waiting for fall

[just-ice]

Just making a post for the heck of it in case any new Coloradans want to get away from the crowded sites/apps and to say hi to wiperhunter and eyefisher
Its been a slow spring and summer here.

[wiperhunter2]

Just making a post for the heck of it in case any new Coloradans want to get away from the crowded sites/apps and to say hi to wiperhunter and eyefisher
Its been a slow spring and summer here.

Good to read you are still around, haven't read a post from Utwalleye in a while. What have you been chasing?

[just-ice]

I've been chasing myself in circles mostly, stopped drinking this year so everything I do is not drinking and it feels like alls monochrome and pointless, like watching TCM on mute.mostly been going for suckers and chubs in mudflow we used to call a river, I took a few on a tigermusky trip, where there's possibly one or two. If you convert 10000 casts into odds by population it works out to 100000-1000000 casts, and I only made 10 casts.
First I had a turtle chewing on the bait, then a explosive bite I knew was a Muskie, turned out to be a 9# catfish, had a tiny area between trees with thick catails to pull it through, catfish bodies aren't built for that so I moved to a wider spot someone cleared out and again the bobber does it but this time I know for s ure its the muskie and of course it was a 5# bass.
Also had a couple more cats, one tiny one that I tried hard not to getknicked by but still got paper cut, Colorado's most dangerous fish..also it was going for a huge sucker twice its weight.
Also had a rat like thing swim into my line and made friends with a turtle, picked it up out of the water and put it back in but it still stayed to study me and the bobber, also caught one under ice punching my hand through and grabbing it, considering that a new specie for the year.
I was hoping for a relaxing Walden pond like experience, which many people seem to be reenacting by the river , maybe we should blame Thoreau for all that. Anyway as a kid this pond was fishable on most of the bank, now its overgrown, maybe four spots one person can fish at a time, walking around could trigger a flashback from Nam.
How about you? Big wiper would be fun to go for but I don't know how to find them here, few and far between but it seems like they're making a comeback

[wiperhunter2]

Any time you go though what you are going through, stopping things that have become part of your life, for so many years, like drinking, it takes some time before life gets back to normal or should I say your new normal but sooner or later they will and you will be much happier in the end and you will be glad you made the change.
We started catching chubs for bait a number of years ago and even use them for ice fishing now, I never could have imagined how good of a bait they would turn out to be. We use them in the Spring, Fall and Winter with great success. They will work in the Summer too but we use other things that work as well and you don't have the mess to deal with when you cut them up. Tiger musky are a fun fish to catch but as you said, you can spend a lot of time casing them with little success. Was the rat like animal you saw maybe a muskrat? They look a lot like a big rat.
I grew up in Southern Colo and at that time there was no wipers there but when I started catching them here in Utah, after I got out of the service, I started checking out what Colo had for wipers, I don't remember what the Northern end of the state had but the area around Colo Springs had good populations of them, even some records of 20 plus pound fish being caught there, I haven't check in recent years but I bet you could find them in your area just by doing a quick on line search, maybe even find info on your Fish and Wildlife site.

As far as what I've been after, wipers in my area and the local lake I fish the most have declined in recent years because the DWR quit stocking them in the numbers they once did in favor of Walleye, I'm fine with that because I enjoy eating eyes more that wipers but I sure miss the fight of those big wipers. Since I retired I've gotten into a pattern of Ice fishing in the Winter, mainly for trout and perch, in Spring, we start off catching cats using chub meat, then late Spring walleye and some years crappie, then as Summer hits we start chasing trout and kokanee, love eating the kokes. In the Fall back to the Cats and perch.

[just-ice]

Thanks for the encourageme, funny thing was I quit around the time of icefishing and didn't crave it, summer has been tougher. I quit chewing and smoking a long time ago and that was something I wanted again, might just be a sign of the times too.
A couple years ago I was pike fishing at night and caught a decent wiper, for here, not giant but I thought for sure it was going to be my trophy pike or t.m., just not used to the fight. Wipers one I thing i've probably iced but need a big one to be sure, not much left for me locally but carp, to catch icefishing  at least. Last season was spent obsessing on one species, didn't go on my usual tour of the lakes but I think I beat my total weight for a ice season by 1000 percent.
Most likely a muskrat, I was wondering what to do if it snagged itself. There are beaver too,they made a dam and it created a shallow pond where there used to be a third pond ten years ago, a flood recreated the area and recent  small floods have brought tons of material from burn scars, I guess, anyway its this thick black mud, must be nutrient rich stuff since the trees and grass went crazy.
Sounds like you got a pretty nice pattern going on over there, never caught  a salmon, icing one would be best but we can snag them somewhere at sometime which sounds fun too.

