By Bill Prater
While many of the club's founding fathers and mothers are still around, frankly they can be a forgetful bunch, and known to stretch the absolute truth in the interests of a a good fishing story. With a little time on our hands these days, let's review the unvarnished history of the first 18 years of the Legendary Loveland Fishing Club.
Like one darned project he’s gotten us into after another, the idea for the Loveland Fishing Club hatched in the fertile mind of Tom Miller. The idea for an organized cadre of senior anglers came with Tom from Southern California, where he had been a senior manager of the California parks system until retirement.Rounding up about two dozen like-minded members of the Loveland Chilson Center, Tom and other charter members brought a broad range of life experiences to the club, including enough legal background to write up by-laws and affiliate with Chilson as a charitable nonprofit. Then they started teaching each other how to fish, and how to lie about fishing. They've been doing it every since.
When I showed up for a meeting of the club back around 2004, immediate past president Miller insisted that the usual minimum requirement for membership was at least one bypass surgery - but since I appeared to be such a fine fellow, they’d waive that prerequisite. I thought he was joking.
Well, he was. But truth to tell, the club really is aimed at seniors, as you can tell by our affiliation with the Senior Center. And over the years, some of us have gotten even more senior, if you catch my drift. Membership is open to all, but virtually all our outings are limited to weekdays, besides volunteer projects like taking youngsters and older timers fishing.
The first club meeting was held at Chilsen Sept. 16, 2003, followed by a first “official” fishing trip on Dowdy Lake ice on Jan. 16, 2004. The club was officially chartered on Jan. 26, 2004 as a nonprofit affiliated with Loveland Parks and Recreation Foundation, a 501 (C)(3).
The intent was simple: get together at least once or twice a week and fish, with little or no regard for a particular species or fishing style. Along the way, we’d share angling knowledge, expenses and medical advice. The club had grown to about 50 members by the time I joined up a year or so later, and has hovered at the century mark ever since.
That first fishing trip was followed on Feb. 1 at Boyd Lake, and the club has been all over the Rocky Mountain West ever since.
The coronavirus has kept us all close to home in spring 2020, but we typically fill the club social calendar for all four seasons with a variety of shared fishing trips, throughout Colorado and occasionally further down the road like Wyoming, Kansas and Nebraska.
A big part of club tradition is also volunteerism, particularly when it comes to kids and fishing. Most often that translates to working with Loveland Police on the annual Kids Fishing Derby at North Lake Park, and regular outings with the Girl Scouts, most often at Swift Ponds, with our close compatriots with Colorado Youth Outdoors.
A huge boost to our volunteer efforts began in September 2011, with the Loveland Fishing Club Senior Fishing Derby in partnership with Chilsen Senior Center and Colorado Parks and Wildlife, which stocked Flatiron Reservoir with trout. It’s been wildly successful, limited only by the number of increasing age of club membership, and a determination to give every participant a lot of warm, personal attention. Here’s a link to the Loveland Reporter Herald’s first writeup on the event:
The derby remains, we think, this nation’s only free fishing derby focused on community's assisted living center residents, run by and for seniors. Other Loveland seniors are welcome, but the primary invited guests are residents of about 10 assisted living centers.
(For a more complete writeup on history of Derby, click here:)
You do the math: the club was founded nearly two decades ago by stout-hearted anglers mostly in their late 60s and early 70s. Some of us are now getting a little gray hair in our ears. And so we rely on a stream of what we affectionately term “temporarily young” members to keep the club thriving. Which is one reason we’re always encouraging newbies to serve on the board and in other volunteer positions. (To see the list of some current volunteers, and think about where you might fit, look here on the website)
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| Barb Ding |
who’s served as treasurer since 2013 while also being a darned good angler.
Seventeen individuals, starting with 2023 President Tom Miller, have served as Club President. Here’s the complete list.
1. Tom Miller, 2004
2. George Kral, 2005
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| Tom Miller |
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| George Kral |
4. Norm Englebrecht, 2007
5. Jim Giles, 2008
6. Bob Scott, 2009
7. John Gwinnup, 2010
8. Ray Park, 2011
9. Dave Boyle, 2012
10. Jerry Miles, 2013
11. Bill Prater 2014
12. Lou Colton 2015
13. Merle Gordon 2016
14. Fred Riehm 2017
15. Dave Johnson 2018
16. Jim Visger 2019
17. Jim Baxter 2020
18. Doug Money 2021
18. Karol Stroschein, 2022
19. Tom Miller 2023
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