DENTRY: LaChance observes all at Horsetooth

Published October 19, 2007 at midnight

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FORT COLLINS - Who knows what brings on a bite, anyway? Mostly, you go on recent history, which, in Chad LaChance's neighborhood, isn't too hard to figure.

LaChance, licensed fishing guide at Horsetooth Reservoir and a few others (FishfulThinker.com), lives a whistle away from Horsetooth's marina.

For a while now, he has observed smallmouth bass, walleyes and other fish "turning on" each afternoon.

For all his fish sense and expensive equipment, he concedes he doesn't altogether understand what flips the piscatorial switch in freshwater impoundments. Who does?

The causes are a lot easier to understand at his greater family's Florida home, where tides are charted and snook chase bait in mangroves at the top of the ebb.

So he watches birds. It's a habit saltwater teaches anglers and not a bad one in freshwater, either.

Horsetooth's gulls were rafted up, but with that edge that suggested someone was coming to dinner. High above, their scouts soared and watched the shimmering waves.

"When the fish start to feed, they'll push the shad up to the surface," he said. "You'll even find bass out there in the middle of nowhere."

That's a curious habit for a fish that covets shoreline rocks and crayfish dinners, both of which Horsetooth has aplenty. But wherever gizzard shad swim, hungry fish adapt.

Since Horsetooth refilled three years ago after dam repairs, smallmouth bass have reclaimed their status as its chief predator. Two years ago, biologist Ken Kehmeier stirred gizzard shad into the soup, along with spottail and emerald shiners.

Horsetooth is a tad cool for shad, so they don't grow very big. Kehmeier said the shad pulled off a spawn last year, and those yearling baitfish now are running 2-3 inches.

Which explains why LaChance handed over a spinning rod outfitted with a like-sized Rat-L-Trap, the legendary shad imitator.

In fact, it seemed the best way to put some fish slime in his glittery new Ranger 21 bass boat. Between the Trap and some leadhead jigs baited with fake minnows and leeches, the fishing fates awoke.

The bite materialized, but without the vigor of recent days. You could tell it was going soft by the disappointed gulls.

So La Chance set about waking a few extra bass with a $16 jerk bait he jerked and retrieved at top speed.

"If I had a signature presentation, this is it," he said. "People know me for my jerk baits. I wear clients out with it."

Bass jumped on the speedy thing, but few were big. LaChance and Kehmeier agree that smallmouth in Horsetooth have grown as girthy as 4 pounds. But the big girls are overwhelmed by too many smaller bass.

"Part of the problem is that everybody hears there are these big smallmouths in there, so when they catch the 12-inchers, they don't take them home," Kehmeier said in a fishing debriefing.

He'd rather we keep them. A 12-inch smallmouth is a legal keeper at Horsetooth precisely because fewer fish in the reservoir equals bigger fish, more baitfish for them to eat and a healthier fishery.

Not that any smallmouth bass ever could be considered small when it comes to tussle. Each 12-incher that came aboard fought like a fish twice as big and worthy of one of the most famous quotations in angling history.

"I consider him, inch for inch and pound for pound, the gamest fish that swims," James Henshall wrote in the Book of the Black Bass in 1881.

So there went another bass boat, launched in style.

dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com

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