Pella Lakes are Waking Up!

The six public-access lakes in the Pella Crossing park and trail system may be the best in or around the Boulder/Longmont area to find decent warm water fishing. The lakes are strictly catch & release and they are heavily monitored, so it really keeps the "5-gallon-bucket-families" at bay. Atrás, cabrones! You can fish flies or artificial lures (NO BAIT!) and you are allowed to put in with a float tube/belly boat...although bank fishing is very easy. There are well worn hiking paths connecting all six lakes. I have landed Largemouth and Smallmouth bass, bluegill, crappie, yellow perch and channel catfish. It is a great place to take the "ankle biters" as well. There is a well maintained restroom and the coves are full of very willing young brim at a very easy casting range. And, they will gobble up a small trout nymph fished on 3x tippet...good times, good times... Find Pella Lakes!

Why I Love Greenies

No, I do not mean touring Colorado fly fishermen. I mean Green Sunfish. They are the only sunfish native to our state (or so I have read, tell me if I have that wrong). There are many reasons to chase warm water species with a fly rod. Throughout the majority of the country warm water fishing is the only available venue for fly fishermen as well as conventional fishermen. But, here on the Front Range of Colorado, we as fishermen are often spoiled by the quality of our trout fishing and rarely take advantage of the other white meat…so to speak. Even amongst the hard-core warm water junkies I know (and I know a ton) many of the smaller brim and sunfish are largely ignored. And it’s a shame. I have always held these little scrappers in high regard. Maybe because I refuse to forget how much they taught me about fishing and basic biology when I was a bare-foot kid. I have always been a big fan of crappie, pumpkinseeds and of course bluegill…but, maybe my favorite is the Greenie. They have the innocent curiosity of a bluegill, aggressive attitude of a smallmouth bass…and the chompers of a largemouth bass! They will eat small trout flies if that is all you have, as well as big topwater bass poppers. And they have this hint of deep jungle tropics in their appearance. Or maybe I’m just getting carried away…

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Walter Mitty Fly Fishing Contest (First Winner: Cody Burgdorff)

It only took a couple of days for us to have our first winner of the first annual "Walter Mitty Fly Fishing Contest". Cody Burgdorff of Lafayette, Colorado went out for a day of warm water fly fishing on June 1st...he landed a nice Smallmouth Bass (1) on the first cast...with a #6 black Backstabber, and it was only just legal! Almost too big... Then Cody landed five good sized carp on the same fly, but they were way too big to count (well over ten inches). But then he got serious about completing the contest and whacked a Green Sunfish (2) a very tiny Bluegill (3) a Yellow Perch (4) a Shinner (5) a Largemouth Bass (6) and as a bonus species a Crappie! (7).

Good job, Cody!

The Walter Mitty Fly Fishing Contest

1. Catch six fish species with a fly and fly rod.

2. All fish must be caught on same day.

3. Each fish must be UNDER 10 inches long!

This contest is to help get you through the runoff doldrums and to remind you all of the reasons you began fishing…and still love it. To enter, send me photos of your six fish (take photo of the fish in hand, so we all can see how small it really is!) and a short anecdote about your day on the water. Email them to me at jayzimangler@yahoo.com

Every entry will receive six free flies (of my choice…dictated by the tone of your entry) and have their photos and story published on the Colorado Fly Fishing Reports blog. Send your mailing address, as well…if you want the free flies.

I’ll kick off the festivities with my own entry. Here goes…. I woke up late on my last day off and found I was in the middle of missing one of the sunniest, most awesome mornings so far this spring. This didn’t necessarily pose a problem of neglected responsibilities…as I am a single dude living in a studio apartment with a cat, but it did mean I was situationally obligated to go fishing immediately. So I began reluctantly gathering gear…rounding up rods and deciding if it was a wet wading type of trip…or not. And I found that I couldn’t get myself excited about what I was doing. It might have been that it was the twelve thousand five hundred and seventeenth day in a row that I had woken up and prepared to either fish, talk about fish or fantasize about fish (and only a couple of those had anything to do with a hot dinner date at Sushi Tora). I guess I was finally burned out. I had been guilty of taking myself—and my fishing—way too seriously. I was far too programmed to stay at home and feel sorry for myself, so I rolled the windows down on my truck, found a good station on the radio…and drove around Boulder looking for inspiration— which got me as far as the irrigation overflow ditch behind some inexpensive CU student housing. I strung up a 4 weight and caught one tiny ditch fish after another…pumpkinseed sunfish, four inch largemouth bass, shiner, baby crappie, skinny catfish and bluegill. I left the ditch sunburned, dehydrated and as giddy as hell! I had not had that much fun since I was a kid playing in the creek by my parent’s house swinging wet flies to little creek chubs and pretending I was a well known river keeper and they were Atlantic salmon. Thus the conception of the Walter Mitty Fly Fishing Contest.

For all you beauty school dropouts…Walter Mitty was a character who would have routine heroic daydreams while going about his rather mundane life in a famous 1939 James Thurber short story entitled “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” . Google it or something…