High Country Fishing Trip

[Glendon Mullins]

awesome pictures, what an adventure!!

 

[Split toe]

Man that is awesome! Keep the pictures coming! The Weminuche is one of my favorite places!

 

[Reburn]

Awesome trip.

I feel ashamed I've never learned to fly fish.

 

[Poser]

I feel ashamed I've never learned to fly fish.

I realize some folks like to make a big deal about it and, it can sometimes appear to look like a bit of sorcery, and, yes, there are some people who are really, really good at it, but fly fishing is hardly rocket science. If you have a DIY bone in your body, you could buy a $99 full setup off Amazon, watch a 10 minute YouTube video and immediately go catch a fish.

 

[Reburn]

I realize some folks like to make a big deal about it and, it can sometimes appear to look like a bit of sorcery, and, yes, there are some people who are really, really good at it, but fly fishing is hardly rocket science. If you have a DIY bone in your body, you could buy a $99 full setup off Amazon, watch a 10 minute YouTube video and immediately go catch a fish.

Very true.
I just always end up with a gun or bow in my hands vs a fishing pole.

 

[7mm-08]

Cool effort and stunning photos. Thanks for taking us along.

 

[Whitefox82]

Very cool adventure. I’m from the Midwest so not familiar with alpine lakes but how do these fish survive? lol! I would think they would die from lack of oxygen over the winter. Are these lakes all spring fed??

 

[MoldedbyNature]

Man, this right here is why I hate being an easterner. Whether the fish are there or not or however you wish to define what fishing is doesn't matter. It's the adventure and the experience. That's what you're really after, fishing is just the excuse. Enjoy spending time with your GF doing awesome things.

 

[Poser]

Very cool adventure. I’m from the Midwest so not familiar with alpine lakes but how do these fish survive? lol! I would think they would die from lack of oxygen over the winter. Are these lakes all spring fed??

It’s impressive that they can survive as these lakes are several feet of ice and many of them are covered with a 10,20,30+ feet of avalanche debris for 7-8 months out of the year. The lakes that can sustain fish are spring fed from the bottom and extremely deep. The fish go semi dormant for long stretches of time and move down into spring. Some of the lakes are suitable for breeding and are self sustaining, but many of them lack the habitat for breeding and must be restocked every so often. CPW does aerial stocking using an airplane. They switch from Northern CO to Southern CO every other year and stock as many lakes as they can given the timeframe and conditions. Some of these lakes are situated in deep, ancient caldrons and must be extremely dangerous to stock. I can only imagine it takes a crop duster mindset to pull it off -low throttle to put over the lake and then pull up at the last second. I haven’t actually seen it done myself but I’ve heard that it’s not so accurate as you might hope that it is and lots of fish end up on the ground due to cross winds.

Given budget cuts and the fact that the fish aren’t native to these lakes, it’s rather surprising that restocking still happens at all. It also seems to be the case that they have abandoned stocking certain lakes that are maybe too dangerous or impractical for aerial stocking. I’ve fished a few unamed, difficult to access lakes that seem to only have a handful of fish left and what fish are there are pretty big by alpine lake standards. I’ve also accessed some lakes that reportedly once had fish in them and are now “dead” lakes. Outside of the more popular lakes, there’s little to no reliable information available. Some lakes may have been stocked once 49 years ago because the pilot had surplus fish that day and the lake happened to be self sustaining in the long run. The fish biologists don’t even have reliable information. I’ve found the only reliable source for information to be climbers as they tend to pass by the lakes more frequently than any other user group and also get vantages from summits and will notice surface strikes.

 

[Whitefox82]

It’s impressive that they can survive as these lakes are several feet of ice and many of them are covered with a 10,20,30+ feet of avalanche debris for 7-8 months out of the year. The lakes that can sustain fish are spring fed from the bottom and extremely deep. The fish go semi dormant for long stretches of time and move down into spring. Some of the lakes are suitable for breeding and are self sustaining, but many of them lack the habitat for breeding and must be restocked every so often. CPW does aerial stocking using an airplane. They switch from Northern CO to Southern CO every other year and stock as many lakes as they can given the timeframe and conditions. Some of these lakes are situated in deep, ancient caldrons and must be extremely dangerous to stock. I can only imagine it takes a crop duster mindset to pull it off -low throttle to put over the lake and then pull up at the last second. I haven’t actually seen it done myself but I’ve heard that it’s not so accurate as you might hope that it is and lots of fish end up on the ground due to cross winds.