[wiperhunter2]

Thanks for the encourageme, funny thing was I quit around the time of icefishing and didn't crave it, summer has been tougher. I quit chewing and smoking a long time ago and that was something I wanted again, might just be a sign of the times too.
A couple years ago I was pike fishing at night and caught a decent wiper, for here, not giant but I thought for sure it was going to be my trophy pike or t.m., just not used to the fight. Wipers one I thing i've probably iced but need a big one to be sure, not much left for me locally but carp, to catch icefishing  at least. Last season was spent obsessing on one species, didn't go on my usual tour of the lakes but I think I beat my total weight for a ice season by 1000 percent.
Most likely a muskrat, I was wondering what to do if it snagged itself. There are beaver too,they made a dam and it created a shallow pond where there used to be a third pond ten years ago, a flood recreated the area and recent  small floods have brought tons of material from burn scars, I guess, anyway its this thick black mud, must be nutrient rich stuff since the trees and grass went crazy.
Sounds like you got a pretty nice pattern going on over there, never caught  a salmon, icing one would be best but we can snag them somewhere at sometime which sounds fun too.

When I lived in Southern Colo back in the 70's it was legal to snag spawning salmon, I did not realize they still allowed that practice. I remember one fall my fishing partner and I caught what seemed to be a hundred of them, my Dad had a 63 Chevy Impala and that low spot in the truck we filled with those salmon. Love to catch kokes while ice fishing but it's not easy, mainly because they are always moving and you just have to be in the right place at the right time, on bigger lakes it's really hard, the smaller the lake the better your chances are. 
Have you ever fished lake Boyd there in Colo?

[just-ice]

Yeah, Boyd has been tough this year, most of the fish are probably out deeper, ts low and pressured, it was the same on the ice this year.
Ponds are appealing since the water levels don't change.
Also thinking back to the whole 10000 cast theory I caught my t.m. on ice so I technically dropped instead of casted, i've fished for years in lakes with them and never got one by casting.
they still allow it places October 1st to the end of the year , snagging a big one in current sounds interesting, heavy line must be important

[wiperhunter2]

Yeah, Boyd has been tough this year, most of the fish are probably out deeper, ts low and pressured, it was the same on the ice this year.
Ponds are appealing since the water levels don't change.
Also thinking back to the whole 10000 cast theory I caught my t.m. on ice so I technically dropped instead of casted, i've fished for years in lakes with them and never got one by casting.
they still allow it places October 1st to the end of the year , snagging a big one in current sounds interesting, heavy line must be important

It's been so long ago now that I really don't remember but I doubt it was more than 10 or 12 lb test we used all those years ago for snagging those kokes

[just-ice]

I have to do it someday, I used to think snagging was permitted for carp and sucker before I actually read the laws, then I got tattled on once for snagging shad, someone came out, just to check that they were'nt game species
It seems like we could use less shad, carp and sucker, it'd if those three were allowed and you had to keep what you snag for bait, food or plant food.
If we allow people here to start classifying carp as game fish then America will be lost forever, all carp to me are invasive species and anti-American.

[wiperhunter2]

I have to do it someday, I used to think snagging was permitted for carp and sucker before I actually read the laws, then I got tattled on once for snagging shad, someone came out, just to check that they were'nt game species
It seems like we could use less shad, carp and sucker, it'd if those three were allowed and you had to keep what you snag for bait, food or plant food.
If we allow people here to start classifying carp as game fish then America will be lost forever, all carp to me are invasive species and anti-American.

You might be aware of this but most snagging in Colo isn't allowed until after the spawn is over, so most of those fish you snag are spawned out and are dying, so there is a small window between the opening date of the season and a point when the fish are in such bad shape that you would not want to keep them anyway. I have no problem keeping red kokes but when they start turning white, that is where I draw the line.
In Utah we are not allowed to keep any shad, because they don't want them to spread from one body of water to another one. As far as carp goes, I agree with you, carp should not be in the USA and are an invasive species, they are of little value IMO and we would be better off if they were not here.

[just-ice]

Yeah, I think its legal everywhere to lip snag, or whatever they call it, where you setup so your line kind of flosses a hook into their inner lip somehow, then you can keep them before they spawn but not sure about that.

As for common carp, at least they're meek compared to other invasive fish, when a fish smacks you in the face like the Asian carp it really must be insulting, dynamite fishing would be just if it keeps those from spreading, no amount of snagging,arrowing, netting will ever be enough to get rid of them. Someone needs to make carp specific poison or something. 
Expanding the market to make large scale commercial fishing possible would be a good idea, I know we already have some going on,  heard years ago that if it doesn't say what the fish is its likely carp. 
don't know if a bounty system has been  tried yet but those affected states could offer free licenses or discounts if you killed enough