Very unfair rule

[TroutFishingBear]

I think that the rule that you cannot use a jig less than 1.5" or it is considered live bait is stupid. This makes it so you can't in places that are flies/lures only, which is definitely unfair because flyfisherman can use #28 flies which are the size of a pinhead... shouldnt that be livebait too if the CDOW was fair? Just another example of another unfair colorado rule by the CDOW.
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[TroutFishingBear]

Why not just make power eggs like that considered live bait? Aren't power eggs bait anyway? A 1" tube jig should NOT be considered live bait.

Fish swallow #28 flies too ya know...I'm just saying a 1" tube jig or the 1/25 oz. nuclear ant (artificial, not bait but a jig) should not be considered live bait. Really it makes no sense.
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[SLAYERFISH]

A lot of the tube jigs and twister tails are scented with one flavor or another,and you can just toss 'em out on the bottom and the trout will inhale them.Trust me, it works-
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[DonInDenver]

I don't have a lot of heartburn over this particular regulation. Like Slayerfish, I believe it is designed to prohibit the small plastic stuff that often is infused with attractant. Those jigs can be passively fished and swallowed with much higher mortality than fish taken with small flies that are actively fished and almost always result in a lip-hooked fish. If you want to fish tiny jigs, you can tie some tiny marabou jigs and fish them legally. It's only the molded plastic jigs less than 1 1/2" that are not considered artificial.
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[SLAYERFISH]

Good catch,Don!
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[TroutFishingBear]

Hmmmm. this is some good insight about this rule. I can see where your coming from; just improper fishing by a lot of people. But actually most jigs like that are not infused with scents and what not... but I guess a few anglers abuse the ones that are. I like to use shrimpos and stuff for jigging bluegills through the ice, but some of my fav. big bluegill lakes are flies/lures only and I can't use those now, and the fish won't bite much else through the ice unless they are very aggressive. I just think that instead of making it a blanket rule like it is it should be made more specific... just like the slot limit of pike someone else on this site mentioned earlier. Hmmmmm at least you guys have given me some insight on this rule and why it was made... I may make some suggestions to DOW about changing the rule for a few lakes anyway.
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[DonInDenver]

TFB-

For bluegill you might try tieing up some 1/80th or 1/100th ounce jigs with a flo. red or flo. orange head and a hot chartreuse micro-chenille body and chartreuse marabou tail. I haven't fished them for bluegill, but it's a hot color for ice fishing crappie (and trout). My other favorite is a glow head, chartreuse micro-chenille body and white tail. For cloudy days I tie some with a few strands of pearl flashabou. For bright days you don't need the flashabou.

By the way, I started using Shrimpos, too, about 2 or 3 years ago and they are now my favorite soft plastic ice jig. Deadly where legal.
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[TroutFishingBear]

Sounds like those jigs might work pretty good; I definitely need to start tying my own.

I was talking to a warden today at the local state park a few minutes from my house and he said that even if they saw somebody using a jig like a shrimpo icefishing and actually jigging it they wouldn't get a ticket right off which is nice.They would most likely just give a warning.
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[Icedaddy22]

Nope I have to say as that I as a staunch supporter for bait and lure fishing that this rule is another blow to spin fishermen in favor of fly fishermen. It's the same as with bait, not that you are fishing with it but HOW you are fishing with it. When you actively fish bait by drifting it along the bottom and setting the hook on the take, the mortality with bait is the same as with lures or properly fished flies. I'm not meaning to open a can of worms here, but fly fishing as some people practice it actually has the highest mortality rate of any of the three methods. This is because some anglers use extremely light tippets in the 2 pound all the way down to 8 ounce size. This prolongs the fight and causes the fatigued fish to build up large amounts of lactic acid. Many of these released fish will die from metabolic acidosis.
I am against most all flies and lures only restrictions. I support these regulations only in a handful of small tailwater streams, like small sections of the Fryingpan, Blue, Taylor, and South Platte. Maybe very unique lakes like spinney or the delaney buttes should have the regs as well. I base this on the fact that a drifted bait has no higher a mortality rate than properly fished lures or flies. For example, I caught 44 trout on the Colorado River Sunday, fishing drifted nightcrawlers. Only two swallowed the hook. If half of those fish survive that swallow the hook like the CDOW claims, the mortality rate is almost nil. I am however tired of seeing so many fish on the smaller rivers with mulitiple flies and tippets lodged in there mouths, gills, eyes, jaws, ect. It's an epidemic. Fly fishing I have nothing against, only those who think that I am a fish killer because I use bait which is something that is consistantly many fold more effective.

Tyler
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[DonInDenver]

Tyler-

Sounds like you had a great day on the Colrado. Congratulations.

