I can't believe it!

[kbproctor]

All morning, I was wondering why I felt like I had to put a rod or two in the truck for my trip up to Lake Tumblesome for the weekend. Colorado, 9000 ft, January, all adds up to lots of very hard water.

They finished the dam repairs a week ago and started refilling the lake. The springs are fairly warm and I have found OPEN WATER at 9000 ft in Colorado, in January! I know there are fish there as I saw an otter grab one.

Brookie fishing in the morning! Can't let the otters have all of them, now, can I?

[JeffHamm]

What a great surprise. Perhaps you should start reading tea leaves too? Have fun with the brookies while contemplating a new career path!

- Jeff

[kbproctor]

The lake is refilling nicely. Up about 15" in the last week.

The rest of this is normally under about 6' to 7' of water.

The large hole is where I got a couple of hits and saw the otter grab one yesterday. About 4.5' of my walking stave is visible in the picture to give you a size reference. You can see that this is dumping directly into the main body of the lake. If I could have got my fly up under the ice, I might have had better luck.

The little stream heads up to another spring where I got a hit, but nothing serious. Behind that is a marshy area that is frequented by moose quite a bit. There must be more springs in there, but I didn't go nosing around much.

The other little hole is one of the other springs that feed the lake. You can see where the water bubbles up right in the center of the circle. There is no inlet, so to speak. The lake is fed by underwater springs and spring runoff from the immediate slopes only. Just walking around the lake bed, I spotted 6 springs.

It has been snowing with the sun shining off and on since I got back to the cabin.

[JohnScott]

Kevin -

That is way too cool. Well, not TOO cool, I guess, since you got open water at 9,000'.

Those are some pretty active springs and lots of them to be bringing the water level up that quickly. If you plan to fish the lake with a boat or 'toon or something later in the year when it is full, it would be great to have GPS coordinates for the springs. Better, if not a bit more challenging, than a fish finder.

John

[kbproctor]

That is a great idea! I didn't think of it but will take waypoints tomorrow while I can walk around on the lake bed. Those would be good to have next winter to know where to put holes in the ice as well.

I don't have a thermometer to take the water temp in the springs, but it is probably right around 40 degrees coming out of the ground. The only place there is open water is at a spring. If the spring is much below the level of the lake, it is frozen over. Once the level of the lake raises another foot or two, these will be frozen over as well. Normally, at this time of year, the lake is solid enough to drive on with about 2 feet of ice. With the water being drawn down for repairs, the springs kept it warmer and the ice is very unstable. Not knowing where all the springs are, it would be real easy to find a thin spot and fall through.

I'm going to try some midges in the morning at the big hole. If I can actually land something, I will likely be the first person in the history of the camp to catch anything on a fly in January.

[kbproctor]

I am back down the hill. It was snowing sideways this morning and the wind blowing at a right brisk pace. A fly never would have hit the water! I started out to get GPS readings, but I was headed West and the wind was out of the west and suddenly it wasn't all that important. I did mention getting coordinates for what springs were still visible to the Camp Ranger and he said he would try to map them Tuesday after the weather improves. He LIVES there and didn't want to get out in that wind.

It was still cool, walking around the lake bed like an Israelite in the Red Sea and learning more about the lake. And really cool to have a couple of spots of open water up there in January, even if I didn't catch anything.