If your fishing trip is about numbers of fish now is the time to get out. Casting spoons at Antero has been phenomenal and rigging live bait at Chatfield is on fire. It always happens this time of year as the cold water fish finally warm up and the warm water fish have nothing to eat. I am doing double trips most days so the total is often over a hundred fish. Truthfully, I don’t care if I turn left (Chatfield) or right (Antero) onto 285. I know that the fish clicker and the Ego net will get a workout either way.

Last year I hit a hundred in 6 hours a few times. I can feel it coming soon. Friday is a “six-tuna” day on my Solunar app. If you believe that stuff then we will see.

I was flipping through my photos on the computer and wow, there are tons of big fish here in Colorado! Sometimes I wonder if I’ve caught the same fish a few times, especially at Spinney. So, to keep everyone entertained and thinking of the upcoming pike season (and the walleye we are catching right now) I’ll be posting photos onto TightlineOutdoors on facebook a few times a week. I have about 164 pike photos (most over 40″) and 120 walleye photos (all over 21″) from 2010 alone. That will keep me going for a few months. Thanks for following. If you like a photo, please feel free to comment, send it to your friends, or just like it. There may be a vote at the end for the most-liked photo.

At Spring Valley, the Sauger is the money fish and we ended up with only one in the boat the second day. Our three-fish total for two days put us at 58th place (out of 131 boats) which is a bit out of the money, but still better than half the other boats. With all of the momentum in the world after day 1 the fish bit right away on day 2. Four bites in the first 90 minutes left us with one in the boat and “the one that got away”. Even 14 hours of driving home in a blizzard (the third cold front of the week) wasn’t enough time to figure out why everyone else around us was reeling them in and our bites had stopped. About the Nebraska line we turned our focus on what we needed to improve for Pueblo and, like any sport where only one in 131 wins, we started to gather optimism. Mental focus and a few key skills are on the list for the Mid-May western walleye show down south of Denver.

While preparing for day 2 we got the call that Chatfield would be open when we returned. After a week of 1.5-lb saugers we knew that one or two trolling passes would produce Colorado Walleyes that would feed on those dinky Illinois fish. True to form, Chatfield has been producing the large fish on a regular basis. Tightline Outdoors guides at night in the spring and offers trips from 7 PM to 1 AM for the most consistent large fish bite of the year. Smaller fish are available during day trips. These post-spawn fish have not fed for days and hit lures with abandon. Chatfield is so full of walleye and shad this year the fish are not always in their typical spots. This bite only lasts until Mid-May so book a “keeper trip” today.

caption id=”attachment_640″ align=”aligncenter” width=”300″ caption=”Sitting in the river waiting to start a barge comes through, the bridge above, classic Spring Valley!”][/caption]

Boat #91 of 132 left Barto Landing at about 7:26 AM on March 23, 2013. The Lund Pro-V headed upstream to our morning bite spot. We pulled away from the other boats behind us with the 225 Verado running upstram at 45 to 50 mph. Finally a warm day in the midwest so we didn’t have to wear goggles for the run and we didn’t worry about ice spray freezing to the rods and everything else. Nate accidentally turned on the front livewell though and slowly flooded the front deck. It didn’t matter, we were pulling 3-way rigs with custom painted Rapal Original Floater lures from the back of the boat.

Our morning bite fizzled! No bites. We saw fish on the Lowrance and did three passes at this spot and another jigging pass upstream further at a deep hole that held large walleye earlier in the week. We repeated this strategy twice without any fish. By 11:30 we ran back to the pack of boats meandering at Peru flats to run through our late day spot. We had the 3-ways down for 4.5 mintues and watched a boat jig up two walleyes in deeper water. That was the end of the 3-ways! We pulled into deeper water and jigged for 3 minutes before the first bite. A 16.5-inch Sauger that really made our day and was the start of a second-half (near) miracle. We made a total of 8 passes at peru flats and got one strike on each pass. The second pass brought in a slightly shorter 15.5-inch fish. The third pass was the heartbreak: a harder-fighting came off before we saw it. Fourth pass brought David’s first fish, but it turned out to be 0.2 inches shorter than the 14-inch minimum. Missed strikes on all of the other passes give us hope at the same time creating a long line of “what-ifs”.

One key to the day was using a prototype Fenwick HMX rod that is due to be released in 2014 (yes, a year form now). This rod is awesome! Everything this week has come on Fenwick rods. From trolling, to 3-way rigs, to vertical jigging the rods work great. Few other companies produce a full ine of rods with multiple price points that all work.

