Where the Ice Is Biting

It’s not until you embark on an ice fishing adventure, plunge feet-first through 60 inches of snow and cannot get out that you appreciate the important things in life. The laughter of children. The magnificence of nature. Pants.

It was an early January morning in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, and I’d walked about 50 feet from my truck before breaking through the thin crust of the heavy snow. I was trapped, and spending years in the wilderness had taught me that getting out depended on my ability to stay calm. To use my head. To think clearly. To wait for the return of my ice-fishing partner, Colorado Springs city forester Jim McGannon, who had forged ahead on snowshoes, similar to the ones I could have rented earlier in the morning for $9.

As the minutes passed, I could feel my body getting numb. Oddly, however, I could still feel the $9 in my pocket. It was, according to the thermometer I had glanced at an hour earlier, about 3 degrees. The snow was being driven by a howling wind. Then I heard another sound echoing across the frozen Rockies: me screaming for help. Soon Jim showed up and dug me out. Then he stamped down the snow with--our--snowshoes and made a trail onto the frozen lake. I lurched along behind. And we went ice fishing.

The place was Taylor Park Reservoir, at 9,000 feet a magnificent fishing lake in the warm summer. In the dead of winter, however, the area becomes cold, dark and forbidding, not unlike parts of Alaska. Or marriage. It is located about 25 miles north of Gunnison and 100 miles west of Colorado Springs.

This was not my introduction to ice fishing. That came more than 30 years ago when my dad took me out on the lakes and ponds of Massachusetts, where ice fishing is a popular winter sport. And while I’ve thrown myself into the more typical winter sports over the decades--skiing comes to mind in a marvelous, I-broke-my-arm-in-1977 sort of way--and have fly-fished from Alaska to New Zealand, I continue to get excited by the frostbitten sport of ice fishing. If you’re a fisherman in the Rockies, when it freezes you have the option of buying a 100-pound bag of Cheetos and settling in for the winter, or going ice fishing.

Each winter I also ice fish at Elevenmile Canyon Reservoir near the town of Lake George, 35 miles from my home in Colorado Springs. My kids tag along, mostly on days when they can’t find their Nintendo controls. At Elevenmile we drink hot chocolate and fish; trout, salmon and northern pike are the game.

Two pluses about ice fishing: There are fewer fishermen, and the fish have more trouble finding natural food in the winter, so they tend to be more aggressive. My kids--ages 13, 9 and 6--enjoy it, and they tend to catch a lot of fish. We shovel off a big area on the lake, and they put on ice skates and skate around. But Elevenmile is only a 90-minute drive from Colorado Springs, so on a winter Sunday you may find 200 fishermen on the reservoir.

Elevenmile can attract a crowd in winter, but Taylor Reservoir only attracts elk. So once a year, when the soul of a Rocky Mountain winter drops the thermometer reading to the Nome level, I head to the numbing wilderness that is Taylor Reservoir. The place is a fishing mecca, filled with large trout and pike. The area is blanketed by several feet of snow by January and doesn’t thaw out until June. Taylor Reservoir is nestled by the Taylor River, near the tiny village of Taylor Park. The area was settled by gold miners who stayed only a few winters, eventually deciding--I am guessing this was during January or February--that gold was not all that important.

A day earlier, Jim and I had roared into Gunnison from Colorado Springs, a four-hour drive. (Six if you stop to look at every Texan in a Chevy Suburban who has slid off the road.) The route takes you south from Colorado Springs to Canon City, then west. Well down the road, near the junction of highways 24 and 50 at the town of Buena Vista, are the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs--a terrific place to stop on the drive back for a hot soak.

It was still early when we pulled into Gunnison, and the first order of business was finding bait. We parked the truck, braved the howling wind and walked three blocks to Gene Taylor’s Sporting Goods. Then we headed back out into the bitter cold, having purchased eight of the dead fish for $16.

Eventually, following the brief stop that allowed me to flirt with death in the snow, we were standing atop Taylor Park Reservoir. We drilled holes through the thick ice with a powerful, gas-powered, three-horsepower ice auger and lowered our baits. Below us swam rainbows and cutthroats and giant lake trout. Using special ice fishing rods just 2 feet long (so we can sit close to the ice hole), we sat on overturned buckets, hunched over and waited. Sitting hunched over on buckets is a crucial part of the ice fishing experience.

