The club is open to all, but club events take place during the week and we meet at Chilson Senior Center in Loveland, CO. Our basic purpose is to fish, but we're easily distracted by the chance to work with youngsters or improve northern Colorado outdoor resources.
Fairgrounds Park is great, but hey, Chilson has air conditioning.
After more than a year's closing due to you know what, the center has reopened for business.
So dust off your fishing cap and badge, and meet us at Chilson at 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 20.
And bring some cash. John Gwinnup's been squirreling away great stuff for the raffle.
Once again the Loveland Girl Scouts will be holding a day camp at Lon Hagler reservoir, and once again they're asking the club to help them with a day of fishing.
Save this date: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, July 12.
There will be a signup sheet at Friday breakfast.
Barb Ding, who's guarded the club's treasures for the past eight years, will be passing on those duties on Jan. 1. That leaves plenty of time for a new volunteer to step up and learn from the best.
Interested? See Barb or President Doug Money at breakfast or the next club meeting.
In the meantime, let Barb know how much you appreciated her work on our behalf.
T’was a record hot at Boyd Lake state park Tuesday, but that didn’t keep Loveland Fishing Club volunteers help our Girl Scout buddies with a morning of fishing. Here are a few photos of the event.
By Bill Prater
I’m not absolutely sure what I think about folks who choose to share intimate details about exactly where and how a fish was caught, especially when another person may be naively expect “the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth.” Seems like a religious question to me, best left to my minister brother. I do, however, feel compelled to share the limits of my own candor in a public forum. To me, the crucial question is, Just how frank and open should one be in a crowded room, social media, print media, or a popular website like this one?
The founding father of this nifty website of ours, Fish Explorer Executive Editor Matt Snider, says he came up with the basic premise “when I got my first boat and couldn't find a list of lakes showing where I could launch it. I wanted to fly fish for wipers and hunt tiger muskie, but couldn't find a map showing which lakes had them. And if I was going to travel hours to get to a lake, I had very few options if any to determine whether the lake was full enough to launch, or warm enough to find active fish.”
The end result of all that heavy thinking was the 2006 launch of Fish Explorer, and its core concept of mapping lakes, cross-referencing fish species and updating other anglers about current lake and stream conditions. Things like water level, water temperature and general conditions like visibility. It is an absolute jewel of a resource, at its best when advising you, before you waste time and gas, on time-sensitive conditions like fluctuating water levels or the approaching end of the ice fishing season on a given body of water.
Fair enough. In fact, thanks again, Matt!
Ask even me for water temperature, or current bait of choice, or how deep I caught fish, and you can pretty much count on a pretty honest answer. The trickier bit - and you see it on just about every social media group about fishing - comes when someone asks: “Where’s a good spot on West Murray Pond where I can catch a big crappie this time of year?” This is the angling equivalent of asking a homely guy exactly how they landed a first date with the prettiest girl in school, or what they accomplished on that date.
This subject would never come up in water-wealthy places like Florida or Minnesota, “The Land of 10,000 Lakes.” But I would argue that the public waters we share in Colorado are too tiny for that kind of candor with anyone but a spouse or maybe a favorite sister. I am annoyed by overly chatty apps like Fishbrain, for example, that seem to expect everyone to share GPS coordinates for a favorite bluegill spawning bed.
Here’s a better alternative: When asking for advice about a body of water, limit yourself to questions you might be willing to answer in front of an unseen, larger audience. Aim for the level of detail other Fish Explorer contributors share in a well-crafted Lake or Stream Update. Or ones like these: “Are there crappie in this lake?” “How deep were you fishing?” “Can you get in there with a belly boat?” If a new friend really wants to help, they might respond, ““Hey, drop me an e-mail.” Or, “I’m free Wednesday. Let’s go fishing.”
The Loveland Fishing Club is resuming its monthly meetings after more than a year's hiatus. We still can't meet at Chilsen, but the June meeting will be at 2 p.m. at Fairgrounds Park, 700 S. Railroad Ave., Loveland. It is suggested that you bring your own chair and water.
Also Tuesday, the club is also taking Girl Scouts fishing at their annual day camp at Boyd Lake State Park, in the group meeting facility on the northeast corner north of the marina.
Their fishing day will be held from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Volunteers will finish in time to make the club meeting at Fairgrounds Park, so get out and help.
Here's one more of the club's favorite things that's getting back underway! Covid-19 forced cancellation of our annual fishing day with Girl Scouts at Swift Ponds last year. The Colorado Youth Outdoors facility was unavailable this summer, but the girls will be able to hold their annual day camp at Boyd Lake State Park, in the group meeting facility on the northeast corner north of the marina.
A Girl Scout shows Norm Engelbrecht
how it's done during the 2010 day camp.
Their fishing day will be held from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, June 15. That's the same day the Loveland Fishing Club will resume its own monthly meetings, but volunteers will be able to make that meeting as well.
