Leon Lake

[TroutFishingBear]

Went yesterday and caught 15 brook trout. Most were 15", but I cauhgt a couple smaller ones around 10"
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[TroutFishingBear]

I'm going again tomorrow early in the morning. It hasn't been full moon for a while now so fishing should be a lot faster than last time. I am going to be fishing for 2 days, tomorrow and the next. I also plan to fish weir and johnson since it has some nice bows and some brooks, but leon lake is the main reason. Hope to hook into a 18+ incher. (but it is unlikely)

If you ever plan on going the north side isn't worth the horrible walk across the boulder field, just fish the south side. It's just as good.
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[TroutFishingBear]

By the way that guest reply was me again. Fishing has been good there this year! I might wanna try to hit it one last time in the next week or two before it freezes.

And yes, it is possible to use a belly boat, except you have to walk in about 2/3 mile
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[NealCO]

I used to have friends who lived in Grand Junction in the late 80s and early 90s. I would come over and stay a week at a time and fish every day.

We fished Vega, Waterdog. Island and Rifle Gap alot. We never got to any of the more remote lakes on the Mesa. Sure is a pretty place!!!!

I really liked trolling at Rifle Gap! Caught some really nice Browns there. If I lived there, I would ice fish Vega alot. Do you ever fish Crawford? I always heard it was good for Perch and Pike?
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[TroutFishingBear]

The mesa is definitely overrated. Not as good as you'd think because of CDOW managing almost every fishery as put and take stocker rainbow. Also a lot of the remote reservoirs that used to have huge brookies and huge cutthroats now havve nothing in them because of the drought. Y and S Reservoir, A walk in reservoir about 3 miles from the walk in reservoir leon lake (just walk down marcot creek then there is a dam about 200 yards to your left and up a steep hill) used to be full of cutthroat trout that averaged 4 lbs. There were a few bows and the occasional brook as well. You would walk up on the lake and see about 50 fish immediately, all huge. But It was drained.[:|][] all the big fish died[mad] dow didn't even try to salvage them and put them in marcot creek[mad][mad][mad][mad]

Yeah, I've fished crawford. It has a ton of small perch, very few good ones. It used to be a lot better for pike than it is now because of CDOW no bag limit on pike BS. YOu can still scratch a few pike a trip there depending on water clarity, and icefishing crawford is the best I've ran into in the state, a 2-3 pike day a piece is not uncommon, which is an enormously high amount of pike icefishing in colorado.

Vega is an awesome rainbow fishery for numbers, and it would also be for size like it used to be, but once again CDOW mismanagement has stunted the population. It is rare to get a trout about 14" at vega now, but you can get 100 of them easily in a day. Definitely waaaaay overpopulated.

Rifle gap is alright, got some big perch, got some big walleye, would be more walleye if CDOW didn't stock such huge numbers of rainbow trout in there. There aren't many browns there anymore because of too many bows also.

Boy if only CDOW would manage these fisheries properly, think what would be within an hour of me!!!
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