My First MA!

Took me two years :D

July at Granby

So far I have spent a little over 2 weeks in Granby in July. The fishing has been pretty good. No monsters, but catching a lot. Time on the water has been pretty limited due to the wind. The only fishable hours have been from 6 to 11 am. After that it just gets too windy to really make a good presentation to the fish. Headed up on Monday the 25th for 4 days. The wind on those days is only supposed to get up to 7 mph at most. I might be able to fish all day :)

The weekend before the 4th I headed up by myself for the first 2 days. Fishing was good and the weather was great. It was so sunny I had a chance to use my new fishing shirt and Buff to keep the sun off me. The Buff is really nice. Keeps my face out of the sun without having to smear sunscreen on it. The shirt from Columbia is really nice too. The material is something synthetic so it keeps the skin cool and wicks away moisture while blocking something like 90% of UV rays. I probably look kind of silly, but it's worth it to keep my skin safe.

I had a chance to use my new phone mount and remote control to take pictures. Worked great. Totally ready for any monsters I might catch by myself :D

After my 2 days alone Diane came up. The weather for the next 3 days was pretty miserable. Rain all the time and very windy. We still had a good time and managed to catch fish. After all the time I have spent fishing alone it was very nice to have some company :) Diane caught plenty of fish and got to see me play the suspended fish using the sonar.

That weekend Diane's two brothers and their families came up. We rented a pontoon boat for all the extra people. We took the pontoon and my boat out to fish. This was really fun. I had her brother Danny's two boys and wife in my boat. Danny was driving the pontoon with his brother David, David's wife and David's two girls. We managed to catch some good sized fish and decided to keep some for dinner. It was really cool seeing the boys catch fish. All the kids were great. I'm not even kidding, I actually had fun hanging out with kids lol.

We had to take the pontoon back at 11 am. After that we went back to camp and started cooking fish. The fish were really too big to cook in a pan. So we cut them up into smaller pieces. Even then we burnt through a whole bottle of propane. Danny must have spent an hour cooking all the trout. One of Danny's boys and his wife even cleaned a few fish. I was pretty impressed.

After eating fish we broke down camp and went to a nice hotel in Granby to stay the night. I managed to catch a cold that day so I went to bed early. Diane's brothers and their families went to Frasier or Winter Park to see fireworks that night.

The next morning we all met at Java Lava and had breakfast then headed home. Well Diane and I headed home, everyone else headed to Yellowstone to continue with their vacation. It was really fun to hang out with Diane's family. Hope we can do it again next year.

I spent the next 3 days at home with a cold, then I went back to Granby for a week. I was alone most of this trip. My friend Daniel made it up for a day though. We did pretty well fishing the day he was out. He even managed to hook a fish in the ass lol. Told him that only counted as a half fish. The rest of that trip was pretty uneventful. Caught a lot of fish, nothing huge though. I was very happy to make it home that weekend.

Over those two weeks I did learn some things though. First was how to operate my boat properly. I discovered on accident why you adjust the motor trim in a position besides all the way down when the boat is moving :s It's honestly kind of embarrassing to have been driving a boat for years and not known this. One morning when I launched the boat I trimmed the motor down into the water. Not all the way down. Just far enough so the prop and fins were completely submerged a few inches below the water. Then I fired the motor up and let the engine warm up. I usually then trim the motor all the way down and take off, leaving the engine trimmed all the way down the whole time I'm on the water. This time I forgot and took off. I noticed right away that my boat was moving way faster. My boat would always go on a plane, but now the bow was more out of the water than usual. Also the ride was smoother. So yeah, this is why you trim the boat engine up a little when driving the boat haha. My boat actually got a 25% increase in speed from this. So not only do you get a speed increase and a smoother ride, but you also save on gas. Feels like I have a new boat now :D

The second thing I learned is that the new Fenwick rod is not exactly what I want. I went from a super soft tip with the Shimano to a really hard tip with the Fenwick. The longer I fished with the Fenwick the more I visualized myself fishing with a 2x4. I think for heavier jigs it will be perfect, but for a 1/2 oz jig, it's just too stiff for me. I picked up a St. Croix Premier this week. I think it's going to fit perfectly in between the Shimano and the Fenwick. I'm also pretty happy that the St. Croix is 100% made in the USA.