Club President Doug Money will have a sign up sheet for volunteers at breakfast Friday, but please turn out to held the girls regardless.
This has been an annual event for the club for more than a decade, and it's great to have to opportunity to fish with these kids. We'll have all the equipment ready; just show up ready to fish.
Here's a link to photos taken at Saturday's Loveland Kids Fishing Derby.
Lots of trout, lots of sunshine, lots of kids. You couldn't ask for a much better day at the Duck Pond at North Lake Park in Loveland Wednesday.
Raffle prizes were awarded on the half hour, with all participants eligible. Winner of a rod and reel combination and tackle box for smallest trout of the day, an 8 incher, went to 13-year-old Alex Torres.
The prize for biggest trout, at 13 3/4 inches, was shared by two angleers, 8-year-old Caden Schaeffer and 4-year-old Lars Rehberger (grandson of Loveland Fishing Club veterans John and Marcia Lewis, who now live in Colorado Springs.
Check back for more photos; we'll be sending a link to others found on Google Photos. Thanks to all the club members, other event organizers, sponsors and family members who made this possible.
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| Caden Schaeffer |
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| Alex Torres |
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| Rick Golz with raffle winner Judah |
By Bill Prater
My exasperated Mom had a favorite expression she used with my annoying older brother Paulie and occasionally even me: “I’ve had just about enough of you…”
Fortunately she never carried out the implied threat behind that frustrated wail. But she likely had cause. These days, so do I, and, I will reluctantly admit, so do you. Probably. As an introverted, short-tempered, solitude-loving retiree, I am faced with daily doses of darned near everything that annoys me: Sold-out campgrounds. Jet skis. Wake boats. Paddleboards. On every body of water that can float a duck.
I find myself annoyed even by other well-intended fisher men and women - ones who get up really early or when it’s really really cold or wet to fish one of my favorite spots. I look for peace and quiet, and find crowds. In fairness, they’re finding me, too. In a state known for wilderness, we are jostling for space in the Great Outdoors the way New Yorkers jockey for a space to park. In one fashion or another, every Westerner, native and newly arrived, is searching for the same thing: a reasonable break from a world gone kinda mad.
Have the crowds really gotten that much worse, that quickly? Will things settle down, now that Covid-19 seems to be dissipating? Or is this merely the opening days of the 21st Century equivalent of the Oklahoma Land Rush?
I honestly don’t know. I DO know I really like an old quote by the novelist Michael Arlen:
“It’s amazing how nice people are to you, when they know you’re going away.”
I think it’s safe to conclude that the people who annoy me the most are likely not going away soon. So I will try my best to be nice, hoping you will too, as we look for ways to get along. Let’s not spend precious time and karma trying to get someone else’s chosen sport banned or restricted from the waterways and open spaces we all enjoy.
They say Daniel Boone kept pushing further and further into 18th Century wilderness as eager settlers followed in his footsteps. Did Daniel gnash his teeth at the sight of distant campfires, the way I flinch when followed into a backwater cove by paddleboarders? Probably. That pioneer blazed the “Wilderness Road” from Tennessee through the Cumberland Gap in 1775. And by the end of the 18th Century, more than 200,000 settlers had poured into Kentucky by the same route.
I personally might have left the path all bumpy and discouraging, like Colorado roads and bridges. But if I have one positive thing to recommend, it is this: let’s put younger generations first. I relish the lifting of covid restrictions in large part because kids are coming back out to play. In substantial ways, we should return quickly to doing our best to encourage youngsters’ interest in fishing. (And if they temporarily step away from righteousness and onto a damned paddleboard or jet ski, we can gently nudge them back onto a path toward the fine pastime of angling.)
Also, I for one am encouraged by recent open space innovations, like introducing one-way loops into backcountry trails to keep us from constantly confronting one another. Can something similar be done on the water? Maybe. Let’s just force ourselves to:
1. Look at our lakes and streams from other user’s perspectives, not just our own.
2. Be nice - and show a willingness to compromise.
3. Compromise.
The thought of a tiger muskie lurking around a small body of water like Bass Pond can make one hesitate before dipping ones toes in the water. Wayne Baranczyk had the chance to remove that threat from Bass Pond Tuesday, but chose instead to land and then release a humongous tiger muskie.
Wayne never got a photo of the darned thing, choosing caution and common sense over valor as he wrestled the beast into that puny landing net of his (Unlike my own well-documented, 28-inch grass carp yanked from the same body of water last month). But I really did see the thing from my distant belly boat, and Wayne did get a good measurement: a solid 30 capped by a mean face full of teeth. (Plus, there's no denying Wayne had hooked something pretty scary: you could hear the lad being dragged all over the lake for at least 20 minutes, screaming like he'd hooked himself with that tiny Gulp Minnow.
Here’s a stock photo of what his prize must have looked like:
