Barker Reservoir

Went for salmon, braved the wind and cold, caught one teeny tiny fish. I named him fish stick and set him free to live his life. He was very pretty though.

I dropped off the girls at dance classes, picked up a friend who had never caught a kokanee, and hustled up to Barker reservoir. Being a cold and rainy day, I had high hopes that we’d be the only anglers up there, and we were! One thing I hope to NEVER do is stand shoulder-to-shoulder and combat fish in the mountains of Colorado. We each rigged up two poles, one for snagging and one for angling. Allow me to briefly explain snagging in Colorado - in contrast to my recent experience of witnessing illegal salmon snagging in Washington… Kokanee are stocked in 26 water bodies in Colorado, and do not naturally reproduce successfully in ANY of them. So CPW harvests eggs, fertilizes and raises them in the hatchery to restock the lakes each year. Kokanee live 3-5 years (typically 4) at which point they spawn once and die (even though the spawn isn’t successful). A special snagging season is part of the fisheries management plan for some select CO locations. Essentially they are stocking them with this snagging season in mind, for recreational purposes. And without it, a higher percentage of those fish would die and “go to waste”. Barker is a reservoir with no boating allowed AND no ice fishing allowed, yet they stock it with Kokanee. Most of those Kokanee are out of range for most anglers until those fish attempt to spawn. So essentially these fish were born, bred, and paid for by our taxes to be snagged at the end of their lives. So that’s why this is a different situation than salmon that are in the process of viable spawning, and which are protected by anti-snagging rules for fisheries management purposes in some places. (If I ever go snagging again I’ll skip the explanation and just refer back to this post) By the way, Wyoming doesn’t allow any snagging, and that’s where I first learned to catch Kokanee a few seasons ago. The first hole we checked was empty; it seems *someone* cleaned it out already Myles Horne nice work LOL! With about an hour and a half of daylight we hit the main inlet channel. I managed to get 7 kokes for the smoker (limit is 10, ran out of time), and my buddy got a couple - his first kokes! Got back down Boulder canyon and picked up the girls from dance just in time! Success!

Caught just fingerlings this one was the biggest, small but chubby for the size 🤣

Cute little brown! Saw some salmon too!

Beautiful feisty brookies and a big bow! All caught on a push button kiddy rod!

Nice juvenile cutty a few weeks ago while taking a break from elk hunting.

The homie Eric with his first catch in a while