DENTRY: Angler pitches kinder hooks

Friday, August 17, 2007

KREMMLING - The bugs were busy, and so were trout in a section of the Blue River below Green Mountain Dam. Trout rose to snatch caddis flies real and fake.

It was as if the chill tailwaters ripping downstream were nothing to these robust river fish.

"We don't have to worry about warm water here," Chuck Ober-meyer said.

He was referring to the recent disaster at Antero Reservoir, where sun-heated water and sloppy fishing practices killed hundreds of large trout.

The current ran a cool 50 degrees on the river reach that Obermeyer championed for public access (soon to come, whenever the Bureau of Land Management gets around to it) and for new catch-and-release regulations.

The problem is that trout hardened in swift streams fight like fish twice their size. Big trout especially are vulnerable to fatal hook injuries, exhaustion and death from poor releases.

"With the fiasco at Antero, this might be a good time to talk about single hooks and barbless hooks," Obermeyer said.

Armed with abundant research showing the ugly effects lures with treble hooks have on fish, he proposed single-hook rules to Colorado wildlife commissioners. That was five months ago, but they haven't responded.

Obermeyer, of Highlands Ranch, wants Colorado to adopt fish-friendly single, barbless hook rules, at least on catch-and- release waters.

"Studies show hooking mortality with treble hooks can be as high as 16 percent," he said. "A single- hook regulation would cut the mortality rate down to 2 percent. If you went barbless, you would cut it to 1 percent."

Colorado permits anglers to fish with lures on special-regulation waters - with no restrictions on treble hooks, which also can be used to snag fish illegally.

"Treble hooks kill fish," Ober-meyer said. "It takes 20 seconds with split-ring pliers to remove a treble hook and replace it with a single, barbless hook."

His efforts to go easier on trout include replacing his old, knotted landing net with a new, nonabrasive, rubberized net.

"Watch this," he said.

He cradled a plump rainbow in the rubberized net. The barbless fly slipped effortlessly from the fish's mouth, and he held net and fish in the current.

"The net isn't even touching the fish," he said. "He'll swim out on his own when he's ready."

One after another, his trout revived that way, untouched. Each fish finned gently in the open net and departed looking hardly the worse for wear.

Such fish-saving measures as single hooks and knotless rubber nets - and even fly-fishing only - aren't elite, effete or farfetched, Obermeyer said. They make good conservation sense.

Several Western states and Canadian provinces already strictly regulate tackle and fishing methods to protect their cold- water fishing investment.

Washington, which is no slouch in the cold-water fishing department, is a model state, Obermeyer said.

Washington protects most of its trout waters with fly-fishing-only rules. Hooks musts be single and without barbs.

Washington also forbids anglers to land trout with anything other than those newfangled, rubberized nets.

Obermeyer said he wants wildlife commissioners, who voted Monday for fish conservation at Antero, to consider taking a bigger step:

"If people are willing to save fish in what essentially is a small pond, surely they will consider it for the rest of the state."

dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com