Lost an Old Friend Last Night :(

Now that I have a new boat it was time to get rid of the old one. What a great boat. I hope my new boat treats me half as well. I sold her to a nice retired gentleman who says she will spend most of her time relaxing in Nebraska next to Lake McConaughy. Not a bad way to pasture. Diane and I and a friend of mine all caught Colorado master angler Lake Trout from my old boat. Really feel I became a seasoned fisherman with that boat. Bitter sweet day. The saying goes the best days of owning a boat are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. Well those people didn't have this boat, or they would know that saying is only half right.

Finally a keeper Walleye!

The weekend of 6-24 I decided to stay home and fish Chatfield for Walleye. The Walleye bite has been good end of June/early July in the past. Diane decided to stay at home and sleep in for once. Walleye were stacked up on the road bed. I think I caught about 10-12 and 2 big Rainbow Trout as well. One Walleye was 18", just big enough to keep. I also kept one of the trout so we would have enough fish for dinner. I filleted the Walleye and deep fried it. The trout I pan fried in bacon grease from Diane's breakfast. I forgot just how good Walleye is! Going to try for some more soon.

Friday night after work UPS delivered my new 3 bank battery charger. Got it installed. Two banks for the two trolling motor batteries, and one for the starting and fish finder battery.

New Boat!

My 1994 Tracker Pro Deep V 16 has been an amazing boat. I have had my 16' for about 5 years now. Never once did it not start or let me down. The 16' was my first boat to really use a lot. I learned a lot about boating and fishing with this boat. Getting a new boat is bitter sweet. But it is time. My 16' has been going hard for 23 years and deserves a break.. from me anyway hah. The main reason I decided to get a new boat was just to get something wider. The older Tracker boats are kind of narrow. The newer ones are about 8' wide! way more comfortable to fish out of and more stable too.

Friday the 16th I picked up my new 2017 Tracker Pro Guide 175 WT. It's 17 feet long and 97" wide. I upgrade the motor to a 115 Merc. I also had Bass Pro upgrade the trolling motor and fish finder. The boat now has a 24v 80lb Minn Kota Terrova with 60" shaft and a Humminbird Helix 12 with down and side imaging. Within 14 hours of picking up the boat Diane caught the first fish out of it, I followed with the second shortly there after :)

WAT?

Granby 6-9

I feel like ice off and July are big fish months at Granby. This year I can't spend all week at Granby so I'm trying to go up every weekend. Going on the weekend makes it much hard to get a camping spot at Stillwater.. basically impossible. This weekend I tried just finding a spot on the waters edge and camping. This works fine when only fishing for two days as I don't need to charge the trolling motor batteries. I threw all my stuff in the boat and found a nice spot in Grand Bay to camp. I basically just set up my camp stove on the shore and slept in the boat. Sleeping in the boat was awesome. I slept really well. The only downside is waking up at 5 am to go fishing and first thing having to deal with all the bedding and the bimini sides in the boat. Still beats sleeping in a tent on the ground imho.

Saturday was so windy that I only fished from about 7 am to 9 and only caught 3 fish. Then I setup camp and took a nap on the boat till about 1. Fished from the bank for a while and caught my first brown trout from Granby using a husky jerk :). Sunday was better, way less wind and the fish were biting. Nothing huge though :\

Twin Lakes 6-2-17

Decided to hit some new lakes this summer. First up was Twin Lakes near Leadville, Colorado. Twin Lakes is at about 10,500 feet above sea level at the base of Mt. Elbert. The views are amazing and the fishing is not bad either. Diane and I managed to catch 8 or so fish a day by noon. The lake trout here are long but very skinny. The look kind of funny hah. We stayed at a pretty neat inn/tavern built in the 1800s. Not sure I'll go back to Twin Lakes, but I'm glad we went.

Labor Day Weekend 2017

Saw Jethro Tull at Red Rocks on Friday. Got up at 4 am Saturday and drove to Granby to fish for the rest of the weekend. The fish are really active back in Arapaho Bay. Diane and I both did really well. We caught a pair of 24"ers and a lot of 20-22" as well. The weather was nice. The lake was lower than I have ever seen it.

Cold Trip To Blue Mesa 5-18-17

First major trip of 2017. The weather in Denver and on the way to Blue Mesa was really nice. As soon as we hit Gunnison it started snowing. For the next 3 days the average temperature when on the lake was about 30F. Pretty cold. We still managed to catch a good amount of fish and had a good time.

Getting ready for 2017 season :D

Finally time to breakout the boat and get ready for the 2017 season. In a week and a half Diane and I are heading to Blue Mesa for 5 days. So this weekend I started the process of getting everything ready. De-winterized the boat. Changed the oil in the lower unit, got new tires for the trailer, start putting all the batteries back in etc. Put the muffs on the engine and it fired right up. By the time I had the boat ready to go in was close to 5pm so we decided to wait till tomorrow (Sunday) to take the boat out.

Gander Mountain was recently bought by Camping World :(. Camping World decided to close all the stores, liquidate all the stock, then reopen 70..? As of now, no store knows if they are in the 70 that will remain open. This makes me sad because there are not a lot of good sportsman stores left in Denver. Bass Pro Shops pretty much ran all the small places out of business, leaving just a few other large competitors. Bass Pro Shop is the worst... So Gander is having a giant sale. Diane and I finally decided to buy a Yeti cooler :D It's so nice, I think I will feel bad the first time it gets dirty :(

Sunday we took the boat out to Chatfield just to make sure everything was good to go. The day started out overcast. After being at the lake for about 2 hours the weather got nasty so we decided to call it a day. The boat did well and I feel it is ready for 2017. Now I just have to get all my fishing and camping gear in order.