We do practically all our fishing up on and around the Grand Mesa. Lakes are all above 9,000 ft. with our favorites at 9,800 - 10,500 ft. … Typically very cold water. These lakes are stocked at least semi-annually with rainbows, brookies, and "cutbows", but the biggest fish will usually be the wild spawn cutthroats.
Colorado is getting very particular about limiting the use of any type of live bait, even earthworms as there seems to be a correlation with live bait and "Whirling Disease", and many lakes are posted "Artificial Baits and Lures Only!"
We are far from tackle collectors and only take what we know works. Because we always buy "second rod stamps" we always have at least one rig still fishing and at least two rigs being used for one of two different spin-casting techniques.
For our "still-rigs" we use a sliding egg sinker with a large enough snap swivel to keep it from binding into the end of the sinker and then a 2 ft. leader with a #12 - #16 treble hook hiding inside a small ball of Berkley's Floating Power Bait. We prefer the "neon sparkle orange" and "sparkle hot pink". We find the floating kind about 3 times as effective. We always take at least a dozen pre-tied leaders because the fish often swallow the bait and will died from you trying to remove it, so often if it isn't a keeper we just cut the line as far into the fish as we can reach and let them go. We have caught many larger keepers that had been obviously released by this method at a much younger age and seemed to have survived into maturity just fine carrying around a small treble in their belly. The other thing about this kind of rig is that it often difficult to tell if you have a "fish on" unless you actually physically check with an occasional little tug. They can sit there for a half hour without giving a visual indication.
Our favorite though is spin-casting with
"Pistol Petes" . These are like a nymph style wet fly with a small shiny propeller on front. The rig for these is a clear plastic casting bubble about 3/4 full of water left free to slide and held on with a proper sized snap swivel… Then about 30" of leader out to the Pistol Pete. These are fished like a really slow spinner just barely fast enough to make a very small wake with the casting bubble. These usually get very dramatic and hard strikes, and because they use a single hook, unlike most spin baits that use treble hooks they are less likely to snag. We typically use the #10 size to start and move up to a # 6 if bigger fish are biting. We like yellow the best followed by platte river pete, mafia pete, olive, and double renegade. These are fun to fish because you stay busy, are super effective and pretty much trouble free.
For lakes with steep shore line drop offs we also use
Blue Fox® Foxtail® Super Vibrax® Spinners on a 48" leader behind a casting bubble but at about twice the retrieval speed of a "pistol pete".
In our experience, if you want to catch bigger fish, use bigger lures… within reason of course. Just saying…