38ish Inch Lake Trout From Granby

I got back from camping at Arapaho Bay on Monday. I took off to back to Granby at 4 am on Wednesday. This was by far my best trip ever to Granby.

I made it to the Lake about 6:30 am. I checked out the Stillwater campsite and was able to find a really nice site with power. After securing a site I used the ramp at Stillwater to launch my boat.

My friend Jeremy called right as I launched and said him and his friend Ed were fishing at Ford's Hump and that I should meet them out there. I met them at the hump and started fishing. The water temperature was about 59 degrees and I was fishing in about 70 feet of water right on the edge of the hump. I caught a few fish right away. Fishing was pretty good there till about 10ish. I missed a lot of good bites. After 10 I think I checked out a few more places on the lake and got another fish or two. That evening Ed invited Jeremy and myself to dinner at his RV campsite. His wife Willie made a great pot roast. We hung out for a few hours and had a really good time. Ed and his wife are great people.

Thursday I fished with Jeremy and his dog out of his boat. Jeremy has been fishing at Granby for years and was also a guide there for a while. Fishing with him that day taught me so much. I really feel that all the pieces came together for me that day. First I got to see how he uses his electronics to target suspended fish. I had tried this before with no luck. The problem I was having was my sonar was not zoomed in enough. So I could see my jig and the fish, but I could not see the subtle movements the fish was making and how they were reacting to my presentation. Also my jigging rod's tip is waaayy to soft. The soft tip took so much feeling away. When I would jig with it sometimes I would feel bites. Often I would just feel the weight of a fish on when I lifted the rod to jig back up and then I would set the hook. I would not feel the fish picking up the jig on the drop. Those two things and lots of other subtle things made a huge difference for me. We caught fish all day and I even managed to catch one suspended.

That night Jeremy invited me over for dinner. He made an awesome steak.

Friday!!!! So Friday morning I was at the boat ramp at 6:30. Ed was there and was just launching his boat as I pulled up. He waited for me in his boat. I backed my boat down and stopped right before my boat was in the water. I took my dock line and tied it to a kleet on the dock and left some slack in the line. I then backed my boat down into the water and tapped the brake and let the boat slide off. I pulled up and parked the truck. When I got back to the dock I found my boat floating away!! My dock line either snagged on something or just snapped. Thankfully Ed was there and he gave me a ride to my boat lol.

Ed and I headed to Ford's again. It took me about and hour to figure out how to "zoom" in my fish finder. Humminbirds don't really let you zoom the 2D sonar view. What you do is set the lower and upper depth thresholds. I set it to show the bottom (70 FOW) and 30 feet up from that. So I had a really zoomed in view from 40 FOW down to the bottom. It was great. I could really see every little detail. I started catching fish right away. I was even able to present to suspended fish and catch some of them. I stayed at Ford's for about 3 hours.

