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DENTRY: Ice anglers treated to slushy

By Ed Dentry, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published March 11, 2008 at 12:15 a.m.

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Payton Michael caught, then released, this 351/2-inch lake trout at Blue Mesa. He estimated it weighed 27 to 30 pounds.

Photo by Special To The Rocky

Payton Michael caught, then released, this 351/2-inch lake trout at Blue Mesa. He estimated it weighed 27 to 30 pounds.

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Winter is giving way at lower elevations. But if ice fishing is your enduring passion, you can buy an extension in the mountain valleys.

The coolest would be the Gunnison Valley, where Dave Bryant, of XtremeIceFishing.com, got his snowmobile stuck - and then frozen fast - in Blue Mesa Reservoir last weekend.

"I got my four-wheeler stuck, too," said Travis Snyder, who guides fishermen for HighMtnDrifters.com when he isn't working at Gene Taylor's store in Gunnison.

Snyder said the cause of all this foundering was slush caused by dam releases, which have dropped Blue Mesa's level 40 feet.

Shoreline ice caved in and water streamed over the top, creating large bowls of cold soup 2 feet deep.

Bryant drove into the vichyssoise while scouting out a shortcut to the mouth of the Cebolla Creek Arm, where lake trout had been biting.

He had to leave the sled overnight. But he said the minus-15- degree temperatures the next morning kept his group from overheating while they chipped the vehicle free from "the hardest concrete."

Hardened ice fishers know such slush traps are typical hazards at water-storage reservoirs in March. They happen when dams release water so they can catch more water when spring runoff starts.

Usually, solid ice rests just under the slush.

With hearty mountain snowpacks this year, several reservoirs are dropping in anticipation of the big rise. Slush comes with the turf. And surf. So be careful.

Meanwhile, Bryant and Snyder said fishing was excellent. Bryant's group caught rainbows and brown trout, lake trout up to 10 pounds, some kokanee and a few perch.

Big lake trout season is approaching. Ice angler Payton Michael, who visited Blue Mesa a week or so earlier, jigged up a lake trout 35 1/2 inches long. He released the big fish but estimated its weight at 27 to 30 pounds.

Michael said the laker came from 75 feet deep and chased his jig up to 25 feet, where it engulfed the lure.

For all their record-breaking appeal, lake trout have stirred less discussion at Blue Mesa lately than yellow perch, which lie at the other end of the measuring stick.

Perch turned up at Blue Mesa after an illegal introduction several years ago. They have proliferated since, but finding them isn't always so easy.

Bryant's theory is the perch schools must keep moving to avoid being eaten by hungry lake trout and other Blue Mesa predators.

Although seldom longer than 10 inches, perch are schooling, culinary delights. Some people can't get them off their minds.

Never mind chasing big lake trout. Some people want to know where to catch perch, purely in the interest of keeping their population in check.

"You and everybody else," Snyder said.

Snyder offers one suggestion that sometimes works for Blue Mesa's perch jerkers: "They tend to hang out with rainbows and browns at the Gunnison River inlet," the guide said.

Rather, it's probably the other way around, that the rainbows and browns have been hanging out with those delectable perch.

Anyway, it's a starting point.

dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com