When I was as a young boy, which was just a couple of years ago, my friends and I would ride our bicycles up the hill to Lake Loveland. We would carry our fishing rods across the handlebars with a couple of yellow jiggers, all in hopes of catching a few crappy. The lake is called Lake Loveland and has evolved from a muddy marsh, to a resource for irrigated agriculture, to a public water supply and a scenic and recreational treasure. It was completed in the fall of 1894 and filled for the first time with the spring runoff of 1895. Anyway, we would fish the south shore where the dam is lined with rocks and concrete slabs. Along the banks were large cottonwood trees with their trunks and roots providing habitat for these fish. Most of our fishing was for entertainment so catch and release was the order of the day, hoping we would have the opportunity to catch them again. Of course over time some of those cottonwood trees are gone but the city has now made the South Shore into a nice park area with benches and statues. I made a visit last week, walked along the path on the dam and took in the view of those majestic Rocky Mountains. It reminded me of those boyhood days.