[fishinlooney]

If the couple of fish that I saw last fall are any indication, we will have some FAT fish, and at the beginning of the year we will have some over 18" but once those are out of the system we will be back to the 17.9" phenomenon. The DOW spawning operation every year proves that there are unbelievable numbers of BIG fish in the lake, they are just hard to catch. As far as the shad "problem" goes, it sure is nice to have too many shad rather than the low water year when we didn't have a lot of forage and the fish got really skinny. What's good for the fish isn't always good for the fisherman, (although balance is nice. ;D) I predict that with other lakes like CC, Horsetooth, Pueblo and Aurora having better fishing and taking a little pressure off Chatfield, it could be the awesome fishery that it was just a couple short seasons ago.