A long-winded conversation on getting acquainted with the Loveland Fishing Club

 

By Bill Prater  

Following is pretty much all I can think to tell you about how to become a thriving member of the Loveland Fishing Club. It also describes some specific fishing preferences of a few long-time (and reasonably successful) members that you should get to know. 

 I’m often asked, in front of witnesses, about specifically where to go fishing around northern Colorado, and how to catch fish when you get there. I hesitate to respond with the absolute truth.

That truth is, our public waters tend to run on the small side, while our population gets steadily bigger. So I'm reluctant to share too many specifics about too many specific spots with too many people. Some annoying social media - places like FishBrain and YouTube - have also cropped up in recent years. They allow – even encourage – overly intimate information about favorite fishing holes. Trouble is, you’re not just sharing what you know with a quiet and loveably discreet guy like me. If you’re not careful, that secret bass spawning bed of yours will have has its own GPS tag on Google Earth.

  

So, what is an innocent newcomer to northern Colorado or the sport of angling supposed to do? The best thing I can recommend to new club members is: patiently invest time in identifying and getting acquainted with club members with shared interests. Tact, persistence, hygiene and a reasonably affable personality should get you started. As a group, we old timers do tend to be a bit cliquish. But hey, we all joined the club at some point to find folks with shared interests, and tend to hang with the ones we find. 

Start by going to breakfast with us; just buy a cup of coffee if money is scarce. Thanks in part to Covid-19, we now have three distinct groups that meet each Friday – around 7 a.m. at the Perkins and El Cielo restaurants in in west Loveland; and about 9 a.m. for the Fort Collins crowd at the Breakfast Club on College. Also, show up a bit early for our 2 p.m. general meetings at Chilson Center on the third Tuesday of the month, and board meetings on the third Tuesday, when the B.S. is flowing freely. Point is, we are a mostly talkative, welcoming bunch, even if some of us (like me) are also grumpy and introverted. So introduce yourself (multiple times if you have to; we’re getting old) and take the initiative to start conversations. 

 

Also, do not neglect one of your most valuable club resources: that membership list you should have gotten from Treasurer Barb Ding. You won’t find that useful list of names and contact information on this blog. These days you can’t, or at least shouldn’t, post name and contact information in lists in public places like this. You may find yourself targeted by Democrats, Republicans and other likely scammers. It has been suggested multiple times that the club should add individual member fishing preferences to our membership lists. I’m not sure why, but we’ve tried that several times in the past and not had much success. Most of us are just not that organized, I guess. So, prepare to be a bit persistent and deliberately extroverted. 

 

Another time-tested method for getting the most out of this club is to consider ways to help actually run the club. Talk to Tom Miller or any of the board about volunteer skills we’re needing; often that's not much more than a willingness to help. Look over the volunteerism we do as a group, things like the annual June Loveland Kids Derby, summer trips with Girl Scouts, and the club’s Senior Fishing Derby for assisted living center residents. We come together to help others, and in the process get acquainted with each other. 

 

To help get you started, here are some specific fishing preferences of a few long-time club members, some more likeable or competent than others. But hey, that’s the chance you run in trying to be part of a club.

 

 First, bank fishermen. We’ve got many good ones in the club, some slowed by stuff like arthritis, and others who just prefer the conviviality of a shared shoreline. Club Treasurer Barb Ding and coots like Dennis Kelsey, Don Knudsen, Harvey Purman, Doug Money and Tom Boesch are a few of the craftier ones, and I think most are reasonably truthful. And don’t get me started about Rick Golz and that damned half a nightcrawler technique of his. At this point, I should also concede that Ken Kesterke kicked the rest of us’ butts at the annual club championship at Flatiron Reservoir in September, using some kinda spoon. 

 

I’m not sure who to recommend as a catfishing legend, with the passing of old Harry Case. We do have a pretty strong cat population in the lakes and ponds around here, but for some reason club members just don't target them much, or at least don’t talk about them much. Wayne Baranczyk has caught several dandies from his belly boat. Kelsey has a sneaky trick for catfish and bass that involves live bait. And Jim Roode is a good guy to see about night fishing for channels from his float tube; fun but a bit intimidating for someone scared of the dark. 

 

With open water trout, given our average age, not many of us are still agile enough to regularly wade a Rocky Mountain stream. But we’ve got some scary good folks fishing small lakes and ponds in pontoon boats and float tubes, with spinning gear or fly rods. John Gwinnup immediately comes to mind, along with Jim Clune and Walt and Cindy Graul, though I’ll also concede that others like past presidents Jim Visger and Dave Johnson are handier than me with their fly rods and hand-tied flies. Speaking of which, Roode and Gwinnup have been talking about getting back into offering an introductory fly-tying class. You might ask them about it. 

 

Ice fishing. Around here that almost exclusively means fishing for trout. You can do worse than talking to Baranczyk or Kelsey, though I wish you’d had the opportunity to get on the ice with my now-lost but not forgotten buddies Norm Engelbrecht and Dave Harem. Those rascals would brave any weather, and out fish the rest of us every time. (Don’t bother bringing up the subject of ice with Dan Barker, though; he just mopes his way through the winter season and dredges up memories of his lone, disastrous January trip with us to the Laramie Lakes in Wyoming.)  

For fishing from boats, hats off to Dan and Kathleen Barker and Dave Boyle for introducing the club's Boat Day, a great way to pair up boat owners with others needing a ride when the event resumes next spring. And Club Vice President Tom Miller has a proven, effective way to go after trout and walleye with lead line trolled behind his pontoon. Ask how he does it, and he'll talk your ear off.  

Speaking of trolling, and whatever else some guys will do to chase and eat walleye, I’d start by badgering the Barkers and Boyle, and probably George May.  

 

The above is by no means an all-inclusive list of possible references - just something to get conversations started. (Ask Kesterke what kind of spoon that was) I haven't until now even mentioned Ray Park, for instance, and he can consistently pull trout from Carter Lake in the dead of winter. The point is, find opportunities to just sit with us, or call us, and if you have to, take the initiative to steer the conversation away from hip replacements. In turn be generous in sharing what you have learned about this great sport of ours. 

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