Alpine Fishing Adventures

06/03/2026

Always a pleasure to talk fishing with Terry Wickstrom Outdoors on 104.3 The Fan.
In this segment, I give information and an update on the water levels at Dillon Reservoir and Green Mountain. We talked about the Dillon Arctic Char and Brown Trout and then I give some information about how we have been catching the fish at both reservoirs.

 In the next segment of Terry Wickstrom Outdoors, Randy Ford joins the show to discuss updates for Lake Dillon and Green Mountain Reservoir.

06/01/2026

Nice specimen of an Arctic Char at Dillon Reservoir on a spectacular morning!

05/28/2026

On a lot of trolling charters — and honestly most of the ones I’ve seen — the guide does everything. They set all the lines, run the gear, pull rods out of the holders, and the clients mostly sit back sightseeing while waiting for a bite.

That’s not how we do things.

On our trolling charters, we encourage our customers to be part of the action. You’ll learn how to set lines, run the downriggers, and fight the fish yourself. It’s always a blast when we get a crew that picks it up quickly and works together as a team to get fish in the boat.

Today’s crew did exactly that and crushed it.

The rainbow trout were hitting our flatline rods right on the surface, along with the lead core setup running about 15 feet down. Then they picked up a bunch of lake trout down around 45 feet on the downriggers.
After a few hours trolling, they did some casting along the shorelines and picked up a few more rainbow trout and a brown trout. 
Another productive early summer day on the water, plenty of fish in the boat, and a crew that got the full hands-on experience.

The good early summer bite should last through the next few weeks so hit us up if you want in on the action!

05/25/2026

It was another fast action multi species day for Drew’s birthday with 25 fish caught and more bags of beautiful filets harvested!

05/24/2026

We clean the catch at the lake so our customers can leave with some delicious fillets for the pan, grill, oven or smoker🔥

05/24/2026

After the morning trip today at Green Mountian I headed over to Dillon for the afternoon to take Justin out who drove up from New Mexico to target Arctic Char. The bite was on and his mission was accomplished with a dozen Arctic Char In a variety of colors and size ranging from 13’ to the largest at 20 1/2”!

05/23/2026

Hector had himself a morning on Green Mountian. 🎣

He stayed busy all trip long, catching a great mixed bag of kokanee salmon, lake trout and rainbow trout. — He selectively harvested his catch of 20 or so fish and decided to keep two of each species for the table!

05/22/2026

Dillon Reservoir 5/22/26

Our open water season at Dillon Reservoir is officially underway! Today we launched two of our boats and spent the day getting everything ready for our upcoming trips this evening and weekend. During our prep work, Judson and I slipped away for about an hour to do a little fishing ourselves — and we found some excellent brown trout action.

Dillon Reservoir has always been home to a wild, naturally reproducing population of brown trout. These fish were never stocked into the reservoir itself. In fact, brown trout were introduced into Colorado from Scotland and Germany in the late 1800s when eggs were brought to the Leadville hatchery and the fish were reared and then stocked into the Blue, Snake, and Tenmile River systems. Long before the reservoir existed, these trout were already thriving in the naturally flowing creeks and rivers of the area.

When Dillon Reservoir began filling in the 1960s, the brown trout adapted and continued to survive and reproduce in this new artificial environment. Whether it was a free-flowing mountain river or the reservoir we know today, these fish have truly stood the test of time. Most anglers who spend enough time chasing them will tell you there is something pretty special about the Lake Dillon wild brown trout.

June is hands-down one of the best months of the season to target brown trout on Dillon Reservoir.
Right now lake conditions are good.
We are in pre run off and the surface temp is 47 degrees. The lake has begun to rise a
and now it’s about 19 feet below full pool. In flow is 211 ft.³ per second and outflow is 55 so we are gaining water! Runoff may turn out a bit better than expected Considering the drought, There is still a fair amount of snow above 11,500 feet waiting to melt and flow into the lake. If you’ve been thinking about getting out on the water, now is the time to book your trip and experience some of the best brown trout fishing of the year!

05/19/2026

As an attempted solution to control Green Mountain Reservoir’s gill lice problem, Colorado Parks and Wildlife stopped stocking kokanee salmon and rainbow trout beginning in 2015.

Then in 2020, CPW resumed the stocking program — but with some major changes. Instead of the 300,000 kokanee salmon the reservoir used to receive every year, they began stocking only 200,000 fish, and only every other year. So far, kokanee have only been stocked in 2020, 2022, and 2024.

Here’s the really interesting part: we aren’t even supposed to see the 2024 kokanee showing up as full-size mature fish until next season. Yet even during the “off years,” when there technically shouldn’t be mature 3½-year-old salmon in the lake, we still catch them.

That’s exciting because it strongly suggests there may be some natural reproduction happening in Green Mountain Reservoir. These salmon that don’t seem to come from the hatchery do not carry the Gil lice, or have just a couple lice per gill. and that is incredible, and points to genetics as a solution to the lice.  Something about these possible naturally hatched fish, gives them the ability to shed the lice.
This season is one of those off years where we supposedly shouldn’t have mature hatchery salmon yet… but we’ve already been catching a few. Today, Mark had an awesome day landing around 15 rainbow trout along with 4 big, fat, beautiful kokanee salmon!

Green Mountain continues to surprise us every season.

05/17/2026

Green Mountain Reservoir had not been stocked with rainbow trout since 2015. Then last fall, CPW finally decided to give the reservoir some love.
Rainbow trout stockings are an essential part of keeping our large lake trout population healthy which has suffered over the last 10 years.
The rainbows also provide some really fast action for us anglers.  They were somewhere around 11 inches when they were stocked last fall and they did well over the winter. The last couple days we’ve been on some really fast action for these fish and they are in the 16 inch range, providing us a decent size fish to filet up for the pan!
Yesterday’s crew took home a six person limit of beautiful brightly orange colored filets!