Sometime in the early afternoon I headed to Inspiration Point area. Found some water about 95 feet deep. I jigged for a while and could not catch anything. I could see on the bottom a mass of something. I wasn't sure if it was weeds or mud...or something else. I decided to stop jigging the bottom which is the standard presentation for Lakers at Granby. I decided to suspend and jig right above the mass at the bottom. As soon as I did this I caught a fish. I was able to work out that the mass I was seeing on the bottom was all fish! I kept suspending my jig to get the fish off the bottom and interested. I would then usually have to drop the jig back down once they were interested. Then I would jig normally for a second or two and they would hit. The longer I did this the more the fish got excited. At 12:00 noon exactly I was doing this same thing. I was jigging maybe 5 feet above the bottom and I saw a normal size mark come up off the bottom. I then dropped my jig all the way to the bottom, jigged two or three times then BAM!! Something about the hit and the flash I saw on the fish finder right before the hit made me think I was into a big fish. I reeled up for about 20 seconds without much resistance . Then I saw the fish completely off the bottom on the fish finder.It was a HUGE mark!! Right then the fish woke up lol. The fish ripped line off my reel like it was a snoopy rod and reel set up. It took me about 10 minutes of fighting just to get the fish off the bottom. He would come up maybe 10 feet then go right back down. The whole time my rod was completely doubled over.All I could think about was the back to back uni knots I used to tie on my mono leader to the fireline. PLEASE don't fail knot! When I wasn't thinking about that I was thinking about the fragile walleye style jig head I was using. A fish like this could easily straightened out the thin hook I was using. The intense fear of equipment failure and the overwhelming joy of hooking a fish like this had me laughing like a complete idiot. I'm talking about the deep, from the gut, uncontrollable laughter. It was truly amazing. After about 10 minutes of give and take I was able to get the fish up about 30 feet to 65 FOW. At that point he started to tire. The last 65 feet or so only took about 5 minutes. At this point I was hoping I could just see the fish, even if he got off. Please just make it to the top so I can see what I have hooked into. Then I saw him! I have seen quite a few big trout, 30+ inchers, I knew instantly that this one was bigger. He was also fat!! After a minute of holding my breath I had him in the net!! :D Once I got the fish into my boat my hands were shaking and my back was burning a little. I scrambled to get my tape measure and my camera. I set out the tape next to him and took a few pictures. Then I put him back in the water. I held the fish by the tail and revived him for about 5 minutes. Then he slowly swam away :) I sat down in my boat for a few minutes trying to take everything in and lock everything that had just happened into memory. About that time the wind picked up. I figured this was a good way to end the day so I headed for the ramp.

Saturday I caught 3 fish lol. Packed up all my gear and headed home.

37-38 inched and about 18-20lbs

Camping at Arapaho Bay in Granby Colorado

Arapaho Bay is one of the more secluded campsites at Lake Granby. It's way at the back of the lake at the inlet. The site has really great views. Right next to our site was the roaring fork and Monarch Lake. We stayed there for 4 days and 3 nights. My mom and niece came from Texas for 2 nights. The fishing was slow but we managed to catch some everyday. Nothing to get excited about. We had all had a great time.

Chatfield Early June

Chatfield has been really slow for walleye (for me anyway). Monday I decided to forget about walleye for a while and try my luck with some smallmouth bass. Diane and I went out Monday night for an hour and caught two each. I went out again this morning and got five. All were caught jigging. Today they seemed to be into green with red flecks. I actually caught the bass in a new spot. I have always fished the dam for smallies. Typically you can find them near hard rocky bottoms. I found these guys on weeds with a steep drop off near by.

I also tried night fishing for catfish on Sunday. It' was super boring hah. Note to self: never try fishing with chicken liver again :s

Sunday when we showed up to fish the wind started blowing *really* hard. The cove with the boat ramp had 3 foot waves coming into it. I have never seen waves like that at Chatfield before. It was actually pretty scary. One minute everything was ok, next minute three foot waves. We waited for the wind to pass before we went out.

Camping in Estes Park

My buddy Paul is getting married this weekend. For a bachelor party we went camping on Paul's land in Estes. Really nice property right on top of a mountain. I had a great time hanging out with his buddies from Wisconsin. We spent most of the night drinking beer and laughing.

This was my first chance to try out the new bed I made for the back of the Tundra. Only took a few minutes to get it all setup. I slept great. Super warm and very comfortable. Probably the best sleep I have ever had camping. This was a good test run for next weekend. Next Friday heading up to Granby to camp in Arapaho Bay.