Friday, October 09, 2020

A Quiet Day at the DeWeese Reservoir SWA

 Not much riding today.

Pretty much just enjoyed a quiet morning at camp, watching canoes with fishermen or at least, fishing poles in them, move slowly about.  Several RVs within my line of sight but spaced out nicely and none really close to mine.  

Spent most of the first half of the afternoon online perusing and discarding candidates for lands that are for sale.  Zillow is good for the initial find, but one must use tools such as google maps and valueacre.com which provides plat maps to show you the property lines.  Zillow sucks at pretty much everything important....kind of like the initial ranging shot in the artillery, it gets you in the ball park....then you zero in.

After three hours of no luck finding properties worth a physical look, I went and checked out a previously discarded one that was nearby.  It's still not suitable, basically, you're buying a small hill...no access roads and completely tree covered.

There's only one property I'm interested in and that's awaiting coordination work between my realtor and the listing agent sometime this coming week.  More on that later if it works out.

I discovered on my ride back through the Lake DeWeese Resort community, a sign stating some new to me rules regarding boat activity or rather waterborne activity in this particular State Wildlife Area or SWA.  Somehow, the recreational boating rights aren't owned by the state but by private parties and they went to court to prevent any recreation boating activity not authorized by them.

The result is the only activity allowed for the public is fishing (with a Colorado license of course) from a boat is the only activity allowed.  Nothing else, no wake boards, jetskis, powerboats (unless actively fishing) and any other water craft.  I'd been wondering why things were so quiet here, now I knew.

So weird to me, that private parties can "own" recreational boating rights but the state retains ownership of fishing rights.  Lawyers....

At the end of the riding, the sun was shining nicely through some trees near the campsite so I posed Yagi accordingly:






Today's sunset coloration wasn't too bad I guess, a good end to a peaceful day....


6 comments:

CCjon said...

That is strange on the water activity rights, wonder if maybe private parties created the lake/stock pond originally on private land then deeded it to the Resort Community. If they stocked a private lake with fish, not sure the State would have a say in requiring fishing licenses unless the State gave them the fingerings. Hmmm, is a mystery.

RichardM said...

I like the sky in the last photo.

We stayed at a lake in TX where the dam was originally built by ranchers. They also owned the land. The dam was turned over to the CoE but not sure of the lake itself. The only boat activity on the lake was fishing.

redlegsrides said...

I believe, CCjon, that the Deweese Resort (basically a few dozen small dwellings on south end of reservoir are the Private Psrties who hold the recreational water rights and they want to keep noisy boats from interfering with their fishing. The state of Colorado now requires one to have either a fishing or hunting license to simply camp in any of the state’s swas which used to be free.

redlegsrides said...

Thanks RichardM for the feedback and the info! Probably a similar situation here....

SonjaM said...

Great backlighting pics, Dom.

I like the idea of limiting noisy recreational activities on the lake. It can get fairly annoying when all that one is looking for is a quiet time.

redlegsrides said...

Thanks SonjaM, and yes quiet is valued over noise....keeps down the crowds too I think.