You can contact Dennis at: DSmith7136@msn.com

 

         It’s late on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, 2007, and I just got back from Lake John in North Park where a hellish blizzard roared in, unannounced, over the Medicine Bow Mountains stranding me, my two sons, five fishing buddies and hundreds of holiday travelers across southern Wyoming and North Central Colorado. It was not the ice fishing adventure we had counted on, but it was the one we got. The best laid plans, and all that.

     The trip started out just fine on the morning of the 29^th with dry roads and clear weather from Loveland into Laramie, then on through Fox Park, King’s Canyon and from there into Walden and the plains lakes area. Antelope were herded up by the hundreds, wintering on the sage flats surrounding Lake John and we took that to be a good omen, though I’m not sure why.

     We had originally intended to take my two grandchildren but they begged off at the last minute, leaving us to wonder if they knew something we didn’t or if kids are just inherently smarter than adults when it comes to matters like ice fishing. We planned to check into a cabin at the Lake John Resort, punch a few holes in the ice, set up an ice hut, field test a new propane heater and dangle some nymphs below the ice for big trout. An elderly fly fisherman I’d met earlier in the year lured me into this madness with tales of monster trout taken through the ice at Lake John on bead-headed damsel and dragon fly nymphs “They work like a champ,” he said. Those bugs are in the lakes year round and the trout know it. Just because fly fishermen are obsessed with the damsel fly hatches in June, doesn’t mean the fish ignore them the rest of the year.” It was his idea of winter fly fishing, and I bought into it.

     Most ice fishermen use weighted jigs of various colors and configurations that mimic God-only-knows-what, but which seem to be effective if you tip them with garden worms, meal worms, corn grubs or other unlikely baits, none of which is present in trout lakes. I figured to remain true to my fly fishing roots and fish flies, even if I’d have to drop them through an eight-inch ice hole instead of casting them with a fly rod. Bone-headed stubbornness, I guess…

     Long story short: they didn’t work. My sons hooked trout on their conventional jigs and meal worms, but the damsel fly nymphs produced nothing, not even a casual glance.

     Inside the dark, toasty-warm hut we were completely oblivious to the raging storm until we stepped outside to photograph a ferociously fat rainbow trout, and the poor thing froze stiff as a tire iron within seconds. We looked around us and saw - absolutely nothing. Uh-oh. White out. We tore down the hut, packed up our gear and lurched off in the general direction of shore. From time to time it appeared to us as a swirling gray mirage of vague shapes and forms - trees, outbuildings and such - we hoped. We had to change course half a dozen times, but eventually made land, found our truck, locked the hubs and plowed our way through bumper-deep drifts back to the resort store where a small crowd of other ice anglers had gathered to discuss their options. There weren’t any; we’d all be spending the night. And that’s exactly what we did - after calling to tell the grandchildren we should have listened to them.

- Dennis

Dennis Smith is an Outdoor Writer and Photographer. His articles and photos have appeared in numerous outdoor publications, catalogs and newspapers. Dennis can be reached at (970) 669-6074. Want to know more about Dennis?

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