Antero Fishing
Antero Reservoir is the first in a chain of reservoirs in the middle of the high plains section of Colorado. Located south of South Park and close to the mosquito range, the lake offers some awesome views of many mountain ranges. Antero is one of the oldest reservoirs in Colorado and was formerly the location of a small lake. The lake itself is still relatively shallow. Average depth is about 6-8 feet deep and at its deepest only about 18-20 feet. The lake boasts some of the best lake trout fishing around with an average trout size of about 17 inches and 2 lbs. The lake maintains a cold water temperature year round, promoting a healthy rainbow trout population. Weather can be very volatile as with anywhere that is high altitude. During our day fishing, we had it go from calm winds to 35 mph gusts, which created whitecaps on the lake.
We went there early and the most of the people seemed to be by the boat dock or float tubing on the lake, so we headed over to the breast of the dam. Fly fishing got tough once the winds kicked up so I moved back to spincasting to ease my frustration. Right when I was telling Ben that I was going to change my lure, a fat rainbow crushed the plastic jig I was using. I was using my ultralight spinning rod with 4lb-6lb test, so the fish fought for a good 15-20 minutes and the drag just kept winding out. Since I was wading, the fish just swam around me during the fight. Finally we used Ben’s net to capture the behemoth. It was the biggest trout I ever caught and ended up shaking afterwords.
Ben has having a good day fly fishing on the lake too. He caught several males, using all types of different flys, ranging from a large “meat whistle”, to woolly booger, to eggs, to caddis. It was a good day for some lake fishing.
