anglers joyful.
Blissful is usually a relative time period in the case of ice fishing.
“Ice fishing could be actually depressing if it’s actually chilly and also you don’t have a hut. And it’s a must to have a number of persistence,” Brauch mentioned. “We actually recognize the ice anglers keen to be a part of the answer.”
