SHADOW MOUNTAIN LAKE — The mountain views from the crisp blue water — of subalpine fir shot through with canary-yellow aspen below the sugar-dusted Continental Divide — are sublime. In still coves, all is mirrored perfection. In breeze-rippled open water, waves play an angler’s tune against an aluminum hull. And a storied river runs through it. 

But Shadow Mountain Lake is less a pristine pool at the foot of wilderness than it is a manipulated fish bowl for the experimental gods of aquatic science. As biologist Jon Ewert stands on the dock on a misty late September afternoon, impressive specimens of the brown trout anglers vie to pull from Shadow Mountain keep roiling the surface. Ewert’s thousand-yard stare is not for them. 

“When I look at this lake, in my mind’s eye, all I see is a living carpet of white suckers,” said Ewert, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife aquatics manager. Ewert’s biology-based pitch papers to the bosses can extinguish, revive or introduce entire species in the biggest, most popular recreation pools of Grand and Summit counties. 

In recent years, the state has dumped millions of fingerlings of brown and rainbow trout, cutbow hybrids and kokanee salmon into Shadow Mountain to promote an angler-friendly fishery in the shallow pool that connects natural Grand Lake to the much larger Lake Granby reservoir on the Colorado River.

At many other high-elevation Colorado reservoirs, trout and salmon thrive. Here at Shadow Mountain, “they stall out,” in Ewert’s studied assessment. They never get much past 12 inches. 

Continue reading this story at ColoradoSun.com/2025/10/12/shadow-mountain-lake-colorado-fishing-science-experiment.