For the first few hours, nothing happened. Jim said we should have gotten out onto the ice at the crack of dawn. Ice fishing can best be described as a jerk on one end of the line waiting for a jerk on the other, although a clerk at Gene Taylor’s had told me the trout were biting easy. “All you’ll feel,” he said, “is a slight tap-tap-tap.”

Suddenly my rod went tap-tap-tap. I set the hook and was now engaged in a death struggle with an enormous fish. After five minutes I pulled the lake trout through the ice, a solid 6-pounder. Later I landed two fat rainbow trout.

For the rest of the day we pulled fish through the ice at a steady pace. There were a few more lake trout and lots of rainbows and cutthroats, which grow to 6 pounds and more in the vegetation-rich water. We released some and kept some on the ice.

The most remarkable thing about this adventure, on a day that would make even L.L. Bean stay in bed, was that the ice was littered with dozens of other anglers. One group of men, all in their 70s, settled about 200 yards away. After pounding their way through the thick ice with ice chisels, they spent the day huddled around the holes, pulling a dozen or more big fish from the water. Farther away, other groups had ice fishing huts, small portable shacks that serve as windbreakers; they allow you to fish from inside, your body warmed by a heater and thoughts of Ann-Margret. But in Colorado, fishing shacks have to be pulled off the ice before you leave, and it was so windy that day that I didn’t think my shack would stand up. So I left it in my truck.

Taylor Park Reservoir is about 50 minutes from the ski resort town of Crested Butte--both are an easy drive from the Gunnison airport. For a more rustic stay, the town of Almont is about 15 miles from the reservoir. The bravest, however, will stay at the Taylor Park Trading Post, which offers cabins, a grocery store, fishing tackle and bait within a mile of the reservoir. The post is at the end of Taylor Canyon road.

The remote cabins are a haven for anglers, snowmobilers, cross-country skiers and, I am guessing, those in the federal Witness Protection Program. These cabins are extremely rustic: a couple of beds, with a wood stove or electric heater and a kitchenette. It’s so cold in the winter that there are electric space heaters in the crawl space under the floorboards to keep the water pipes from freezing, so you keep tripping over extension cords in the cabin. Even though Jim and I caught a lot of fish, when we got to the cabins we didn’t want to clean and cook them. Fishing from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the freezing cold sucks a lot of energy out of you. Instead, we put on a big pot of canned stew, ate and fell into bed.

A suggestion I’d make for the somewhat less adventurous (i.e. smarter) angler, who sees being buried in the snow as something of a negative, is to visit one of several snowmobile rental outfits in nearby Gunnison. The snow machines will whisk you over the deepest snow and onto Taylor Reservoir in just minutes.

Anything else you might need for this unusual, memorable fishing adventure can be found at various Gunnison-area sporting goods stores. I’d also strongly suggest spending $9 for the snowshoes.

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GUIDEBOOK

Cold Comfort in Colorado

Getting there: The nearest airport to Taylor Park Reservoir is in Gunnison, Colorado. United Airlines offers connecting service (via Denver) from LAX with round-trip fares starting at $341. From Gunnison, it’s a 25-mile drive to the reservoir. For Elevenmile Canyon Reservoir, fly into Colorado Springs on Delta or United (connecting service only; fares start at $234 round trip); drive 90 minutes to the reservoir.

Where to stay: Gunnison has dozens of hotels and motels, with rates starting near $50. Closer to Taylor Park Reservoir is the Almont Resort, P.O. Box 306, Almont, CO 81210, telephone or fax (970) 641-4009, with cabins and a restaurant. Cabins with two beds cost $70 to $75.

At the reservoir is Taylor Park Trading Post, P.O. Box 545, Almont, CO 81210, tel. (970) 641-2555, with rustic cabins and a store selling basic supplies. It reopens in mid-January. Cabin rates are $64 to $74.

For fishing supplies and fishing licenses in Gunnison, try Gene Taylor’s Sporting Goods, 201 West Tomichi Ave.; tel. (970) 641-1845, fax (970) 641-1848. Out-of-state fishing permits cost $5.25 for one day, $18.25 for five days. For snowmobiles try Mark’s Snowmobile Rentals, 2115 Highway 135, tel./fax (970) 641-5134. A full day’s rental costs $120.

If you fish in Elevenmile Canyon, it’s easiest to stay in the Colorado Springs area.

For more information: Colorado Travel and Tourism Authority, P.O. Box 22005, Denver, CO 80222; tel. (800) 433-2656.