Quirky warm weather has a way of teasing lowland ice fishers. And just when Front Range reservoirs had grown solid enough to land small aircraft.

Just when metro- based Nanooks were leaning into the learning curve at Chatfield Reservoir, where keeper walleye secrets are writ in stingy runes.

Here come ice fishermen in T-shirts, slathering sunblock. Dave Bryant peeled layers off and propped his bare feet on a minnow bucket Monday.

"It's Colorado. Hard to say if this heat will last. It'll probably freeze when the sun goes down," he said.

Beneath Bryant's sun-toasted toes, slush and ice water seeped across a hard deck 12 inches thick. He whistled, and a seagull came for handouts.

Maybe the recent tropical recess is one of El Niño's pranks. That would be fine with Front Range ice fishers, who would just as soon jump back into endless winter.

Or maybe this is spring.

It's all the same to Bryant, a Minnesota transplant who worships walleyes under ice but is just as happy higher, where winter stays long and lake trout bite.

In weekly workshops at Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, Bryant started talking about lake trout but found himself answering fishermen's Front Range cravings.

Good ice at lower elevations is a gift from Jack Frost, and Chatfield's ice remains too good to shrug off, slush aside.

"We're going to catch a legal walleye today. That's my goal," Bryant said.

His fellow crusaders were Harry Finnigsmier, of Greeley; Dale Hiatt, of Colorado Springs; and a curious bystander. Their assignment was tough.

Chatfield has an 18-inch minimum walleye size limit. It is crammed with walleyes of all sizes, including huge and immense. The walleyes shorter than 17.9 inches have prodigious appetites. But let them grow longer, and they become phantoms.

Bryant, 40, twists odds in his favor with electronic aids that World War II sea captains would have dismissed as science fiction. His arsenal includes a Lowrance handheld GPS unit, Vexilar color sonar fish-finder and detailed underwater topo maps by Fish-n-Map.

He also studies fish behavior, keeps records of previous years' trips and (where legal) enlists fishing's classic foot soldiers.

"These walleyes are pretty tricky, but I've got live minnows," he said.

None of that mattered when walleyes were supposed to bite, at dawn. So, after enticing one rainbow trout to a minnow dangling from a Buck-Shot Rattle Spoon, Bryant led the troupe on GPS recon.

"Just concentrate on the roads," he said.

He located the berm of a submerged road and joined the crew drilling an ellipse of holes over 15- to 24-foot depths.

It was there, under a simmering February sun at an unlikely 10 a.m., that Finnigsmier hoisted a handsome 19 1/2-inch walleye. A few minutes later, he caught a creature almost as scarce at Chatfield these days: a big, fat yellow perch.

In theory, as the sun set and commuters roared on nearby C-470, the walleyes should have swarmed along their own underwater highway.

At least one walleye did stop for a bite. Declaring it of legal size, Bryant slipped the fish back into the drink for another day. Mission accomplished twice.

The slush was freezing again. With El Niño's help, we might hold off using the boat for a couple of weeks.

Fly-tying show on tap

Colorado's best fly tiers will spin fur, feathers and fishing yarns Saturday at the 31st West Denver Fly Tying Clinic. The homegrown show, sponsored by West Denver Trout Unlimited, features a video fly-tying theater, 60 skilled tiers demonstrating their craft up close and a youth fly-tying station.

• When: 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.

• Where: Jefferson County Fairgrounds. Take the Indiana Street exit off U.S. 6.

• Admission: $9 at the door. Get $2 off with coupons from area fly shops and WestDenver TU.org.

dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com

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