Arkansas River (2013 Frostbite Fish-Off)

Had an awesome time at the Frostbite Fish-Off! This was the first tournament that Ben and I have been in and it was a really fun experience. This tourney is run by the Southern Colorado Greenback Chapter of TU  and Steel City Anglers. Most of the proceeds go to the Arkansas River in Pueblo so it is really worth supporting and a helluva good time. In fact, there are pictures of the river improvements currently in the works on the river on Steel City Angler's FB page that were made possible, in part, by the proceeds of this tourney.

We showed up on Friday night to draw our beats and I ran into Chris Ramos and Mark Puterbaugh. I went to high school with Chris and had the pleasure of meeting Mark. We sat together for the beat drawings. Ben and I decided to go with Team Chuck and Duck for our team name due to the finely tuned casting technique that we have both acquired over years of dedicated practice. The teams were called up one by one to draw a morning beat and an afternoon beat. There was a large map of the river laid out across a pool table that everyone hurried over to after they drew their beats. Team after team went up and drew their beats. Ben and I started to get worried after 15 or so teams out of 18 were called. I was starting to think I screwed up our application. We were the next to the last team to be called up. Ben drew beat 16 for the morning session and I drew beat 4 for the afternoon session. A quick trip to the pool table revealed that we had done pretty well. Beat 16 is just around the first bend up from the Nature Center and beat 4 included the hatchery outlet. Nice! We had good beats. Now it was up to us.

We showed up Saturday morning at 7 to sign in and grab breakfast. We signed in and decided to head to "Arribas" for a breakfast burrito. I've been told the food is good there and it is. Convenient location. Going to have to make it a regular stop. After breakfast we decided to head to beat 16 to scout out the water. This is the beat around the first bend upstream from the Nature Center. We climbed up on the high bank and were able to spot some trout at the head of the run. Most of the run was a deep slow channel on the far bank. My Dad had come down for the morning session to watch the action (I use that term loosely) and set up camp in the middle of our beat. We met our Controller and at 9AM EXACTLY I made my first cast.

A BITE! Whoahh - first cast in the first tourney I've ever fished and I had a bite. Unfortunately it surprised the hell out of me and I didn't get a good hook set. Rookie mistake. This was going to be a productive run! Ben and I took turns fishing. Only one angler could have his line in the water at a time. We didn't have a specific system worked out we just decided to get a few good drifts in and then switch it up. We did this for the next 2.5 hours without a fish! WTF over - Ben and I were pretty discouraged at this point but we Cowgirled up and kept at it. With about 20 minutes left in the tourney Ben got a hit and landed a nice 15.5" rainbow. I netted the fish and then turn around and made a cast. BOOM! Hit and landed a 17.5" rainbow. Two fish within 4 minutes out of 3 hours of fishing! CRAZY. Ben and I were thinking we were going to have to skip lunch because it would have sucked going in there and posting goose eggs. We ended the morning session with 33" of trout. Not great but not terrible.

We went back to the Sports Garden for lunch and the morning results were posted. Lots of 20"+ fish were caught including a nice 22.5" brown caught by Tim Hannan on Team Angler's Covey (Tim's write up can be read here) . Biggest fish was a 23.5" brown caught on a streamer. There were some good fishermen fishing in this tourney! 70"+ of trout put you in the running we were at 33"..... Had a lot of work to do in the PM.

We finished lunch and headed to beat 4. This beat includes the outlet of the hatchery and is an excellent piece of water. The Team that fished this beat in the morning did VERY well so the pressure was on. I hooked up pretty quick with a 14". It was good to get on the board quickly after the morning's session. Things were looking up when I hooked into and landed an 18" rainbow. This beat was going to be awesome! Two more rainbows, 14.75" and 16" were landed and we had 4 fish on the board! Saweet! Now we needed to replace some of those smaller fish with some Pigs! Queue the fish switch...... Everything turned off.... Not another landed fish for two hours. Very strange day. The weather was strange and there was a front moving in so I think it really affected the fishing.

****NO WAY THAT JUST HAPPENED*****
Towards the end of the session I broke off a rig. I knew we didn't have much time left and I asked our Controller how much time we had. He said, "3 and a half minutes". Ben was fishing the run below the hatchery outlet. I had Marty's 4wt Orvis Clearwater II that I had broken a rig off of earlier. I decided to generate a desperation rig consisting of a 4wt Orvis Clearwater, 3X tippet, and a huge olive Meat Whistle. I rigged it up and asked the controller, "how much time"? "You have 30 seconds". I told Ben that I was casting and he pulled his line out of the water. I was in the slack water just to the right of the drop off below the hatchery outlet. I cast just above the drop off and started stripping hard - strip - strip - strip - BOOM!!! Big slab of red comes up to the surface. Holy Shit!!!! This could be the fish of the tournament. I had him stuck on a big hook with 3X tippet. He is mine!!!! I started loading the reel with slack line and I heard a SNAP! Everything went slack and I looked down to see half a rod in the water. This Pig had just snapped Marty's rod in two!!!! The fish spit the hook and the tournament was over! My controller looked at me and said, "no way that just happened". He saw the fish when it came up to the surface. Unbelievable!!! There were probably 15 seconds on the clock when this fish hit. I would have had 10 minutes to land him. Not only did I loose the fish of the tournament but I have to pay for Marty's rod repair! What a kick in the nuts!!

But- it makes for an awesome story and I had a great time. I kept a section of the broken rod as a souvenir. I'm the ass-hat that tried to strip a Meat Whistle on a 4wt anyway. Another lesson learned the hard way. Can't wait for next year!!! We wound up in 7th place out of 18 teams. Not bad for a couple of amateurs. The official score card can be found here.