You can contact Dennis at: DSmith7136@msn.com
I’d been trying to get up to North Park to fish the “ice off” bite on the Delaney Buttes Lakes since late-March, but didn’t succeed until first week in May. Unfortunately, I’m sorry to say, I appear to have arrived there a tad late - and became yet another victim of the “you-should-have-been-here-when” blues.
“Ice off” on the Delaneys (as on most of our big trout lakes) triggers a monumental feeding binge by winter starved trout, and on the Delaneys, those trout can be enormous. A friend of mine had been up there a few days after the ice began going off the lakes and stopped by to tell me he’d personally seen 8 to 10-pound fish cruising the shoreline scarfing up midge larvae, caddis fly pupae, damsel fly nymphs and, well - just about anything that moved or bore a resemblance to fish food.
This guy would know: he’s a retired school teacher, maintains a camp in North Park year round and has been fishing Lake John and all three of the Delaney Buttes Lakes almost exclusively for decades. He is intimately familiar with their hatches and seasonal idiosyncrasies. More, though, he is not given to foolish exaggeration; if he says he saw ten-pound trout prowling the shoreline, you can make book on it. I purposed in my heart to go on my next day off, but of course, blizzards and freak storms conspired to thwart my every attempt for the next month.
In the ensuing weeks, photos of big trout from North Park began appearing in my e-mail, sent by buddies of mine who’d been up there to experience the legendary bite. The fish, of course, were heart-stopping monsters. And just last week, Frank Cada sent me photos of two beautiful trout he’d taken on South Delaney Lake. They weren’t ten pounders, but they were over two feet long - more than enough to give even the most seasoned angler a mind-screaming anxiety attack.
The morning of May 1st, my friend Steve Armstrong and I pulled into a turn out on the northeast shore of South Delaney Lake to find overcast skies, a dead calm lake and trout rising noisily all over the cove. We figured we’d hit the big fish jack pot, but that was not the case.
Instead, we found hordes of average, 10 to 14-inch Snake River fine-spotted cutthroats gorging themselves on emerging midge pupae. A size 16 shiny green pupae with a white bead-head proved to be very effective and we caught plenty of fish. Alas, though, the big ice out monsters of Delaney never materialized, and we decided we’d just have to come back in a week or two and try again. I mean, it’s not as if they left the lake; they still have to be there somewhere, right?
- 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?