Blue Mesa Ice Fishing Report/Conditions: progress is being made!

Blue Mesa Reservoir, near Gunnison Colorado, has had good ice from about the Iola boat ramp to just before the middle bridge for several weeks now.  Ice thickness is 6-16″ with 5-8″ of snow on top.  This section should be good for snowmobiles and fourwheelers.  Most everything west of Middle bridge has recently capped and needs time to thicken up.   Trout fishing has been good along the rocky shorelines for a mix of rainbow trout and brown trout. We are catching anywhere from 15-40 fish a day and we’re seeing some cutbow trout mixed in as well and some have been nice sized!  We have not heard any salmon reports nor seen any on our outings.  I hope they are just hiding from us on the west end of the lake!  Yellow perch have been showing up some days on the east end of the lake.  They are usually in 12-25′ of water.  The lake trout bite has been very good to us so far with some really nice fish showing up!  They have been all over the place as far as depths.  A good solid depth for action is 40-60′.  

The pics below are of the lake last friday along with some recent catches!

PS. Robby Richardson is a licensed real estate agent in Colorado and now New Mexico!  He would love to help you in your search for a hunting/fishing/recreational property in either state or residential real estate in the Gunnison Valley!  He also has connections with experienced agents who specialize in hunting properties in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas!  Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions.  Robby currently works with Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Today Realty and Associates in Colorado and Great Plains Land Company 405-255-0051 for New Mexico.

One of my clients caught this fish and it has a blind eye and looked old! It had a tag in it from the CPW tagging program in the early 2000s. The fish was 34.5” long with an 18” girth giving it a weight guesstimate of roughly 12-13 lbs. We sent the tag # in to the area biologist and it was tagged in 2009 and there’s no record of it being caught and reported since! When tagged, it was 26” long and 5.4 lbs. We caught it about 4 miles from where it was tagged! The biologist estimates this fish to be 21 years old. This is another testament to how long it takes these fish to get big, especially when they only have one good eye! It’s possible this fish hadn’t seen a human for at least 13 years… that’s pretty cool to think about! If you ever catch this dinosaur on Blue Mesa with the tag # 2004-1025 let us know!

 

A blind trophy lake trout estimated at 21 years old!

Tagged fish released!

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