On the road to good fishing

The bass is frowned upon in Boulder, Colorado. We prefer trout here. Like our town it’s a discriminating fish: athletic, sleek, yet with a slightly stylish and snooty attitude. Bass fishing? That’s not a sport, it’s a something that card carrying Republicans from Texarkana do between cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. In Boulder, we ride road bikes wearing wrist computers that track how many calories we burn. If we do stoop to an un-athletic “sport” like fishing, it’s for the aforementioned tout in our mountain creeks.

But if you live in Boulder County, and like to bike, I suggest you reconsider the bass. I also suggest you trade your road bike for a mountain or ‘cross bike for a day, and—God forbid—look east, to the plains, instead of to the mountains. Because, out in the flats of our county there are some big bass, and the best way to reach them is by bike.

I learned this dirty little secret recently when I decided I was sick of driving to find fish, sick of driving to go mountain biking. After a long day in front of the computer, I want adventure out my back door. And to find that I was going to have to embrace the plains.

I live in what my wife and I like to call the “yuppie projects,” that vast grid of condos east of Boulder’s downtown and ritzy foothills. Here, we’re surrounded by more condos, prairie dog towns, and abandoned office buildings. We may drive Subarus instead of pickup trucks and pick up our dog poop in a little blue bags, but this is as redneck as it gets in Boulder.

And redneck country is bass country. Look on a map of Boulder County and you’ll see patch after patch of blue out here, and many of these manmade bodies of water have been stocked by the Colorado Divison of Wildlife (an agency whose machinations are more mysterious than the department of Homeland Security) with enough large-and smallmouth bass to make a NASCAR fan drop his beer for his baitcaster. You’ll also see a network of trails, all open to bikes. (The irony is not lost on me that there you can ride your mountain bike on any of these trails, but most of the ones in the mountains are closed.)

A redneck in lycra clothing?

So I pulled my old hardtail out of the garage, tossed some lures into my Camelbak, strapped my spinning rod to the back, and headed out my door. I didn’t find the type of grunting hill climbs that I love, but I did spin for hours, following trails to places I never knew existed. I looked off to the Flatirons on the horizon and the Indian Peaks beyond them like a rising mist. I saw cows. I found singletrack. I found a BMX-style bike park where I was the only one over 15. I saw people of all shapes and sizes: running, walking, biking, pushing carriages. It felt, well, democratic, populist even.

Oh, and I found bass. Big ones. I had stopped at a few of the bigger bodies of water and cast with no result. At a place called “Bass Pond” I snagged my lure on dead bushes sunken in the middle of the lake, and sat for a while and watched the sun heading down. And then, as I walked back toward my bike, I saw three fish so big they scared me. I looked around and saw more of them rising everywhere, their backs slowly coming up above the surface as they fed. My lure was back in the water.

I didn’t catch the big ones (you rarely do), but I did catch some fish that made my blood pump as the sun went down. It was a rush almost as goods as singletrack.

So get on your bike and seek bass. Embrace your inner redneck. Embrace the plains. And if you think that’s a stretch, just remember next time you walk past your local coffee shop and see the road cyclists wearing bright jersey unabashedly covered with the names of corporate sponsors, bass anglers like to dress the same damn way.