A curmudgeon confronts life on an overcrowded lake

By Bill Prater

 Lately I’ve been thinking of my 73-year-old memory as a kind of flawed time machine. Everyone but a newborn recalls life before the covid-19 pandemic. But my recollection goes way, way back, to the 1950s: a time of two-holer outhouses, radio as our only social media, and total absence of the outboards, inboards, kayaks and paddleboards that contribute to so many conflicts in 2021. You know; back to the “Good Old Days.”

Back then, my only alternative to fishing from the bank was Grandpa’s homemade 8-foot pram. Trolling motor meant “sculling” with one arm, giving me a right forearm like Popeye’s. (Youngsters can Google the term) 

I admit, I relate to the bold, lone paddle boarder bobbing in the wake of a wake boat in the middle of a choppy lake like Horsetooth Reservoir. And I’ve been tempted more than once to try one of those amazing new fishing kayaks I see zipping back and forth every darned place I go. But I'm too darned old to start one more hobby, and plan to stick to my 20-year-old fishing boat and Fat Cat float tube. Neither goes very fast or far, and one small stroke will probably end my belly boat days one of these days. But for now, the tube helps me escape to a dwindling number of ponds around northern Colorado that prohibit BOTH motorized traffic AND paddles. I just feel badly outnumbered, and kinda threatened.

You don’t have to be Mahatma Ghandi to look at this from other viewpoints. Larimer County Parks, Open Space and Trails is confirming with numbers what we’ve all seen with our eyes: In 2020 alone, both motorized boat inspections and paddle crafts at Horsetooth increased by 40 percent! Reckless and thoughtless behavior once done in relative seclusion can now annoy or even threaten the safety of dozens of other good people, including those who lack good fishing skills.

Unfortunately, on April Fool’s Day 2021, Larimer County lake managers really meant it when, as a “safety measure,” they banned all gas and electric motors from Horsetooth’s Satanka Cove, bequeathing the cove to the paddleboards and kayaks. That is one heavily used fishing hole, but also recently described in “Collegian” magazine as “Party Cove, also known as Satanka,” a great place to do (illegal) backflips off scenic sandstone cliffs. 

This time machine memory of mine brings back those long-lost thoughts about how cool it would be to fish from a kayak. But in the 1950s and ‘60s those little boats were expensive and notoriously unstable. You even had to master a rollover technique now considered offensive even to describe: the “Eskimo Roll.” Now some kayaks cost about the same as a belly boat, and kids barely out of diapers paddle them everywhere.

Truth to tell, until 2010 or so, you could fish Horsetooth for days without seeing

one of those now annoyingly effective kayak anglers.

And Paddle boarders? They were nowhere to be found, until the boards became cheap

and inflatable about the same time people were getting desperate to get out of their homes. 

A decade ago, I think I hurt the feelings of now-retired Fish Explorer columnist David Coulson, speaking at a Larimer County Fishing Expo about being one of the very first to fish deep, wind-blown Horsetooth from a spiffy new kayak.. I listened kinda skeptically, and afterward asked him:  “Do you REALLY get on Horsetooth in a KAYAK?” I have probably alienated a few other friends recently by sharing my feelings about the Satanka decision. Hopefully I’m just annoying, not alienating, good people with conflicting passions and motives about how to live their lives in the Great Outdoors.

I cynically worry that even if genius solutions are proposed to reduce congestion and conflict at the places I try to frequent, like Horsetooth, Carter, Boyd, Dowdy, North Michigan and the Lon Hagler and Boedecker State Wildlife Areas, they are unlikely to be adopted. Because no one seems to agree on a darned thing these days. The Loveland Fishing Club is nothing but affable, retired fishermen and women - and we can’t even agree on whether to eat our fish or practice catch and release. So now everyone wants consensus about reducing conflicts among diverse Horsetooth and other lake user groups? The only thing we seem to agree on is, we want everyone else to go away.

I am as perplexed as anyone about overcrowding and conflicts on and off the water, sympathetic to all well-intended people trying to mitigate the situation. We obviously have to be as nice as possible, and open to others’ passions and ideas. I just don’t know what the answer is; I just wish we could smile at each other a bit more, and share the water with as much good feeling as we can muster.

At least it’s easier to hide your true feelings when you’re wearing a mask