Given budget cuts and the fact that the fish aren’t native to these lakes, it’s rather surprising that restocking still happens at all. It also seems to be the case that they have abandoned stocking certain lakes that are maybe too dangerous or impractical for aerial stocking. I’ve fished a few unamed, difficult to access lakes that seem to only have a handful of fish left and what fish are there are pretty big by alpine lake standards. I’ve also accessed some lakes that reportedly once had fish in them and are now “dead” lakes. Outside of the more popular lakes, there’s little to no reliable information available. Some lakes may have been stocked once 49 years ago because the pilot had surplus fish that day and the lake happened to be self sustaining in the long run. The fish biologists don’t even have reliable information. I’ve found the only reliable source for information to be climbers as they tend to pass by the lakes more frequently than any other user group and also get vantages from summits and will notice surface strikes.

Thank you! I would have never thought CPW would budget yet alone make that kind of effort to stock those lakes! Great that they do!

 

[Poser]

In Rich Osthoffs backcountry fishing book there is a chapter called "speed scouting lakes", maybe you've read it already but there are some good tips for the particular mission you have.

I finally got around to reading this book, FYI. I did find it helpful and it enjoyed it much more than I thought I would every enjoy a book about fishing. Like you said, there's definitely some filler chapters to skip over (camping, lightning, snakes, bears etc) as well as some outdated relevancy in some chapters (how to take a trophy fish pic) given that it is a book from 1998, but the meat of it is super insightful. That guy definitely knows the Wind River Range well.

Anyway, the book confirms that some lakes can easily appear to be barren more often than not or even the vasy majority of the time. It had me going back and reanalysizing some lakes on the map that I thought I could get away with dismissing: despite a milky, glacial flour water content where fish struggle, very little to maybe no spawning habitat, and in the shade most of the day due to peaks on 3 sides resulting in little to no surface insect activity, the only way to be sure is to hike miles/thousnds of feet out of the way, decend 400 feet of scree, cast a streamer way out into the deep and see if there is maybe an old trout or 2 hanging out at 30-40 feet living off scuds.

 

[Nickofthewoods]

I finally got around to reading this book, FYI. I did find it helpful and it enjoyed it much more than I thought I would every enjoy a book about fishing. Like you said, there's definitely some filler chapters to skip over (camping, lightning, snakes, bears etc) as well as some outdated relevancy in some chapters (how to take a trophy fish pic) given that it is a book from 1998, but the meat of it is super insightful. That guy definitely knows the Wind River Range well.

Anyway, the book confirms that some lakes can easily appear to be barren more often than not or even the vasy majority of the time. It had me going back and reanalysizing some lakes on the map that I thought I could get away with dismissing: despite a milky, glacial flour water content where fish struggle, very little to maybe no spawning habitat, and in the shade most of the day due to peaks on 3 sides resulting in little to no surface insect activity, the only way to be sure is to hike miles/thousnds of feet out of the way, decend 400 feet of scree, cast a streamer way out into the deep and see if there is maybe an old trout or 2 hanging out at 30-40 feet living off scuds.

Nice, glad you found it helpful. I still flip that book open occassionally. Last summer I re-read chapter 14 after being humbled at a high mountain lake with tremendous potential.

 

[Poser]

Nice, glad you found it helpful. I still flip that book open occassionally. Last summer I re-read chapter 14 after being humbled at a high mountain lake with tremendous potential.

It also made me realize I need to up my scud game.

 

[Nickofthewoods]

It also made me realize I need to up my scud game.

The thing with scuds is they swim and dart around in the shallows and bottoms and the way Osthoff describes fishing them is chucking them out into the drop-offs and letting them sink which isn't how scuds really behave. But it works for him obviously. I usually trail one behind a leach and strip slowly as close to the bottom as I can get without hanging up.

 

[Poser]

The thing with scuds is they swim and dart around in the shallows and bottoms and the way Osthoff describes fishing them is chucking them out into the drop-offs and letting them sink which isn't how scuds really behave. But it works for him obviously. I usually trail one behind a leach and strip slowly as close to the bottom as I can get without hanging up.

I thought that was odd and non intuitive as well. I tend to see scuds in shallow water, but looking into this a little more, apparently scuds will thrive down to about a depth of 35 feet, even though they tend to avoid open water. I have definitely fished some lakes where nymphs, upon sinking 10-15+ feet will trigger strikes from the dark depths and the fish come out of nowhere like rockets. Could be that this technique relies on triggering impulsive or instinctual strikes where, otherwise, the fish just aren’t that motivated?

 

[trailblazer75]

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.

View attachment 903015

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.

View attachment 903016

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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.

View attachment 903020

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.

View attachment 903028This 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.

View attachment 903033

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.

Dude this is amazing! You're winning at life with that woman. Good for you. Excellent write up on a cool adventure.

 

[2ski]

This is awesome. I'm totally jealous.

I'm just going to throw this out there. 3 years of these trips with her and this is year 4? Have you landed the biggest fish of all you'll ever catch? I hear a diamond ring is the only bait they bite on.

 

[dtrkyman]

Not to your extent but I have gotten into back country fishing in recent years, though I prefer rivers, and have hit some cutthroat lakes loaded with rainbows, meh!