Post By: TeamGR3 Posted: 7/14/2012 12:03:21 PM Points: 290
Well, 2 bored neighbors head out at 0600 to fish chatty-should be great for at least 2 hrs.... wrong, I guess the skiers beat us there and we fought them the entire time. 1 guy told me in a dead troll that I was in his way and that we should move. I was a tad irate with the comment and pulled in my lines to explain thoroughly to this skier how I felt, the feelings that came over me were so bad, that I guess I said what all of us anglers have been wanting to say for some time up close. The part I did not realize was that the park ranger was behind me watching it go down. He then sped up to me and asked if they ripped our lines or if anything else was wrong. They understood, that with all of chatty, why are they up our butts moving at .05 mph(no wake from me)-well he spoke to them, and we never crossed paths for the entire morning.
On to the good stuff, we had fish jumping all morning-the green drake hatch from shore to about 50 feet out was on, and the bite was hot!!! we finally used the planer boards, and I think moving bait-lures away from the boat had a better catch-hook up ratio than behind the boat-IMO.
The ocean waves at 1000hrs slammed the dickens out of my 14' starcraft-time to go home-no love from the skiers to us anglers-same old song and dance. We will go to chatty at night time from this point out into the rest of summer. tightlines...
With so many people wanting to or using close to the mass of population, waters for not only fishing but pleasure boating, ie: Cherry Creek, Chatfield, that to seperate the fishing crowd from the un or miss informed boaters/jet skiers, that maybe one day it would be, the lake would only be for fishing Saturday, and boating only on Sundays !
Ive also heard, that power boats ignor the no wake bouys in the south of Chatfield.?
Maybe the rangers should quiz the obvious skiers/wake board boats if they understand some of the simple rules....such as distance to give boats fishing/at anchor/trolling. Direction of travel on marked courses.
It does seem that those skier/wake boats think that whereever there is water, they can go any way they please,
Reply by: TeamGR3 Posted: 7/15/2012 11:33:27 AM Points: 290
Ice- I hope that rumor is true, it would be fantastic-thanks for the compliment, and I have seen the rangers at chatty pull a jet skier in the no wake over and fined...so they are on it when the masses hit these waters, but, there are just so many you-yo'sout there and rangers with minimum resources, let's hope the fisherman get a day at the these 2 places. tightlines....
I would love to fish A-town, but with tags being a bit steep for me and family, school tuition etc... I can't justify the pass for another year or two. I agree, when I was single and fishing A-town-Quincy and so on with multiple passes, I could pick weekend days to fish more peacefully. A-town has given up some good fish to myself, including a few nice eye's by mistake, I never targeted them but, kinda know a few great spots. tight lines guys-get em at A-town, and I hope chatty calms down this week for you guys....
Reply by: jsr Posted: 7/16/2012 8:33:30 AM Points: 0
If you have a marine radio, you can call the boats and jet skiers that are in the no wake into the Park Patrol and if they are not too busy, they WILL respond. I spent the night on Chatfield Friday night and woke up at 0530 to jet skiers already churning the place up. They must have been in the boats anchored not far from us just waitng for first light.
Reply by: fishrmurri Posted: 7/16/2012 9:37:12 AM Points: 57
Seems like part of the problem is that the majority of the fish reside in the main part of the lake. It would be great if we could figure out a way to convince the fish to take up residence in the no-wake zone. However its pretty shallow.
I don't understand why some boaters think that they don't have to follow the rules. It seems that excluding Jet Skiers the bigger the size of your boat the less likely to follow the rules.
I do need to get a marine radio. There was a Jet Skier trying to use the Buoys as an obstacle course!
Reply by: FishSeal Posted: 7/17/2012 9:39:16 AM Points: 4587
Yup, the Rangers monitor channel 16. I just bought my first marine VHF.
You know... I like the idea of the floating logs in the water, anchored, but in the no wake zones. It would help break up wakes reducing damage to the shoreline... and keep fast boaters out. Produce some habitat for the fishing and make fishing more fun. They can still be arranged as to allow for some trolling.
