|
Fishing at the Reservoir Out of all my family trips, the ones to Colorado are the most vivid. There was always some new ranch experience and something new to learn. It was staying at the ranch that forced me to use my imagination. I will admit there are a few times I wished for a game console, a computer, or even cartoons, but I can look back now and enjoy all the outside memories. One of these new experiences was when my uncle planned to take my dad, my little brother, Jason, and myself to the reservoir. He had to open the gates and start drawing water from it to irrigate the fields. The best part was that the four of us would go up there on 2 four wheelers! My brother and I took our fishing poles. That was the usual thing to do for us kids whenever we were headed to a place that either had a creek or a large body of water. After a really fun ride we stopped in the middle of what was a giant boulder and dirt damn. This looked more like a lake than a reservoir. My uncle told us that it is actually 2 separate reservoirs, the upper and the lower. The upper reservoir drains into the lower one, so when you start irrigating you need to open the gates on the upper reservoir too. My uncle and dad left us with one of the four wheelers with instructions to open the gates to the bottom reservoir in 5 or 10 minutes. We could see them, taking a dirt trail until they got swallowed up by trees and brush. With nothing better to do, my brother and I got out our fishing poles to try our luck on a reservoir. I figured that anything with this much water has got to have some fish in it. After several tries and much boredom we gave up and I opened the gates. The water started to flow out of this pipe that went through the damn. The water that came out was a dark rusty color at first, then it gradually lightened up. Jason and I listened to the water gushing into the stream below as we began eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My sandwich wasn't too satisfying and I got to thinking about the water going through the gates. I figured that since we didn't catch any fish, they were all at the deepest part of the reservoir, and the gates to the dam the I just opened must be down there too. All the fish are probably being poured out into the little creek below. So I grabbed my pole and hiked down the damn to that creek and dropped in my hook and worm. I was a little disappointed when nothing tried to eat my worm. But just for good measure I tried it again and got a very hard tug on my line. This is the part of fishing that always makes the wait worth while. Having a fish tug on your pole is so exciting. You know there is a fish on the other end of your line and you are pulling it in thinking so many things at once. "I don't want to let it get away." "I wonder how big this one is." "I hope it doesn't spit the hook out" I reeled in in my line and found a very large trout attached to my hook. I yelled up to my brother about the fish that I just got but I think he was more interested in his sandwich. The next 20 minutes was the best fishing experience of my life. I would catch a fish usually on my first try and every one that I pulled out was big enough to keep. I even tried fishing without any bait on my hook and some of the fish still went after that! I caught so many fish my little fishing pack was full and I was starting to get really hungry. I went back up to the top of the damn and showed my brother all the fish. I caught nineteen fish in twenty minutes. |