I agree with you that an actively fished natural bait fished in moving water need not result in higher mortality than fly and lure fishing. However, lots of bait fishermen don't know how to fish that way, unfortunately. For still waters, I'm sure there is higher mortality from bait due to the passive way that most people fish it. So in lots of places I think protection of the fishery benefits from fly/lure only restrictions. I do agree with you that fly fishermen need to examine the ethics of hitting the river undergunned in tippet size, etc.

I think the biggest task we anglers face in Colorado is educating a lot of the fishing public that our waters simply will not support a lot of harvest if we're going to have a decent quantity of bigger fish. Catch-n-release or very limited harvest is going to have to be the norm on a lot of waters, especially the waters that will support natural reproduction or where the fish will survive the winter. There are too many people fishing and not enough quality waters to have it work any other way fror the future. That's my 2 cents worth anyway.
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[Oats]

You both have a point, and its a wake up for everyone that yields a rod in Colorado waters. But I must say I've fished for trout with both bait and flies and there's no way flies cause a higher mortality rate than the hooks bait fisherman use.
Serveral reasons for this. One most of the hooks that flyfisherman use are size 12 and smaller which means they have much smaller barbs and rust out much quicker than the standard 10 to 2 sizes most bait people use. Secondly I've flyfished for the past decade and have never played a fish to death, if that happens its usually because they were kept out of the water too long. Thirdly the very few times that I've had fish take flies deep I've either cut the line or been able to use pliers leaving the fish with a hook a fraction of the size of a bait hook. But to compare what fish ingest more often flies or bait, there no comparison. And the more restrictions the better. Thats the way I look at it!
Oats
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[Icedaddy22]

I agree pretty much completely with what Don says, and I respectfully disagree with what oats says. I do agree with him that he and a lot of others who properly fish flies have a low mortality rate just like those who fish lures or actively fish baits. I disagree with him saying that more restrictions are better. In still water fisheries such as spinney and the delaney buttes, maybe a no bait restriction is fine. I can also say that letting a bait sit in a larger river actually is less productive than flies or lures much of the time. You don't really get that many strikes. Trust me I have tried. I have many holes where I have never got a strike experimenting with stillfishing, only to mop them up on bait that is drifted. I have deep hooked very few fish fishing this way. If the half the fish that are deep hooked survive rule is correct, my mortality rate this year is about 4%. I agree that we need mostly catch and release for quality trout waters. I never hardly keep a trout in these waters even though I am allowed to do so in most. Let the no bait rule stand in a few of the lakes and small rivers. However I and most of the rest of Colorado anglers will not tolerate any additional regulations in other waters. Once they refill Antero, bait should be allowed there like always. You just cannot usually match the success with flies or lures that you can skillfully fished bait. And the only way to skillfully fish bait in larger rivers is drifting, and by this method most all trout are lip or mouth hooked. Also, when I say fly fisherman have a high mortality rate, I mean ONLY those who fish with too light of gear, tippets, leaders ect. Proper fly fishing is very low in mortality, some of the lowest. But it's not statisically lower than properly fished lures or baits. I can assure you that passively fishing baits in rivers doesn't work as well as fly fishing or lure fishing, let alone drifted bait. So to have bait allowed on all larger rivers is a good and just rule because those who improperly fish bait are not going to hook many fish, trust me. It's also important that we educate anglers to properly fish bait or flies, and to release most all trout caught in most fisheries. The only quality water in which I regularly harvest trout are smaller browns in the Gunnison Gorge, where restrictive limits have actually allowed the browns to become too numerous. Besides that, only brookies and small macks go onto my stringer. I also wish that bass, pike, catfish, walleye, and panfish would be given the same respect.
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[Oats]

When I say the more restrictions the better, I mainly mean the quality waters such as you mentioned. I have nothing against bait/lure fisherman mainly because I also do that. I also have no problem with people that keep fish as long as it is within reason, I know I take some home.
But the tighter restrictions like the limit change to four fish and the 18" minimum walleye restriction can only be a good thing, after all fishing to me is more about catching than keeping.
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[Icedaddy22]

