Pike Fishing On Rifle Gap

Often overlooked in the Roaring Fork Valley, Northern Pike are highly sought after gamefish for fly rodders. Every March I look foward to wading the shallow flats of Rifle Gap and Harvey Gap Reservoirs in search of large pike. Taylor Creek guide, Travis Lyons, and I headed down to New Castle/Rifle on Monday to go put an eyeball on the ice and water conditions on the two reservoirs. Harvey Gap still was still locked up in ice from bank to bank. We headed up the road a few miles to Rifle Gap where I knew that at least the inlet would hold some open water and possibly even be fishable. One quick glance and a short drive around the lake and we saw approximately 1/3 of the lake open water. Out came the fly rods....quickly.

Gearing up, I had high hopes of seeing some monsters laid up in the shallow water reeds. Perch and Crayfish colored flies have always produced well for me on both of these lakes. The majority of my flies are about 3-5" inches. Not too big, not too small. I've never been a fan of fishing with wire tippets out here as these fish bite much better, and much more frequently when your flies are attached to fluorocarbon tippets. I prefer to fish a two foot, 03X (25.3lb)Seaguar FX tippet section that attaches directly to my fly. Though blind casting to pike can often be effective, I'm here at early ice out to stalk fish in less than two feet of water. Long story short, we found a few fish laid up. All in all, between the two of us in two hours of fishing we saw somewhere in the neighborhood of about 13-16 fish. Most of those were hammer handles about 20-24" inches in length. We did see a very few fish in the 26-30" inch range and two nice specimans that pushed 34-36" inch length. Trav and I probobly had half a dozen shots each, at some of the better fish we saw. Both of us hooked up once, lost both fish and left after two hours.

I got my first yearly injection of pike fishing out of the way only to turn me back into a frequent pike junkie. I'll be making weeking visits now and hopefully will post up some fish pics soon from me and some of the other boys! Keepin' it real in the Valley, I'm out. -Kirk Webb-