Jay was the epitome of a dedicated and successful fisherman. He loved to fish and did so whenever he could. I suppose, his love for fishing started in his youth in Northern Wisconsin where he grew up. There were plenty of small lakes and streams and rivers there in which to fish and kids then didn’t have all the distractions that I had let alone all the distractions of kids today. He was a boy there in the 1930’s and 1940’s. He got married and had three children and moved to Denver Colorado. A great place near the Rockies to be an angler.
He used family outings into the mountains as an excuse to go fishing. My brother and I were the trainees and my sisters, little sis came along after we moved to Denver, just tagged along. My mother just loved to do things with my father so, she never complained but, my older sister didn’t like it and would let us know. Back to fishing. Jay was mostly a bait fisherman, not a fly fisherman.
Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t just toss his line out and wait forever for a bite. He worked his line and cast until he found the right spot where the fish were biting, constantly moving up and down the shore whether on land or in a boat. He could and did to fly fishing from time-to-time but, preferred the other. Maybe the lake fish were fatter and the fillet were juicer and more delicious. Whatever the reason, that’s what he preferred.
Our two most frequented places in the Rockies (Rocky Mountains of Colorado) were Grandby reservoir and Lake John. Granby was a pretty place near Rocky Mountain State Park in a beautiful valley beyond Berthoud Pass over the Continental Divide from what is now Highway 70 thru the Rockies from East to West.
Granby was then and probably still is an idilic place for family outings especially for camping and we had a big tent. Big for those days anyway. So we would go to the mountain valley that Granby was in and fish the lake and river there. That is until my dad discovered Lake John. Not a very fancy name, is it? It wasn’t a very fancy place either. Deeper in the mountains and in a high dessert plane in North Central Colorado, it is a rather baron looking place, no offense to those who live there and love it there. My dad loved it because of the fishing. My sister hated it. I was just glad to be in the mountains and away from the city doing something different. An adventure as it were.
I’ve got many funny stories of Lake John which I will share in later posts. At Lake John, at least in those days (the late 1950’s), everyone was a great fisherman if you were willing to grab a rod, attach some bait to the hook, and cast it into the lake. The fish were plentiful and big. They ate freshwater shrimp that fed off of submerged sagebrush is the story I heard from my dad. They were Rainbow Trout and they grew to an enormous size in just a year or two. We regularly caught several 5 to 7 pounders along with the normal 2 to 4 pounders. Just a ton of fish in a short weekend outing.
When we moved to Nevada, outside of Las Vegas, Henderson to be exact, Jay started fishing at Lake Mead and eventually along the Colorado River below Hoover Dam. And, the fish in those two bodies of water were Large Mouth Bass. I said eventually but, now that I think about it, he made the switch pretty fast. Maybe a couple years in Lake Mead and them the last 35 years of his life, along the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona.
To highlight how good a fisherman Jay was, I want to relate a little story that might have happened more than once but, the time I remember was along the Colorado River on one fishing trip. First, let me say that my dad had that river and many of the good fishing spots figured out. He knew when they were biting within just 20 or 30 minutes or so and knew when to pull anchor and move on.
He had a depth finder that let him know where the big submerged rocks were where the fish were likely hiding. So, one morning, or afternoon, I don’t recall just now, my dad and myself and, probably my brother, were in the boat fishing and my dad was catching fish and my brother to but, I wasn’t. So, my dad said, hey, move over to this spot and I’ll take your side of the boat for a while. Within minutes, he was catching fish on my old spot and I was again having no luck at all. He obviously had the knack and the feel for this fishing. It obviously wasn’t about what side of the boat you fished from, it was all the other intangibles about the sport. You can see why I said that Jay was the epitome of a dedicated fisherman.