Agreed Oats. I think we need more restrictive harvest on most fisheries. I think that having a regulation for bass instead of 15" or longer, it should be 2 bass, 12" or under. For the walleyes, I'm not sure how minimum length limits would be better than allowing anglers to keep an even smaller amount of small fish, such as 3 walleyes, 16" or under. I think the more you encourage the release of the big ones, the more big fish will be in the gene pool and thus the population will become larger and healthier. Fishing to me is more about catching than keeping as well. I agree with selective harvest rather than throwing fish in the cooler. Makes me so damn mad when I see someone keep big old trout or walleye, cats and pike for that matter too. Big fish don't taste very good anyway because they get softer and fatty. The smaller ones are firmer, leaner, and cook up a lot better. There are some fisheries though where MORE fish need to be harvested as well though. I know of a lot of places, such as Vega Reservoir Rainbows, and Gunnison River Browns, where the harvest should be increased. Should be 8 trout on Vega for a few years to thin out the little ones. For the Gunnison, should be 8 browns, only one of which can be greater than 15" for a few years. The browns are overpopulated here, though wading through the 12 - 20" ones will get you into big browns up to 15 pounds still. Too many browns is also one reason the greatest rainbow fishery I have seen besides maybe the Glenwood section of the Colorado is having difficulty coming back, though I am catching a few more rainbows this year than last. Those rainbows used to average 18 - 30" and 10 - 15 pounders were almost a guarantee if you hit the river in the canyon by floating. Heck, when we fished in a party of three this year, we still caught about a dozen bows in the 6 - 10 pound range on spinners, and a decent amount of smaller 2 - 4 pounders too. I caught 230 trout on my three day trip in the Gorge this year, and only 19 were rainbows. A couple were small bows, the rest were all three pounds or better. Not that I have anything against brownies, I love them. But there are too many brownies in the gorge, and that is hindering the rainbows that were hammered by WD from coming back. I cannot imagine what it was like 20 years ago. Would I have been catching a 100 bows from 3 - 15 pounds per trip? Probably so. If only. I want to see this fishery come back. What an amazingly beautiful river and gorgeous wild fish.

Tyler
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[TroutFishingBear]

Icedaddy, you and I talk all the time and we agree on most things, no doubt there, and you know how I disagree about you on vega reservoir. 12 fish should be the limit; when this fish are averaging 10-14" in a lake with such a large crayfish and freshwater shrimp population, something is definitely wrong. DOW should also stop stocking so many fish in there and put a few more of those in waters that need em like the gunnison. The DOW complains about the shortage of WD free stockies, but they waste the ones they have[]

I also agree with you about the colorado and other large rivers like that where bait should be allowed. Most baitfisherman I see on the colorado are power bait fisherman who use 12 pound test and huge golfball sized weights, and the most the get is maaaaaaaybe 1 decent bow. seems to me on the roaring fork and gunnison gorge it should be the same as well. But then again I gotta agree that spinney is fine being flies/lures only.

The only thing about flies and lures only waters that I really hate are that most fly fisherman use feather light tippet and, although when they release a fish it may seem fine like oats said he does, later a large percentage of these fish will die due to metabolic acidosis. I notice so many dead fish in the fryingpan and taylor rivers that are huge it makes me sick, and usually they have no evidence of injury... metabolic acidosis. Most flyfisherman use tippet that is equivalent to .5-2.0 lb test for these tough waters, and a fish they catch over 16" will almost certainly die because of how long they played it. So although a flyfisherman may think the fish they are releasing are fine, a lot of them die later. I would make it a law to use a minimum of tippet equivalent to 3.0 lb test. The amount of deaths flyfisherman that use lighter cause on fisheries make me sick at times. Especially when they look down their nose at me for being a lip hook baitfisherman.
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[Icedaddy22]

Actually most fly fisherman like Oats are pretty responsible about how they fish, they use heavier tippets and are careful in how they play and land fish. It isn't most fly fishermen who use improper methods, just a few. But those that do can cause severe damage to smaller fisheries such as the taylor, 'pan, south platte, and blue. Only a small section of the taylor has special regs though.
Those who passively fish bait in bigger rivers will have little luck. Some lakes like spinney should be artificials only to keep the power bait crowd away. Maybe though ice fishing these lakes bait should be allowed because you are jigging. But then again some would still fish and that isn't good. So on lakes, let the regs stand. The taylor, pan, blue, and south platte? They can stand as well. Just no more artificials only regs and maybe some for larger rivers like the Gunny and Roaring Fork the regs should be repealed.

Tyler
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[Oats]

TFB,

There's no way large percentages of fish caught in quality waters die after a battle on a fly rod. First of all they wouldn't grow to trophy size by going belly up after a long battle. I've fished all of the quality waters in this state and others in Wyoming like the Miricle Mile, Grey Reef, the Bighorn and Yellowstone in Montana, San Juan in New Mexico, the Green in Utah and the South Fork, Snake and Teton in Idaho. These waters are heavily fished and in many cases fish are caught 2 or 3 times a day and if they were dieing on a regular basis there wouldn't be the great number of large fish in these places. I don't doubt that you've seen fish on the banks but I think that these fish have been mismanaged or kept out of the water too long.
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