Post By: MathGeek      Posted: 9/30/2012 7:54:56 AM     Points: 351    

Hit Pueblo in search of kitties yesterday. I'm no expert at Pueblo, so we put in at the south shore marina and started trolling our way westward along the south shore to give me an idea what the bottom contours look like and scope out fish on the sonar. We started off trolling spoons at 10-20 feet deep. After 45 minutes of nothing, we started switching over some of the lines to jointed rapalas. Soon after wham, a three pound rainbow trout hit my daughter's line and it was game on. A few mintutes later we had just switched her other line to another orange jointed rapala when wham, she got a hit from an 8 pound carp. That was the fight she had been hoping for. Eventually we passed a spot with some vegetation, so we stopped and fished for bluegill, one of our favorite catfish baits. The children were a bit rusty on their casting and managed a few snags and a couple of bluegill, while I managed a largemouth bass.

The water temp was 68 deg F. Not really familiar with the lay of the land we kept heading west toward the Arkansas river. When we got to the are where the channel depth was 20 ft deep, I really started liking the looks of the way the dead trees, bottom contours, fish on the sonar and bank stacked up, and we began seeing a lot of boats tooling around looking for spots to anchor, so it was clear this was an area where the night fisherman were concentrating. We tooled around and found what looked like a good spot, but several hours later we still empty for catfish, so we started making our way back to the ramp to make sure we beat the 11:00 PM ramp closure. Being unfamilar with the lake, I did not want to be in a hurry back. As it was with the bright moon, I had nothing to be concerned.

On the whole it was a beautiful afternoon and evening to be out on the lake, and we learned a lot even though we came up empty on our target species. I still have a lot more to learn about the lake.