Angling day for disabled in dire need of boats

Sitting on a boat, the surrounding lake provides beautiful views as the sunshine keeps you warm. There’s no tromping through trees or hopping over rocks to get to a river. It’s just you, your boat and the wide open water.

But some outdoor enthusiasts have a more difficult time taking advantage of this scenic moment. That’s where the Colorado Springs chapter of Fishing Has No Boundaries comes in.

The organization offers people with disabilities the opportunity to either learn to fish or regain a love of the outdoors by bringing them, as well as their friends and family, out on the water for an annual fishing day.

But the organization, which is holding its 12th annual event on Sept. 15 at Pueblo Reservoir, is running into a problem: There are not enough boats.

Located just 10 minutes west of Pueblo, Pueblo Reservoir is Colorado’s premier warm water fishery. It provides excellent angling for walleye, wiper, bass and catfish. It has more than 4,600 surface acres of water, 60 miles of shoreline and almost 10,000 acres of land.

I participated in a similar fishing event years ago at Spinney Mountain Reservoir that involved several patients from Craig Hospital. A young man in a wheelchair was loaded into my boat and strapped in. He was not able to cast, but he could reel and handle a rod.

My first thought was we would fish below the boat When: 10 a.m. on Sept. 15. Registration starts at 8:30 a.m.

Where: Pueblo Reservoir’s south shore boat ramp. Volunteers: It is too late to sign up as a participant but volunteers with boats are still being sought. If you would like to offer up your boat, visit the group’s EventBrite site at dpo.st/ boatregistration and select Boat Captain Registration. For more information, contact: Dan Saldana, 7198733462, csfhnb@csfhnb.org, www.csfhnb.org, Facebook.com/CSFHNB/ for rainbow trout. I asked him what he would like to do. He said he had always dreamed of catching a big brown trout. I explained that targeting a single big brown could be a daunting task and we could end up with nothing.

He still wanted to try. With a half hour of fishing to go and no success, we were running out of time. Suddenly his rod bent over and a few minutes later he had boated a 25inch plus brown trout. That young man has contacted me every year for over a decade to talk about “his fish.”

If you own a boat, you can help, even if you’re not an expert angler. This is a chance to explore one of Colorado’s premier fisheries and possibly share someone’s memory of a lifetime.