Fishing Forum

Early Sunday morning, I took a long drive to explore some dearly missed land and to hopefully find some unknown treasures along the way.

My first stop was at a creek that has always grabbed my attention, but never enough for me to give it a shot. Unfortunately, this creek wasn’t cooperating and I moved on, higher up the mountain.

Next stop was a tiny pond that I’d scouted from the maps. By its size, I really didn’t expect to find stocked trout, but there’s always the possibility of bucket stocking, especially with its close proximity to a popular fishing hole.



Nice little pond, but it was only about a foot deep and without any fish. Too bad. Just up the road, I thought I’d work off my skunk by catching some hatchery rainbows from a murky puddle on the upstream end of a heavily fished reservoir.



Several came to hand and they fought deceptively to their size, but this was just a practice session and it was time for some light bushwhacking in search of a nameless pond.

Once I reached it, I beheld its beauty and crossed my fingers while casting away in hopes of a strike.





A strike never came and I concluded that it either didn’t have fish, or that I just couldn’t find them with what I was throwing.

Moving on, my little Sentra was able to slowly get me into a place that I knew had fish. Upon arrival, the surface was rippled with rising trout.

The fish didn’t want anything to do with my favorite Blue Foxes, jigs, or minnows it seemed. After a trail and error period, I finally resorted to the good old nightcrawler, which brought in a little tiger.



A couple of hatchery bows came to play as well and luckily they were hooked in the lip. Not wanting to keep using worms, I kept digging through my gear for a lure that these picky fish would actually bite. Eventually, a chrome/orange kastmaster hooked into my biggest fish of the day, a tall 16” tiger trout.



Nice pattern on that one. The kastmaster didn’t get any other bumps before it broke off, mid-cast.

Knowing that some decent fish lived in the lake, I reverted to the minnow, praying that something would take interest in it. After circling most of the lake, I started getting hits as long as I twitched the minnow every couple of seconds. Some of the hits were big surface splashes, but somehow, they weren’t getting hooked. They would either spit it out within seconds or take off with it, into some logs and get it wrapped up.

After many frustrating “near misses”, I finally got one to hold on and I was very surprised with what I reeled in.



Never before had I caught a brown trout so high in elevation. Previously, my highest brown was at around 8800ft and in a stream. This was a reservoir at nearly 9700ft. What’s more, there’s no record of browns being stocked in there that I can track down. Traveling upstream from the outflow creek would be very hard to believe, since it’s very steep and seemingly impassable.

Perhaps some bucket biology had been practiced. Anyhow, it was neat to catch a brown from there. A couple more rainbows and tigers came to play and my time at that lake had come to a close.



More water awaited me on the other side of the mountain and getting there was as spectacular as can be expected in this lovely area. If only the days were longer…





On the way to my next target, I passed a lake with some brookies and had to stop in for a visit with some of them.



After the diversion of pretty little brookies, it was time to go off trail for a short while and hunt down some cutthroat.






The fishing was really slow and difficult with the thick weeds extending out toward the middle of the lake, but I was eventually rewarded for my patience with a couple of cutts.





That last one seemed to have something funky going on with its skin. Little red dots speckled its sides and reminded me of the early stages of the fungus that I see on a lot of river browns in the fall.

Whatever the case, it was released to either heal or die on its own.

The day grew long and the remaining sunlight had blanketed the land with a golden glow. It was a realization, but my time had come to leave.

On the hike back to my car, I held out for one last bend in my rod at the brookie lake, then I was off.



While descending the mountain, I noticed that the lower elevation scrub oak had some deep colors that were really popping in the retreating light.




It felt really nice to get back to that mountain and the waters that decorate its shoulders. The weather was perfect, the views were amazing, and I was able to catch 5 different species on another wonderful trip to the magical back country of our state.

My face wore a peaceful as I drove off into the sunset.



Happy Fishing, Humans.


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golf clap!
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Nice one as always loah[cool] keep it up.
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awesome just awesome!! nuff said
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Nice post Congrats on the treasures I need to adventure out more and stop fishing the weber so much. [unimpressed]
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Lookin' great LOAH! As always, thanks for sharing.
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those fish are beautiful!!!!!!
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Nice post as usual. Love that cutty!
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I love this post! One of the best ones I have seen. Your pictures are stunning
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You guys are too nice. Thanks.
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Great story, nice set of photos, some pretty fish, and lots of nice scenery. Sounds like you covered a lot of ground to hit all those holes. Were you hiking, or did you drive from place to place?

I think you're a bit like Kochanut - you like to guard your honey-holes. Didn't mention (roughly) what area you were venturing?

Funny - your comment on the worms. I agree - I feel like I NEED to make some hookups on all them shiny lures that keep catching me. Almost seems cheating to come away with a catch from a worm, egg, burger. I'd rather see a spinner get slammed!

Really, the reason I didn't want to use worms was because of the size of fish being brought in by them. I didn't want to mortally hook anything that wasn't over 15" or so and that's what kept hitting the worm.

I agree though. It's great to get them on spinners when they're willing. Usually pretty fast action too.
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Beautiful colors on those trout. Thanks for sharing the awesome photography!
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