High Country Paradise

Unfettered access to the high country has finally arrived! A trip in with Floyd and his friend Joe to kick off the back country lake season will be a memorable one for a while to come. There are still a few drifts to hike over, but that is to be expected this time of year. The first fish of the day was a beautiful cutthroat that came up and took a beetle pattern. After that almost all the fish were on midges as droppers or under an indicator. There were adult midges everywhere in the air. I managed to find my first golden trout of the season on a lake I had all to myself. This was odd as it seemed to be the busiest day of the year at the trail head. Multiple large groups of hikers were on the trails, with some of them carrying rods. Thankfully, they were headed to other destinations and only a few other fisherman were briefly around the lakes we targeted. The afternoon and evening were filled with feisty brook trout and another nice cutthroat came to hand. Joe caught his first cutthroat ever which was a great moment and nice surprise for him. Today was everything you could want from a high country trip with beautiful weather, cool temperatures, wildflowers starting to bloom, cooperative trout and on occasion, some actual solitude.