To put everything into perspective: in 3.5 hours of jigging we passed 108 teams. Each of these teams had 8 hours of jigging to build a limit. We hadn’t caught a fish jigging all week. We didn’t have a confidence lure so we had to copy what other boats were using and then use a similar lure to beat them. And beat them we did. 3.07 pounds of fish put us in 23rd place and ahead of most of the major names in this tournament. The fish we missed at the boat and the small fish, if added to our weight, would have propelled us well into the top 10. AARRGGHH. All the way through Master Buffet dinner (which we have eaten twice this week) we thought we were in 50th to 100th place. The results were posted late and we were surprised at the 23rd place, happy and amazed for about aminute, then grouchy from the missed fish, then relieved a bit to see that the event pays to about 30th place. The emotions and drama of tournaments! Tomorrow we need to bring it hard. We still have some big decisions to make about location and timing but if the top teams falter even a bit, we can jump way up the standings.

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Cold, cold cold. Water froze on the trailer brakes today and didn’t thaw. Water froze to the snaps on the boat cover less than 8 minutes after leaving the river. The wind blew again causing whitecaps and rollers on longer stretches of the river. And today was actually one of the more pleasant days of the week! More sauger came over the gunnels today than any other day. We didn’t think we were early, but today was the first day the ramp parking lot was occupied and the fishing spots crowded at times. Glad we got a 2-day head start.

The Starbicks barista called us crazy today. Shew as obviously educated on the finer points of the tournament and knew some of the teams who were starting to show up, but she said that we were 50% crazy for fishing the past 2 days and another 50% crazy for driving all this way to fish the last two days. While chuckling she filled up two thermoses with coffee and charged us for one. Tightline Outdoor’s newest sponsor: STARBUCKS.

March 23-24 is the Master Walleye Circuit event in Spring Valley, Illinois. We are out here practicing two techniques that we raely see back home. On the Illinois river jigging and handlining rule and almost every team will use these tactics. Jigging on the river is classic vertical jigging where you hold one rod in each hand, touch the bottom with your jig, then snap the lure up and feel for a bite on the fall. That bite triggers a series of events that must happen quickly- set the hook with one hand, drop the rod from the other hand, reel down onto the fish and fight! Handlining forgoes the rod and uses a large weight to put crankbaits right on the bottom. This method proves to be increadibly effective on sharp breaks and manages river currents. When the fish strikes the battle pits you against the fins in hand-to-hand combat. The wire line buzzes with the pulse of the fish and a large walleye can quickly take line. Your fingertips act as the drag.

Back home, 850 Miles west of Illinois, in a state with hardly a navigatable river, these two tactics can be utilized to chase walleye and trout. We use vertical jigging at Cherry Creek anytime the walleye stack up in water deeper than 15 feet. Also at Cherry Creek, handlining replaces lead core when walleyes hug the basin. A walleye is a walleye is a walleye no matter what time zone they live.

Tightline takes things a step further: trout, smallmouth, and even lake trout. Elevenmile has a deep trout bite where both tactics come into play. Imagine fighting a 5-lb rainbow without a reel and no drag with multiple long runs. These tactics work at Aurora and Pueblo too. At both of these reservoirs smallmouth inhabit deeper, clearer sections of the lake where I once watched my jig fall for 20 feet before it finally disappeared. The next time I saw the lure it was hanging from a 3-lb smallmouth. Then, handlining for lake trout. Lake trout hand tight to bottom, in deep water, and eat crankbaits. Bingo, let’s bring them in by hand!

Of course we teach these tactics on our guide trips just let us know you what you want to learn. If you happen to want a set of handlines for your boat, call Brent at Crowley Marine and he will set you up.

Let’s call it the long rod revolution…and it is coming! Sitting on a bucket or in a Clam Shack the 28″ rod can’t be beat. But any time you stand up off the bucket and drop your lure into the hole you will do better with a longer rod. This is, “a Vex in one hand a Rod in the other”-style fishing. Staying in place works at times, but half the time moving around and quickly checking multiple spots just like in summer works better. The key is the tip of the rod. When standing, the tip of a 40″+ rod is near the surface of the ice and you have much more room and rod leverage to set the hook. The swing length of a 28″ rod just can not compare. Secondly, when you see a fish on your Vexilar you want to watch the Vexilar AND your rod tip at the same time so you can react to the fish on the screen but also see any light strike on your rod tip. With a long rod you can keep that tip right in front of the vexilar and focus on both at the same time. Next season, watch for longer rods from companies like Fenwick and pick one up.

The first annual Tightline Outdoors and Blue Quill Angler Evergreen Lake Fishing Derby drew 58 entries and 60+ kids to the lake on Saturday. Here are the details: 150 holes drilled in a tiny section of the lake, 3 hours to fish, largest single trout won. Most anglers brought a bucket, a couple of rods, a Vexilar (or other sonar). The contestants seemed split 50/50 on deadstick/bobber presentations and active jigging. The talented jiggers caught more fish but the winner used a Today’s Tackle Slip Bobber.

The first fish came 3 minutes into the contest. That angler quickly caught two additional fish but didn’t weigh them because they were smaller than the first and he did not want to use up his three alotted weighed fish. Most of the fish came from the edges of the grid but with 50 anglers and 150 holes no one was really fishing the interior holes so this strategy was inconclusive.

