Sunday, June 15, 2008

Sunday, June 15, 2008 - Chatfield Reservoir - for CARP!

Sunday, June 15, 2008 - Chatfield Reservoir - for CARP!

Ok, so I got out today - I tried the South Platte River below Chatfield to no avail. I then hit Chatfield at my normal spot - the water is starting to rise and the waves were coming in pretty good. The fish were porpoising slightly out of the water - and I could tell that they were active. I hooked a nice sized fish, and was reeling him in nicely - problem is that this fish had NO fight at all. He was sort of swimming towards me, but he kept enough pressure on the line that I thought he was just a log. Well, turned out he was a log - a nice 48 inch stick that weighed a ton. I was pretty embarrassed that I had "played" this fish to the reel and worked him in to me. Actually I felt like an ass.

The water was so high that I could see across the shoreline that there was water on the other side - so I gave up fishing and headed over. When I got through the shrubs and over the swampy area, I walked in on an orgy. Fish were everywhere just going at it. I cast a few times in their general direction and got a bump - nothing major. Then I started realizing that there were fish everywhere - mudding in the shallows in a football sized area. There was some slight grass tips poking up and the carp were nosing around in there. I got a lot of practice casting to them. I hurt my shoulder pretty badly on Wednesday night - actually got a cortisone shot on Thursday, so this was my first "excersize" on the shoulder. Well, I eneded up hooking up on 5 total, 3 of which I hooked right and they all took me on a very long over 100 foot run. These runs were nothing of the screaming variety - just strong pulls that never seemed to end - like walking the dog and never getting control over the leash. Each fish popped the fly. The last fish I saw in a school of 5 or 6 fish - all were finning and feeding about 25 feet in front of me. I plopped the fly right in front of this guy and I hooked up quickly - he ate it and ran to the left - with a steady pull of the line, there was no way to turn him at all. Finally the line popped out of the fly and I decided it was time to go. While standing on the concrete path submerged up to my ankles with water (this path is hidden during normal water levels) I saw fish swimming right next to me in the mucky water - they didn't realize that Cabo and I were standing there. We would move around and a fish would spook 2 feet from us - scared the hell out of the dog. Cabo tried a couple of times to wander over to the humpers - the fish didn't care less, but one time, they changed directions and must have bumped right into her - she came right out of the water scared as hell - of course she tried to act all brave by pawing at their wakes, but they were long gone. She came back over to me and decided to stand right between my legs for a few minutes. Funny as hell!

Well - a bit of success - and I found the fish!!

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