Wednesday, July 6, 2016

{Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders} Re: Mountain Lake Trout Fishing

I love this topic and if you want more info than you'll ever want, hit me up offline (thurgool@yahoo.com).  I'm afraid this post is too long....  Lots of other good comments already.  I have not fished the Wind Rivers (on the bucket list) but I make an annual trip to Utah's Uinta Mountains and they are a lot alike.  If I had one day left to fish before I die, it would be in a high-altitude Uinta Mountain lake.  The one I currently have at the top of my list has goldens but if you had asked me more than a year ago, it would have been one with grayling.  Both are over 10,000 feet up.

My backpacking rod is a 5-piece 8'3" 4-weight.  In those Western mountains, you are frequently dealing with wind, so think heavier for line rather than lighter.  My favorite line for that rod and trip is a slightly oversized 4-weight line.  A 5-weight rod/line may be even better.  And yes, I agree with John, think longer rod.  And yes, absolutely look at the inlets and outlets.  For the vast majority of those likes, you will only want a floating line, but I took a sink-tip last year for prospecting a deep dropoff and it worked as planned.

My high mountain box includes, among others, #14 lime trudes and renegades, #16/18 Griffiths gnats, #14/16 cinnamon/black ants, a range of beadhead pheasant tails, zebra midges and brassies and some #16/18 WD-40s.  In some lakes, you have to prospect deeper water (particularly mid-day).  In some, you are really staking out a nice spot and waiting for cruisers to come by, yes, even at mid-day.  Each lake and fishery has its own rhythm.  Bonneville cutthroat and grayling in particular seem to love to cruise around.  Sight casting to a cruising Bonnie or grayling is pure poetry.  Grayling have smaller mouths, so a #16 is as large as you will generally want (but I have caught them on #10s when I didn't expect them to be there).  If everything is playing on top, I will fish a solitary dry, but a few years ago I was completely hooked on dropping an olive WD-40 off the bend of a lime trude on about 18 inches of tippet.  Soon, everyone in my party used the same combo.

Although I have generally found grayling to prefer dries, when I was in Utah last month, I found a lake filled with 8- or 9-inch grayling and a light chop on the lake.  A few grayling came up and took a whack at a dry, but I only hooked one.  Switched to a beadhead under an indicator and let the wind chop provide the action and found plenty of players.  And 6-feet from shore (right at a dropoff) was far more productive than any further out.  I do think grayling and cutties prefer the shoreline.

Two years ago, I hiked to a lake at 11,000 feet filled with oversize brook trout that were smashing blue damselflies on top.  All my damselflies were 2,000 miles away in Virginia in my smallmouth box but I found willing players on the biggest #10 black gnat wet flies I had with me.  When I went back last year to that same lake, I had #10 blue foam damselfly dries and #8 olive damselfly nymphs and cracked that lake's code.  You can bet I will never hike to a high mountain lake without them again.

You will likely be in an area with various lakes within short hikes.  Oftentimes, switching to a different lake is the difference.

Something else you may not otherwise think of:  altitude sickness.  Although I grew up in Utah, I am now a sea-level Virginian and I find that I encounter the effects at 10,000 feet and above.  With me, it starts with a headache and progresses to vomiting.  The last couple of years, I have done much better hiking up to fish, but hiking down below 10,000 feet to sleep.  And drink lots.  More than you think you need to.  Water and Gatorade--but minimize caffeine.  Last year, I at least made it deeper into the afternoon and even evening before I had to descend due to the effects of altitude.  I understand that altitude affects everyone differently, but for me, the more north I get from 40, the more acute my symptoms have become.  And know that you will sunburn more easily.

This may be more (and the wrong kind of) info than you wanted, but there are a few thoughts.

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