Ice Off: Fly Fishing the High Alpine Lakes of Colorado by Jim Fergus "...one of my first fishing outings is a delicately timed affair that involves hiking five miles up to a favorite alpine lake in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness area of northern Colorado." A high country Colorado lake. The summer is pitifully short where I live in northern Colorado, the fly fishing season commensurately brief. There is a tiny window of opportunity early in the season when the ice first comes off the rivers and streams and before the snow melts in the high country to raise and muddy the waters, sometimes for as long as a month or more. But even then, during pre-runoff, the river trout tend to be sluggish and uncooperative, difficult to catch on flies as they come out of their long winter of semi-dormancy in the deep pools and beneath the undercut banks. Then runoff begins in earnest, and in a high snowpack year, my home waters -- the rivers, creeks and streams -- can be all but unfishable all the way into July. So we always try to extend our short season one way or another. Some of my local friends opt for ice fishing in the lakes and reservoirs of the valley during the endless winter months. For them, it is often just a way to get out of the house more than anything; they generally fish with salmon eggs and other stinky, unsavory baits. I've always found that particular sport to be a bit too sedentary, not to mention cold, not to mention deeply boring. In any case, as regular readers will know, these days I'm more or less a snowbird and would just as soon hear my northern friend's tales of ice fishing adventures (a phrase which strikes me as an oxymoron) from the sunny comfort of northern Florida or Arizona. Still, I like to get home in time to see the short spring in the high country and one of my first fishing outings is a delicately timed affair that involves hiking five miles up to a favorite alpine lake in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness area of northern Colorado. I say "delicately timed" because the very best fishing the lake offers is just after the ice comes off; unlike the sluggish river trout that time of year, the lake fish seem especially voracious and active after their long imprisonment beneath the ice, and they tend to strike streamers and nymphs fished deep with particular abandon. However, as there is not exactly anyone you can phone up there to check on ice conditions at timberline, the proper timing is largely a matter of guesswork and experience. And, of course, every year is different. In particularly heavy snow years, the trip is rendered pretty much moot, unless you're willing to walk the five miles in snowshoes -- a steep, strenuous climb in the best of circumstances. And after particularly cold winters with late springs, even if you can get up to the lake, you risk finding it still buried beneath an impenetrable shield of ice. At the same time, wait too long and you miss that specific ice-off feeding frenzy that seems to occur at just that moment and seems to last only for a matter of days. Hopeless snowbird that I am, I rely on my old friend Ron Slosson to make the decision as to when conditions will be prime on the lake. Ron used to work for the U.S. Forest Service and spent weeks at a time with a horse and pack mule up in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness. In fact, he had discovered the phenomenon of voracious fish just when the ice came off in this particular lake (the name of which I would tell you, but Ron would kill me if I did). This last year, Ron phoned me shortly before Memorial Day weekend. "I think the ice is coming off --- Lake this week," he said. "I just have a feeling about it. You want to give it a try?" "You bet," I said, and we set a date. On the day in question we drove up to the trailhead, parked and unloaded our gear. I had brought my lab Sweetz with me because even though she didn't care much for fishing, she still enjoyed a good hike in the hunting off-season. Ron and I rigged our rods, shouldered our day packs and headed out. It was a mild spring day and there were only a few patches of thin snow on the ground at the trailhead. The aspens in the foothills were just beginning to break their buds, their small leaves still just about the size of squirrels ears and a particularly bright shade of spring green. It looked to me like Ron had nailed it again, that our lake would be seething with hungry trout. After a couple of miles of hiking, the snowpack began to get deeper underfoot. The snow had obviously melted and refrozen a number of times so that we could walk on top for a few steps before falling through. Still it was only six inches or so deep, a minor deterrence to our progress and on we pushed. But after another mile or so, the snow got deeper yet, up to our calves, and we began to flounder in it. "Two more miles Ron," I said. "This is going to be tough going. You sure the ice will be off the lake?" "No problem," Ron said, "I think our timing is perfect." Another mile and now we were slogging through waist-high snow in the pine timber, where the snow was soft enough that even Sweetz was falling through, vanishing from sight in the deep drifts, only to lunge back to the surface like a porpoise leaping clear of the water. I felt like an idiot carrying a fly rod up here. What I really needed was a pair of back country skis and a sled for Sweetz. "I don't think we're going to make it, Ron," I said. "Maybe we should turn back and try it another day." "Don't worry," he assured me. "We'll make it. Once we get out of the woods and closer to timberline, there won't be nearly so much snow. You'll see." "I have a bad feeling that the lake is going to be iced over still," I said. "I think we're too early." "Trust me," Ron said. "What do you know anyway, you're a snowbird." On we pushed, laboring, floundering through the drifts. But as Ron said, once we cleared the thick timber and approached timberline, we broke out of the deep snow which had largely been swept clear by the wind or melted by the sun. Now the country opened up from dark wintry pine forest into a magnificent natural bowl carved from the rock and surrounded by high, treeless peaks. Set in the bowl were a series of small alpine lakes, each spilling one into the next. Our destination was the largest of the lakes but when we reached it, exhausted from busting snow for another two miles we found that ice still ringed its shoreline for a good 10 feet out. "Hmmm, we may be a few days early," Ron admitted. "Yeah, and if we'd been one day earlier," I said, "we could have brought our ice skates." "Well, we've come this far," he said. "We might as well give it a try. One thing for sure, we'll be the first people to fish the lake this year. These fish have not seen a fly or a lure for over seven months. You know how hungry these fish are going to be?" "I guess we're going to find out." I said. Ron and I sat on a rock at lakeside and ate our sandwiches first, while Sweetz stretched out in the sun. Only the inlet and outlet to the lakes were completely free of ice, and after lunch we took up our respective positions on either end of the lake. I worked my way out on a rocky point at the outlet, where the lake narrowed and the water spilled down to the next lake. I was fishing a large Woolly Bugger with a sink-tip line, and I worked out some line and dropped the fly in the channel between the ice on either side. I let it sink for a slow eight count, made one strip and felt the hard take of my first trout of the season. At almost exactly the same time, I heard Ron call out from the other end of the lake: "Fish on! Hey, didn't I tell you we timed this perfectly?" My first fish was a beautiful ice-cold 18-inch cuttbow (a rainbow/cutthroat hybrid), its flanks a deep reddish brown. I released it back to the water and immediately hooked another on my next cast, and another on the cast after that. Ron was right, we had hit it perfectly. The fishing was so good that afternoon that we had to force ourselves to quit, to head back down the mountain where we knew the deep winter snow drifts lay waiting for us in the dark timber. Copyright © 1999 Jim Fergus. All rights reserved.