Evening In The Mountains

I had some chores and errands to do on Saturday morning. After finishing up, I loaded the car with my high country gear and a nice dinner to hit mid-afternoon and evening fishing in the mountains. No one else was around today so this was a solo expedition. I found the trailhead a little crowded with cars but most were hikers. The fisherman that were in for the morning were either streaming out down the trail when I was going in, or were at the first easy lake on the trail that I tend to skip over every trip. I had new water on my mind that was relatively close to many lakes I had fished in the past, but I had never ventured over to this particular body of water. Its a pretty spot with plenty of brook trout, some sizable for the altitude. I found them willing to smash a beetle as well as the trailing adams and had a ball working the top water. Some of the takes were the classic brook trout leap taking the fly on the way back down into the water. Obviously, I missed a few of these fish with an early hook set. Its such a neat maneuver on their part. I haven't seen so many fish trying it since my last trip to the Beartooths a few years ago. After taking some nice brook trout I moved on to the cutthroat/golden lake that was nearby but did not see any activity. The wind was coming up and a huge storm seemed to be bearing down on me. The temperature dropped quickly and I donned both my fleece and shell layers to buffer the cold and wind. After suiting up in appropriate clothing, I got a little lower to another favorite lake in case lightning started to appear. Thankfully, the storm swirled around me without a single drop of rain. I set up my high country beer cooler, and fished for a little while before dinner taking some nice brookies and finally breaking off the beetle and adams on various fish. They seemed to like the royal wulff after the wind laid down a bit and I managed to have a nice dinner sandwich with a mountain stream cooled Fat Tire. Finally breaking off the royal wulff on another violent take, I switched to a black bugger and found a couple more fish subsurface before the hike out in the dusky dark. Arriving home I found that town had taken the brunt of the storm I narrowly avoided with heavy rain and hail. Dinner lake side while watching trout work the water made for a perfect evening in the high country.