Story From The Road: High-Holed By Birders

May 2026

It started like any other spring weekday afternoon in the urban warmwaters around Denver. An innocent enough attempt to fish for sunning carp morphed into a strange run-in with another clade of outdoors eccentrics.

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I know a not-so-secret lagoon that offers boom or busy fishing for sunning carp. This oxbow has proven fruitful for carp willing to eat peach or white eggs, but results vary wildly. The only sure trick I know of is to keep everything as quiet and stealthy as possible. Shallow tailing carp are an obvious reward but too much fishing pressure and the day can sour quickly. Here pressure may manifest from leaves simply rustling too loudly, or a low flying shadow. Five shots in an outing would be an epic day.

So unsurprisingly, after a hearty collection of spooked fish I found myself looking around, wondering what else I could do. That proved to be the first of multiple instances where I felt something watching me.

The first eyes I noticed came from a bedding bass sizing me up. He just appeared suddenly, right under my nose. Tucked under an overhanging collection of reeds, shielded by submerged logs, two treading pectoral fins attached to a largemouth mad-doggin’ my threatening shadow. For a few minutes I watched him patrol around the log, stare me down, then swim back and forth along a well established route. Eventually, I had to drop a crayfish in, to see just how attentive he was.

This bass was one discerning parent, but I must have overstated my threat. For no matter how I’d crawl my fly, the bass never once motioned to clear the nest of intruders. As a trained trout-a-holic, my instinct was to cycle through patterns to figure out this fish. Black, chartreuse, big, small, try the egg again. Suddenly, I felt the next set of eyes.

Across the narrow lagoon, I snapped out of my daze to a colorful figure watching me… watching me through binoculars? Then, another figure appeared. A finger rose to point, and more binoculars flashed, scoping me out from 50 feet across the water. In all of five minutes I had been descended on by a crowd of starchy hikers sporting telephoto lenses, scopes, and hiking boots still brandishing their silica packets. “Play it cool.” I told myself under my breath, trying not to get phased by the sudden attention. Worst of all, this bass, still staring at me, was winning our battle of wits. Despite my attempt to tie on another fresh offering, lost rummaging through my fly box, an eerie sense of somebody breathing down my neck crept directly on-top of me. I saw the camera first, out of my right periphery. A two foot long telephoto lens ushered in a clearly realized, frothing at the mouth birder, chasing something close; clearly something rare. Startled, my muscles involuntarily flinched as he stepped directly in front of me (fucking really dude?) and promptly snapped the shudder.

All this time, rooting around under my nose, within swimming distance of the bass: an out of place waterfowl that sent the local birding community into a lusting frenzy. I stepped back in shock, “Did I just get high holed by a birder?” The photo-greedy fanatic felt no regard for blowing up my spot, I doubt it even registered as inconsiderate. A younger me may have taken issue, but I was in no mood for confrontation. After all, this was too much commotion for these skinny water carp, and I was just checkmated by Bobby Fischer reincarnated into this bass… It was time to tuck-tail.

Further Reading

Biology: The lowdown on warmwater lakes.

Tactics: Primer for carp on the fly.

More stories: Wrestling with grass carp.