Ron Gonzalez, Mike Lyons, Mitch Vitkovich and myself hit Colorado last week looking for the big trout of Antero. That was the plan… but as we all have experienced, Antero had its own plan. Seems the late winter conditions had delayed the shallow water migration of the big trout somewhat. The weeds weren’t where they were supposed to be and neither were the trout. We had to fish deep and that changed things a lot for us. The leech strip bite was pretty slow and the average fish we caught was smaller than ever before. This seemed to bother me more than the rest of the group. A slow day on Antero is still a very good day most other places.
Everyone seemed to catch bigger fish than me….I just assume that is because I was a good host (well, that’s how I see it). Everyone caught quite a few fish fish in the 3 lb range, Mike and Ron seemed to catch a lot more of that size fish than I did. I think Mike had 6 of 7 fish in that size at one point while I was catching 1-1.5 lb fish, which I had never seen before at Antero. We may have done better with c’mids or leeches under an indicator but the bobber boys didn’t seem to be catching any big fish either and I just don’t have the patience to do it unless I’m hanging some big ones.
Mitch wade fished a small point of an island and caught several nice fish. One went 4.5 lbs and turned out to be the big fish of the trip.
The wind kept us off the lake one whole day and half of another which gave us a little time to explore. We hit a small, beautiful lake north of Antero called Jefferson that was probably up 11,500 ft and caught lots of small rainbows on dries and nymphs and some smallish lakers as well.
We also hit Spinney Mtn on the lee side of the lake but didn’t have any luck there at all.
Another good trip with a good bunch of guys. I am anxious to see how the group does next month. There was some talk by the local guys at the boat ramp of some winterkill and complaints of smaller fish than usual. I marked a lot of big fish on my finder that just didn’t want to play so I hope it is just that the late runoff has delayed the big fish bite some. I know they were there this past spring because we caught them at iceout. Oh well, fishing’s fishing. If everything worked out as planned every time, we’d get bored with it.