Made it out last weekend for our annual high lake trip. Brought along a few new guys which made this trip much more enjoyable. It’s always nice to see the look on the new faces as they catch a lot fish in such beautiful country.

Got to the trail head (in the Zirkel Wilderness) around 9:00pm and made it to the lake at 11:30pm. Had a hard time sleeping, bad choice bringing my 40 degree bag, but morning came quick enough. Woke up at 5 (i guess I was already awake), walked down to the lake and you could see rainbows and cutthroats everywhere. Fished mostly hardware and did great the first day.

Got up the next morning and the fishing was a little tough. Not much was hitting the hardware we had all used the day before so some of us switched to fly rods and spinning rods set up with bubbles. Once we found the right fly set up it was on (mosquito or black gnat with a green hairs ear dropper (not sure if that’s the right terminology). I caught a few off the fly rod but switched to the bubble so I could cast out to where the fish were. I’ve never used a bubble before, I was very impressed.

All in all we caught around 80 fish in two days.

As we walked along a 20ft cliff we could see a fish right below us. My buddy throws down a lure and right when the fish was about to hit it his line got all tangled up. As he was untangling his mess I couldn’t help myself, I threw down a fly and the fish grabbed it right away. Now what to do, I’m 20 feet above the fish with no where to go. I mannaged to climb down to lake level and land it (with my friend laughing at me the whole time).

-August