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.

Memorial Day At Lake Granby

Took my first trip to Granby for the season over Memorial Day weekend. Left the house Friday morning at 4 am. This was the first real test for the new (to me) Tundra. The truck did great. It had no problems driving over the mountains while pulling the boat. Did use a lot of gas.. but that was expected.

My friend Marin and his girlfriend flew in from San Francisco to fish with us. I had another friend from work who was supposed to go up with us.. but the super charger on his new Audi blew up, so he didn't get to make it.

We found a nice house to rent for the weekend on VRBO. Pretty close to the lake and with all of us pitching in it was cheaper than the cheapest hotel in Granby. It was also really close to Grand Lake.

On Friday morning it was cold and wet. The girls and Marin did not want to fish, so I dropped them off at the house we rented. I was on the lake fishing by 7:30 am. My friend Jeremy who lives in Granby and fishes all the time told me lakers were active in 40ish feet of water. I looked at a topo map and found a few spots at that depth that I thought might hold some fish. Didn't really have much luck in any of the spots I found. So I checked out some deeper spots I normally use later in the summer. Marked a couple of fish at Inspiration Point and Ford's Hump. So I gave them a try and caught a few. I got 5 that morning. Nothing huge, but it was good to be out on the lake. That evening we ate at Mavericks and drank a lot of beer :)

Saturday morning we were out on the lake by 6:30. I had a full boat with 4 people. That was not ideal for fishing lol. We fished 3 people at a time. I tried the deep water spots again and we caught a few. It was really cold and wet all day. No one was having a great time :s That night we went into Grand Lake to get dinner. That was my first time in Grand Lake. Nice town with some pretty decent food.

I spoke with my friend Jeremy that night and he said he would be out fishing the next morning and would show me where the fish were hanging out. Next morning at 6 am we met him in Arapaho Bay. There is a nice big sandy flat back there that is between 30 and 60 feet. The fishing was awesome and so was the weather. Caught fish all day till we left at 11 am. This time it was just Marin and I in my boat and Jeremy in his boat. I would have stayed all day but the ladies were at the house with no car and not much to do. I feel like I really dialed in my vertical jigging style that day. That night we went to the hot springs in Indian Springs. It was very relaxing and felt good on muscles sore from jigging for days in a row. We had lake trout for dinner that night :)

Monday morning we all went out again and fished till about noon. The fishing was still good, but not as good as Saturday. Diane hopped in Jeremy's boat so we could all fish at the same time. She caught her fist fish of the season. After fishing we cleaned up the house and stopped at Mackinaw's to grab lunch the headed home. Cant wait to get back up to Granby on the 10th. Got to go a friends wedding this coming weekend or I would go then.

Broke the Chatfield Skunk!

Just barley though! Took the boat out yesterday. The weather was awesome. Bright, no wind, no clouds. Got on the water about 7am. The surface water temp was 56F. The water is still pretty cloudy from run off. By the dam the water has maybe 8" of visibility. Water on the southwest end was a little clearer..maybe a foot of visibility.

I fished all over the lake. Saw a ton of trout suspended and on bottom. I had one big follower near Massey Draw. No bites though. In the after noon I hit the east-west road bed and saw a few walleye. So I drug a worm across at about .8mph and finally caught one. Fished for a few more hours with no luck.

I also spent some time just checking out different spots I found on Fishing Maps map of Chatfield. I think later in the summer they will produce. I also tried out the foot petal to my trolling motor. I have always used my remote control, but it died in the afternoon. The foot petal is kind of hard to use standing up in waves, but its a good backup. Heading back to Chatfield this evening to do some mapping! Just got Humminbirds Autochart Pro in the mail :D Plan on making a really good map of the gravel pits on the southwest end of the lake.

New Battery Charger

My favorite place in Colorado to fish is Lake Granby. It's a beautiful lake with huge lake trout. I usually vertically jig in 80+ feet of water. The depth makes using an anchor not really practical, plus who wants to fiddle with an anchor. A few years ago I bought a Minnkota trolling motor with iPilot. The iPilot is pretty cool. It's GPS enabled and can do all sorts of neat things. The killer feature it has is a virtual anchor. You can tell it to hold a position for you and it will keep you right in that spot. So when I'm on Granby I use this feature for 6-8 hours in a day. This can really eat up your batteries. Especially on windy days. To keep the trolling motor running strong for a whole day I have wired two 12v Optima deep cycle batteries in parallel (my trolling motor is 12v). This will last the whole day, but the batteries need charging at the end of the day. I used to carry a 10 amp charger with me. This was just kind of a pain in the butt. I decided to make life easier and bought an on-board battery charger. The charger is smart and looks at temperature and current voltage to work out how and if it will charge the battery. This will allow the batteries to charge quickly and safely.

Today I did the install. I found some 5/16" thick rubber standoffs to put between the boat and charger to help with vibration. I used 1/4" hardware with fender and lock washers plus locktite. Hopefully the install will hold up to all the vibration and banging around. Here are a few pictures.

Miserable day at Chatfield

Colorado weather is all over the place, even more so in the spring. Yesterday it was 70s and 80s all day and sunny. Today it was 40s, cloudy, and windy :( Took the boat out to Chatfield anyway to see if the walleyes were holding on the submerged roadbed yet. No such luck. Only marked a few fish on the finder. Today was just a cold miserable day. Can't wait till its 80s all the time. Meh...

New Bench Seat For The Boat

I often have 4 people in my boat, usually on days when I'm not fishing. Just hanging out on the lake. It's always been a little awkward for the 2 people without proper seats. They set on the cooler or on the storage compartments attached the gunwale. Today I solved that with a padded bench. I bought some marine grade vinyl and 3" thick, really dense, padding. Put it all on a 2x12. I had to raise the bench up about 1" so my coolers would fit under it. Turned out pretty nice I think.

Good Day At Cherry Creek

I went to Cherry Creek today with my neighbor Ben. First time out this year when it wasn't really windy, rainy, and cold. Great day on the water, starting to feel like summer here. We lindy rigged with worms for a few hours. Got a couple of 15" walleye. That was my first fish from Cherry Creek. I have camped there and took the boat out, but never actually fished the 'Creek before. Think I'll walleye fish at Chatfield this weekend.

Windy Morning

Hit Chatfield Reservoir today at 6am. It was overcast, windy, and cold. The northeast side of the lake by the dam was really muddy. The inlet by the north boat ramp (plumb creek) was flowing pretty good. I fished all over the place with no luck. The roadbed was empty. Tried jigs and jerk baits in shallower waters.



Watched a video from Nate Zelinsky today. Think I'll try fishing with a heavier jig next time..using super line with a very slow presentation.

Nathan Zelinsky Presentation 2016 from Born to Fish Media on Vimeo.