Well it has been a long time since I have posted to this thread, but the falling snow brings a sense of nostalgia for the warm blissful days of summer. Unfortunately this year was a short year to begin with for my kind of wandering and fishing. The snow hung on untill late june in the high country which limited our summer access, and July found me with a minor health issue that limited my hiking ability..... We still covered a bit of ground though to my doctors annoyance......
As I sorted through the years photo's I decided to just offer a brief glimpse of a year in passing....... But first we offer kudos to my intrepid girls following me through rain and ice, over rocks and through the mud......Even through dangerous country they put their faith in me and the wood/mountain lore they have learned on my heels. There aren't to many 7 year old girls (let alone when she was only 3
) I would trust crossing snowfields and raging streams.. Not many 28 year old women that would follow me either.......
It's kind of odd I realize. Every year I see dozens of deer, even occasionally get close enough to nearly touch them.....we have jumped bobcat, bear, owls, all sorts of small critters and birds.....Zaira and I have also dedicated ourselves to catching every reptile and amphibian we can find.....yet I have never seen an Elk on this side of the cascades......sometimes out on the peninsula but never on Steven's Pass.....untill this year
Any way tis the fishing thread....so first lets give you your fish...... only 3 though or I will fill up a page or three
ohh yeah I forgot it's about the trout not the Orca's I got to watch...
And we also had us a lesson on fish development...of course they were all released after a bit. We typically stop whatever we are doing and have a imprompto lesson about critters we bump into.....
I tried to hit a few new lakes this year... however as I mentioned earlier I didn't cover all that m,uch ground. Typically my hiking boots average between 100-200 miles in a year depending on what else is going on.....this year I barely broke 50..... Here's a couple new lakes and a section or two of stream though and perhaps a few I have posted before...
Lake Dorothy
- 2 visits, 3 small rainbow total :thumbdwn:
Boardman lake
-1 visit, 5 brookey's, varrying 4-7"
Lake Elizabeth
3 visits, 2 rainbow 8"-9"
:thumbdwn:
Trout Lake
2 visits, caught 1 Brookey 7" saw dozens swimming around :fire:
White Chuck River
I camped by this section of stream just before a major wash out / road closure...It was spring the first time and I wet a fly but to no avail. The water is very fast in most places.....shallow with occasional DEEP pockets and many small ones. Very difficult to fish with the huge boulders...narrow stream....and fast water.
I visited again in late july with the fly rod and decided to give it another try really early one morning.....I fished til 1 that afternoon non-stop. By the end of the day I was wet up to my arm pits and grinning from ear to ear. I had caught 14 small fish between 3-5", 3 mid size 6-7", and one big sucker (well at least for that water) It actually made me fall off my precarious perch on a wet boulder.....Kinda like a mild version of "A River Runs Through It" There is no way in hell I was letting him get under a boulder or into really fast water so I just went in after it and chased the little pup through the river. When I finally caught him I had no good way to measure him. but his head laying in my hand his tail came up to my bicept....very pretty rainbow.......And he still lives in that water for next year
:
I visited a couple more times and caught lots of little guys.....I really like this stream, but I have also spotted many many many mountain lion tracks so it is a good stretch of stream to have a .38 in a shoulder holster
And of course since I spend as much of my time on the ridgelines here's a couple local mountains for y'all. A couple should be easy to name....
Untill next time.......