IFF when you mentioned you heard of talk about making some days for pleasure boaters and other days for fisherman that made me think of the rules at Prospect Lake in C/S (they also have a bunch of other restrictions) but I imagine it works pretty good...
Yeah, it pisses me off! If the weather is good, the skiiers are out there almost every day nlt 0600. Last time I was out there in a boat (little 14' Aluminum Lund) a few weeks ago, I fished the whole night into the next morning (Fri-Sat).
What really pissed me off is the guy who ran over my line (connected to a planer board) out in front of Eagle Cove!!! It wasn't even 9am yet. I was trolling ~0.7mph and he was at a standstill. Fancy black ski boat had a kid getting on a wakeboard not far behind me. I already had my eye on him due to just seeing him dang nearly flip a couple guys off of their kayaks near Massey Draw because he went by so closely at high speed. Air horn at the ready, just in case. Sure enough, full throttle take-off, nearly straight toward me. I'm standing up, waving my arms frantically at him, blowing the air horn. He looks RIGHT AT ME, turns just a little, then goes by not even 40 feet from me!!! Boy, was I PISSED OFF!!! I haven't been so angry in a long time.
His boat went right over the top of my BRIGHT YELLOW planer board (with Orange flag), and immediately line starts SCREAMING off of the reel. I pulled my pocket knife and cut the line as quickly as I could (less than 2 seconds here), losing over 200 yards of line in the process (based on the line counter) and the planer board is nowhere in sight. Since I was in the middle of changing the other line when this happened at everything was in the boat, I just gunned the little 25hp motor and went chasing after him (with all the incredible 18mph I could muster).
The kid fell off of the board shortly afterward near the no wake bouys, and as I was chasing them they are frantically waving their stupid man overboard flag so I didn't run over the kid. Gee, I have a little more boating manners than y'all do, so that won't be an issue. I approach them at a 90 degree angle at full speed (the thought of just ramming them runs through my head), and I cut the motor when I got close. Before I even think about what to say, I started SCREAMING at the doofus at the top of my lungs! I was so angry I was shaking. Mind you, I'm 6'2" and 260 pounds, extremely pissed off. This guy was maybe 5'6" and 120 pounds. I think I had him just a wee bit uncomfortable.
I chastised him for being WAY too close, not paying attention, endangering the lives of others, etc. I was REALLY seeing RED! Not only did he run over $25 woth of planer board (plus nearly $10 lure), he's also just stripped ~$8 worth of line from my reel (and I'm telling him this). All he could say (not kidding) was, "Uh, sorry dude." Ugh, I can't take this, I'm going to do something I might regret... Need to exit this situation. My reply, again at the top of my lungs, "Think LONG and HARD about that when you're cleaning out the over 200 yards of 10 pound test fishing line wrapped around your prop that you just stripped from my reel."
I wrote down his boat ID number, then turned around to look for my planer board. I found it not far back, surprisingly intact. There was one spot where it looked like the prop hit the corner, and the flag wire was all bent up, but otherwise it looked ok. Surprisingly, the line going to the lure was still there, and so was my lure! Unfortunately, the line cut about halfway through the post in the two clips (Offshore brand boards), so I had to replace those at a cost of a little over $10. I then found the park ranger boat and told them exactly what happened, giving them the boat ID. They immediately proceeded to go track the guy down, and spent about 15 minutes talking with him. I really hope the doofus got some kind of ticket!
Point of this rant is this: If you're out at Chatty in the morning in a small boat, it is plain DANGEROUS!!! Keep a very close eye on those skiiers!!!
It really sounds like Chatty is a dangerous place with this post, the post from takeakidfishing getting hit, etc. I am amazed that as oppressive CO authorities can be that they are not just cleaning up with BUI and tickets for violations...
takeakidfishing got HIT in his boat out at Chatty??? WTF??? I haven't been on here for awhile, so I guess I missed that. I'll have to go search for the report. Got a link handy by any chance???
