Well, it was indeede Denver and it was late October...but it sure didn't feel like it. I had to travel to Denver for work this week and my buddy Chris took said he was free to take me out to hit the Chatfield Reservoir to chase some smallies (and maybe some walleye). If you remember, a few years back I hired a guide and we did pretty well out there. (read that story here)

We hit the water at about 1030 and the temp was already approaching 70 degrees. It was absolutely unbelievable that we had conditions like these in the last week of October. We decided to hit the dam area and work it for a while for smallies. The rocky shore and bottom in the dam area really looked like a great place to start, but fishing was still pretty tough. We tossed Senkos, Grubs and hard jerkbaits towards the shoreline, but the algae on and near the bottom really made it tough. We ended up with only one real hit, and I brought that one to hand on a slowly worked X-Rap, and she hit it on the pause. After a few hours of minimal action, Chris introduced me to the art of trolling. Since I’ve never done much fishing from a boat like this, I really have no experience with it, but I wanted to at least give it a try.

At first I thought it was pretty boring (most likely my ADD), but it was nice to just leisurely sit back and chat while enjoying a boat ride at the base of Rocky Mountains. It didn’t take long until Chris said “Fish On” as he saw my rod pulsing aggressively. It didn’t feel like much of a fish (and it wasn’t) but it was still fun reeling in anything that was that far behind the boat.

After that we worked our way out to the old road bed where the walleye guys were sitting and jigging away. We must have missed the key bite time b/c they cleared out not long after we started headed that way (or we scared them away). We couldn’t even mark any fish there so we headed out to the dock area to see if that largemouth was still around and hungry. No luck there either, just a Jack’s Worm caught up in the trolling motor. ☺

With the afternoon progressing and nothing left but a little bit of hope, we headed back to the dam area again to see if the fish moved back in for an evening feed. Chris picked up a really nice Rainbow on a white Berkely Swimming Grub, which was really surprising b/c it just didn’t seem like a place that would be holding a trout. As the sun started to go down it got rather chilly but we perservered trying to see if we could pick up a walleye coming in for some evening chow. However, I guess a walleye wasn’t in the cards, but we did get a surprise. A few minutes into swimming my trusty yozuri, I felt what I thought was the familiar thump and tug of a walleye. As it got closer to the boat Chris and I noticed that I had foul hooked it and we both could tell it wasn’t a walleye, but we couldn’t figure out what is was.

Carp? Nope. Sucker? Nope. This thing had a tiny little mouth, was paper thing, slimy as heck, and smelt like it had been rotting on shore for a week. Even after I got it in hand we had no idea what it was. Turns out it was a Gizzard Shad! What the? Unfortunately the picture doesn’t do it justice as I couldn’t wait to get that stupid thing back into the water.

What a great time, thanks again for everything Chris!
Muskalungeee!
-Mike