05-29-2012, 02:06 PM
After posting my colors and honoring the memory of those who served the rest of us, and the cause of freedom, daughter and I headed to Trial Lake yesterday morning. Hadn't been there since I was a kid. Weather was cold, there was snow and ice on the ground at 9000+ feet.
Fishing, however, was not just good, but absolutely hot for typical high mountain lakes smaller rainbows. A couple had cutthroat markings but other than that looked just like rainbows, pink stripe and everything. Didn't measure but I think they were all in the 10-11" range. They were loving worms floating 18" or so off the bottom. Couldn't keep them off. Lost track of how many we released, kept 3 for lunch today. Also caught one on a Jakes. We were fishing from shore just up from the dam.
The water's pretty high, so a lot of the shoreline that ordinarily wouldn't be, is flooded. There's a big ol' log in the water paralleling the shoreline. The ground slopes so the water is anything from a few inches to a few feet deep where this log was. There are a few baby trout living under that log. I had a worm on one rod and a lure on the other one, but a fish hit my worm so I put the other one down and the lure was just sitting there in a few inches of water. After I got my other rod squared away I picked up my lure rod to finish reeling it up and cast it again, and as the lure was reeling up past this log this li'l 4 or 5 inch trout came dashing out from under the log to try to grab it. Happened a few times with different fish. Was kinda funny.
Most of the fish are anything but fat, winter's been a little hard on 'em I guess. I pulled plenty of pine needles and even a piece of broken glass (!!!) out of the stomachs when I cleaned them. Must have been hungry.
Daughter and I got tired of unhooking li'l rainbows, we were hoping for brookies, so we went back down to the creek. Not a nibble up high, but as we were leaving we stopped lower down and I lost two.
Trial lake was the hottest fishing I've had for awhile. It'd be a great place to take the younger crowd right now, enough fish to not lose interest for sure.
(PS--you have to have a "recreation pass" from the Forest Service to park a vehicle anywhere in this area. It's $6 for a 3-day pass. Utah state parks pass does NOT work for this. And...I learned the hard way...they do not take credit cards. It's CASH--bills--or check, only.)
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Fishing, however, was not just good, but absolutely hot for typical high mountain lakes smaller rainbows. A couple had cutthroat markings but other than that looked just like rainbows, pink stripe and everything. Didn't measure but I think they were all in the 10-11" range. They were loving worms floating 18" or so off the bottom. Couldn't keep them off. Lost track of how many we released, kept 3 for lunch today. Also caught one on a Jakes. We were fishing from shore just up from the dam.
The water's pretty high, so a lot of the shoreline that ordinarily wouldn't be, is flooded. There's a big ol' log in the water paralleling the shoreline. The ground slopes so the water is anything from a few inches to a few feet deep where this log was. There are a few baby trout living under that log. I had a worm on one rod and a lure on the other one, but a fish hit my worm so I put the other one down and the lure was just sitting there in a few inches of water. After I got my other rod squared away I picked up my lure rod to finish reeling it up and cast it again, and as the lure was reeling up past this log this li'l 4 or 5 inch trout came dashing out from under the log to try to grab it. Happened a few times with different fish. Was kinda funny.
Most of the fish are anything but fat, winter's been a little hard on 'em I guess. I pulled plenty of pine needles and even a piece of broken glass (!!!) out of the stomachs when I cleaned them. Must have been hungry.
Daughter and I got tired of unhooking li'l rainbows, we were hoping for brookies, so we went back down to the creek. Not a nibble up high, but as we were leaving we stopped lower down and I lost two.
Trial lake was the hottest fishing I've had for awhile. It'd be a great place to take the younger crowd right now, enough fish to not lose interest for sure.
(PS--you have to have a "recreation pass" from the Forest Service to park a vehicle anywhere in this area. It's $6 for a 3-day pass. Utah state parks pass does NOT work for this. And...I learned the hard way...they do not take credit cards. It's CASH--bills--or check, only.)
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