Poser
WKR
My GF and I have done a high country fishing trip the first week of July for the last 3 years. I've been on an informal mission to fish every lake in the Weminuche. I say "informal" because I'm not exactly sure what that means -what counts as "fishing" a lake? Catching a fish? spending a few hours fishing? putting a line in the water? There are also a bunch of lakes and limited information on stocking history. A lot of these lakes were stocked by airplane at some point, but it may have been 20+ years ago. Many lakes don't support breeding very well if at all. I've hiked to lakes that reportedly had fish in them as of X amount of years ago to find them dead. I've also found fish in unnamed lakes that don't seem deep enough to support survival through the winter. So, I'm not even sure how many lakes currently have fish, when some lakes may be restocked and if certain lakes have already gone dead. I'm just knocking off a few new lakes each summer, revisiting my staples and talking to climbers when I run into them in the deep backcountry as they usually have the most reliable info on seeing surface strikes or not in these remote lakes while they are accessing peaks. Climbers know way more about which remote lakes have fish than any angler around.
On this trip, rather than backpacking around every day, we set up a basecamp at a centralized lake and knocked off 3 from the list.
The first 3 days out were super stormy. It would start storming around noon and not stop until 7- 9 PM. I'm talking boomers: thunder, lightning, hail, grapple, hard rain, freezing rain.... As a result, we were spending ~18 hours a day cooped up in the tent with only a 6 hours window to get out and about. We ended up having to come out a day earlier than planned because we ate all of our food while laying around so much. The mornings, however, we're nice, though chilly at 12,500 -12,800 feet.
Now this is my kind of lake: Sits in a deep hole so its protected from the wind. Surrounded by scree slopes with minimal or no willow. This means you can stretch out your casting without snagging on willow. Willow sucks. Wind is frustrating. No trail access and 35+ degree scree slopes keep the riffraff out.
High country fish can be super temperamental. Most years during the early season, all you have to do is put a line in the water most any time of the day with something on it and you'll catch fish, sometimes on every single cast. I like fishing alpine lakes because I'm not a very good angler. This year was different. The only way we could catch anything at all was to see a fish and put a fly directly in front of its path -we didn't catch anything all week on blind casts. We did't catch anything on nymphs. We didn't get a single fish go out of its way in the slightest to bite a fly. They seemed to have plenty food, were content to only feed during short windows and not interested in putting any effort at all for a meal.
This one required crossing over a 13,000 foot pass so, with the storms, we had to wait for the right weather window. We went for it on day 5, though the clouds were questionable all day. I brought a small tarp so we could potentially take some shelter if it stormed, which it seemed as if it could at any moment all day, but never materialized.
A little bit of mountaineering, navigating some goat trails, deciding between bushwacking willow or skidding down scree and we landed at this larger, very deep lake that has had fish in the past, at least as recent as 2 years ago according to a YT video of a goat hunter who caught a fish here. I saw what I thought was a dead fish laying on the bottom near the edge, but couldn't be sure. Only about 50% of the shoreline was fishable as half the lake is either completely choked out of willow or cliffed out. The water was clear and the visibility was excellent: I could see 8-15 feet deep and 10-12 feet out from the shore, but I never saw a single fish or a surface strike. We cast nymphs far, wide and deep and spent several hours here, but nothin'. Maybe they were all holed up on the far side of the lake, maybe they all died out this winter, maybe they all died of old age because I doubt this lake supports any successful breeding as there isn't anywhere shallow.
I suppose the question is, if I'm attempting to fish every lake in the Weminuche and that's going to take some amount of years, if CPW cropdusts this lake with a few thousand fingerlings, do I have to go back and actually catch a fish, or does this effort count? Completely arbitrary, I suppose.
On this trip, rather than backpacking around every day, we set up a basecamp at a centralized lake and knocked off 3 from the list.
The first 3 days out were super stormy. It would start storming around noon and not stop until 7- 9 PM. I'm talking boomers: thunder, lightning, hail, grapple, hard rain, freezing rain.... As a result, we were spending ~18 hours a day cooped up in the tent with only a 6 hours window to get out and about. We ended up having to come out a day earlier than planned because we ate all of our food while laying around so much. The mornings, however, we're nice, though chilly at 12,500 -12,800 feet.
Now this is my kind of lake: Sits in a deep hole so its protected from the wind. Surrounded by scree slopes with minimal or no willow. This means you can stretch out your casting without snagging on willow. Willow sucks. Wind is frustrating. No trail access and 35+ degree scree slopes keep the riffraff out.
High country fish can be super temperamental. Most years during the early season, all you have to do is put a line in the water most any time of the day with something on it and you'll catch fish, sometimes on every single cast. I like fishing alpine lakes because I'm not a very good angler. This year was different. The only way we could catch anything at all was to see a fish and put a fly directly in front of its path -we didn't catch anything all week on blind casts. We did't catch anything on nymphs. We didn't get a single fish go out of its way in the slightest to bite a fly. They seemed to have plenty food, were content to only feed during short windows and not interested in putting any effort at all for a meal.
This one required crossing over a 13,000 foot pass so, with the storms, we had to wait for the right weather window. We went for it on day 5, though the clouds were questionable all day. I brought a small tarp so we could potentially take some shelter if it stormed, which it seemed as if it could at any moment all day, but never materialized. A little bit of mountaineering, navigating some goat trails, deciding between bushwacking willow or skidding down scree and we landed at this larger, very deep lake that has had fish in the past, at least as recent as 2 years ago according to a YT video of a goat hunter who caught a fish here. I saw what I thought was a dead fish laying on the bottom near the edge, but couldn't be sure. Only about 50% of the shoreline was fishable as half the lake is either completely choked out of willow or cliffed out. The water was clear and the visibility was excellent: I could see 8-15 feet deep and 10-12 feet out from the shore, but I never saw a single fish or a surface strike. We cast nymphs far, wide and deep and spent several hours here, but nothin'. Maybe they were all holed up on the far side of the lake, maybe they all died out this winter, maybe they all died of old age because I doubt this lake supports any successful breeding as there isn't anywhere shallow.
I suppose the question is, if I'm attempting to fish every lake in the Weminuche and that's going to take some amount of years, if CPW cropdusts this lake with a few thousand fingerlings, do I have to go back and actually catch a fish, or does this effort count? Completely arbitrary, I suppose.
