It was winter sports galore Saturday with ice fishing, ice carving, snowmobiling and dog sledding during the first day of Vallecito Winterfest.
Vallecito Winterfest was revived after a five-year lull after it debuted in 2016. Event organizer Lisa Bourque said she thought it was a good idea to bring back the festival after people have spent years cooped up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bourque had the help of 25 volunteers and local businesses such as Rocky Mountain General Store and Meats; Weminuche Woodfire Grill owners Joe and Heather Zebas and their staff members.
Winterfest is a way to celebrate the outdoors that Vallecito Lake and the surrounding hills and mountains provide.
“There’s so much to do up here,” Bourque said. “You’ve got the Nordic center and it’s one of the best Nordic centers around. It’s on the east side of the lake.”
She said snowshoeing, snowmobiling and skiing were common at the Nordic center.
Bourque said she was pleased with the turnout in Vallecito as of about noon Saturday. She said the festival was marketed pretty heavily, and those efforts appeared to pay off because people were attracted to the area from Bayfield and Durango.
“A lot of people don’t realize, I think, that this is open all year,” she said. “... I think it’s a nice thing for people to learn what is going on in the valley and what happens in the winter.”
Ice fishing on Vallecito Lake started at 9:30 Saturday morning. It was held by Bo Boling, owner of outfitting and fishing guiding business Hook ’Em Up Anglers, with assistance from his brother, Bryce Boling, and friends James Hardesty and Croy Hardesty.
Boling was excited that about 30 children, plus their parents, showed up to learn how to ice fish.
“I am absolutely blown away (by the turnout),” he said. “Because it was kind of short in how we put it all together, we were a little worried about how many people would come out.”
Boling, who first went ice fishing when he was about 7 years old, has been fishing for 30 years.
Patience is key to ice and open water fishing, he said. Catching is what makes fishing so much fun, but maintaining patience to wait, and wait, and wait until you get a bite is what it takes to be successful.
“I love getting kids involved in the outdoors,” he said. “I have kids, they love fishing, hunting and all of it.”
The sport caught the attention of one young girl who attended the free ice fishing clinic Saturday morning. Dixie Demarest of Durango caught the first fish of the day, a 17.5 inch rainbow trout, at 10:45 a.m.
Lance Demarest, Dixie’s father, said they had wanted to go ice fishing for a long time and finally saw their chance at Winterfest.
Boling said a 16- to 18-inch rainbow trout is a common catch in Vallecito Lake. But rainbows up to 22 inches are also very common.
“There’s also brown trout in here,” he said. “... Some of the bigger browns that I’ve seen and been part of people catching out here, a lot of browns in the 26- to 28-inch range.”
Boling has seen 48-inch-long northern pike in Vallecito Lake.
He said Vallecito Lake freezes at different times depending on the year, and not always enough to make the most out of ice fishing. In a good year, ice fishing may become viable around January and can last until April.
Boling thanked businesses Rocky Mountain General Store, Gardenswartz and Rocky Mountain Custom Jigs for the snacks and prize donations they provided for the ice fishing contest.
Other events included: a snowmobile scavenger hunt/poker run, a similar vehicle-based scavenger hunt, dog sledding and ice sculpting, with music and a happy hour planned for Saturday night at the Weminuche Woodfire Grill. On Sunday, a pool tournament will be held with sign-ups at noon. Trivia is planned for later in the day.
“I think it’s fun,” Bourque said. “It’s definitely a huge community effort. These people have come down here just to help and bring us food and bring us rounds that we’ll put in the ice. Everybody in this valley has come together to make this happen, which is really cool. For an unincorporated area that is not a town, it’s very tight knit.”
For the full schedule for Vallecito Winterfest, visit https://bit.ly/3rrYHOq.
cburney@durangoherald.com
