Foul Hooked
by Howard Levett
Foul Hooked-Winter Edition
Welcome to the “cold” edition of So Much Water and Foul Hooked. If you’re like me (go ahead, admit it) you leave the cold weather fishing to the young bucks, the mentally unstable and those who have already suffered the heartbreak of psoriasis and have nothing to lose.
I used to be one of those…Here’s the story.
One late winter day I took a drive to Black Hawk. For those of you that aren’t familiar with Colorado, Black Hawk used to be a gold town. Now it’s one of Colorado's few legal gambling Mecca’s. Yes, I was going to gamble. Lady luck said otherwise and I left a broken man, heading back down Clear Creek Canyon. As I worked my way downhill, fishing was the last thing on my mind. But, as I glanced at the creek I could see running water amongst the ice. Never one to pass up an opportunity, fishing would give me the time to think of an excuse to tell the wife when she asked, “how’d you do?”
I pulled over to the next open water and hopped out, grabbing the rod I always have stashed for emergencies. I could see that despite the fact that the river was still mostly frozen that some nice pools were visible. Slipping and sliding my way to the water, I waved my rod back and forth a few times and dropped a black woolly bugger neatly onto the ice. Almost instantly a trout of tremendous proportions jumped out the water, crawled across the ice, grabbed the fly, snickered at me and dropped back in the water.
Now I know that more than a few of you will scoff and say there are no trout of tremendous proportions in Clear Creek, but there are. In all the hubbub, the trout had hooked itself and now my job was to figure out how to land this monster. I played the fish like a pro, letting it run back and forth in the ten foot length of the pool. It was epic…until he found an opening in the ice and shot downstream like a greased pig with its tail on fire.
Those of you with lesser intelligence will surely understand what happened next. I decided it was a good idea, dressed in jeans, light jacket and tennis shoes to give chase…in the snow. On a rocky bank covered with ice.
They say that when I fell in the water that you could hear the scream in Denver.
Have fun winter fishermen.