Good Morning and Happy Friday!
My name is John Slattery and I am with the City of Northglenn Parks Department. I am looking for some ideas to solve some fishing access issues at Croke Reservoir here in Northglenn. Croke Reservoir has a cult following of anglers who love to fish here. There are a couple of areas along one run of shoreline that seem to be the fishing locations of choice and unfortunately these areas are being “loved to death”. The problem is that there is about 15 feet of very steep slope between the crusher fine trail going around the lake and the water. As a result, several social trails have been formed by anglers trying to access the lake for fishing. The trails go straight down the steep slope to the water and are getting wider and wider by the year. Fortunately the slope is fairly heavily vegetated by trees and wood shrubs, so there is a lot of root mass holding the shoreline together. As such, considering these social trails have been around for about ten years, the erosion factor isn’t as bad as I’ve seen at other lakes, but we’d very much like to improve this situation. The ideal solution would “formalize” sustainable access to these preferred fishing holes, discourage the formation of new social trails, reflect the character of the nature area surrounding the lake, and hopefully require minimal disturbance to create. I don’t think simply re-cutting trails at an angle that better manages the cross slope is really going to be the solution due to all of the roots present and the soil type (heavy clay), though this could be a possibility with a little resourceful thinking and some study of some success with this….I’m also having a problem finding any solutions via research on the internet. I thought I’d throw this one out to the COSA list to see if anyone had any experience solving this type of problem, had any ideas, or knew of any resources to look at for solutions?
Many thanks and any ideas/thoughts/etc. are both welcome and appreciated!
John Slattery
PMW III
City of Northglenn Parks Department
Northglenn, Colorado