The key to catching the most fish was to actively jig very small panfish-sized jigs with bait on panfish-style strightline reels. Since the largest fish of the day was 0.68 lbs these were not much more than silvery bluegills. No one expected larger fish from Evergreen Lake so trying larger lures would have been counterproductive. The anglers who caught more than one fish focused intently on the sonar reactions of the fish and worked the rod tip delicatly to imitate the aquatic insects emerging from the mud as perfectly as possible. One note that these talented anglers regularly pulled white suckers out as well as trout. The catch rate was approximately three fish per hour for the best active jiggers.

The winning fish, however, came from an angler who was in his first season on the ice. This angler happened to have attended at least four seminars by Nathan Zelinsky as well as the recent Ice School on Evergreen Lake. The key to his plan was to fish the outside edge of the holes nearest to the center of the lake with raw shrimp. The raw shrimp, he felt, gave off more oils and odor than other baits. His fish narrowly beat out the second place fish by 0.01 lbs. For his efforts he won the $580 first prize. The second prize of a 6-hour guided trip with Tighline Outdoors was accepted with a similar smile to the cash because in reality it was worth about the same.

The kids derby introduced at least 60 kids to ice fishing. Most of the kids had seen anglers on the lake while riding in their parent’s cars and had desperately wanted to try the sport. Parents seemed happy to have such an easy way to please the kids. Even a 30-minute snowstorm didn’t slow these kids down as they patiently jigged and bobbered their way to a bunch of fish. The Tightline and Blue Quill Guides provided constant help to the kids and made sure that each participant received a short lesson on fishing the hard water.

Practice up for next year as the event was positively reviewed by all. The cheering for a caught fish and the agony of “the ones that got away” were really cool parts of the atmosphere brought on by the Jaycee’s-style single-hole, limited area event.

Everyone ready for a Jaycee’s-style ice derby in Colorado? This event will be a great test of angling skill as the fish will have 150 presentations to choose from in the same part of the lake. How can you create an advantage? Here are some tips.

–Keep things simple. Take a minimal amount of gear. No shelter. Be prepared with gear to enact your plan but not much more. The derby is not an all-day event.
–Take your presentation in one direction or the other. Finesse a really small bait or flash something big. An average-sized bait or lure will most likely not succeed.
–Use light line. New Berkley line in 2-lb or 4-lb test will greatly increase your odds.
–Keep your bait fresh. Change out waxworms, mealworms, powerbait, (no minnows), often.
–If you are using a Today’s Tackle-style foam slip bobber, trim the foam to a minimal amount to stay afloat. Set the hook as soon as the foam dips underwater.
–Use a Vexilar to fine tune your presentation. If two or three fish come by but do not bite then change something.
–But, rely on your instincts to set the hook. Don’t miss a strike while studying your Vexilar.
–Create a comfortable position. That winning strike will undoubtedly come when you are fidgeting or adjusting something.
–Above all, focus for the full three hours. Regular fishing does not require the mental effort that it will take to win the money on Saturday.

Just a few days left and the majority of Colorado Boating will be done for the season. It is sad to see it go but I must admit I am very excited for this coming season of Ice Fishing! I’m excited for a few reasons… This year has been so productive year for Colorado fishing and it looks like it will continue right into ice season. Second, the entire sport of Ice Fishing has grown so much in the past year. A big portion of this is due to the building of the New Elite ICE TEAM (www.iceteam.com) which is a combination of 25 elite anglers, an extremely informational website with video and audio reports, and lastly great equipment. This is going to be a great Ice season.

Quick wrap up, This past year lead to some incredible bites. The peak of the night bite for Walleye hit in April producing ton’s of big fish. The Pike bite was great in Spring but the Summer bite in August and September was amazing!! 90% of the Pike trips this year were casting trips. The Trout Bite at Antero and Spinney were consistent all season. All in all this was a very productive season and while writing this it is still great for Walleye and Small Mouth.

Now for the coming season!! I have had many anglers ask me to do more small seminars are various tackle retailers. I realized that I have not done many lately so I am now introducing The TIGHTLINE ICE TOUR. The Tour starts November 24th at The Blue Quill Angler in Evergreen (Now carrying all the latest in ice fishing gear and Technology) at 10AM with an Intro To Ice Fishing seminar. After that I will be all over the place with seminars covering many different fish and techniques. Make sure you check this out and try to catch one in your area. Also on the Ice Tour is the new schedule for the 2012/2013 Ice School. We are now doing a beginner class on Evergreen Lake and Walleye school will be held at Cherry Creek.

Our ice season is just getting underway and the hottest early ice bites are typically at Antero and then the Pike are always on the prowl during that early ice phase so make sure you get out there. If your interested in a trip contact us soon.

Holiday Gifts… Remember a