Sunday, July 28, 2013

Boulder Mountain

(Written by Jason Gruber)

The glorious Boulder Mountain fish trip had arrived.  The plan was to head out Wednesday afternoon after work.  There were four of us going: Trevor Cook, Parker Redding, and Chris McGinnis.  A couple weeks before the trip we had a "meeting" to determine which lakes/region to hit up in the Boulder Mountains as well as food and so forth.  The night before we left, we hit up Walmart and grabbed the food for the trip.  Well, the next day Parker called and he was SICK!!! I couldn't believe it.  He had been throwing up all night, still felt sick, and was super sick.  After many calls and as much peer pressure as I felt comfortable dealing out, Parker still decided not to come out with us that night.  He decided he would come out the next morning if he was feeling better.


So, T, Chris and I headed out.  Chris's father in law let him use two four wheelers as well as his truck, which was really generous.  So we had a four wheeler for each person, and left the fourth behind since Parker wasn't coming out that night.  

Along the way we stopped and had some awesome burgers at a little burger joint in Salina.  Since none of us had been to the Boulders before, as we went through the town of Torrey we stopped and grabbed a map.  Well, after searching for quite some time for a "trail head" we think we had found it and since it was late, we just decided to camp at the trail head.  Early in the morning, we decided to take the four wheelers and explore the trail to see if it was good enough for the truck to go on it.  Well, long story short it was the wrong trail, so we went back to another trail and luckily it was the right one.  We quickly packed up the four wheelers with our fishing gear and float tubes, and set off to get our fishing on! 

We came across Beaver Dam first, and it was CRAZY windy.  There was one other guy out on the lake, and we figured if he could do it, then we could.  The lake looked amazing and we were all stoked.  It started out pretty slow, but then after trying some different patterns, we finally caught on to what the fishies wanted.  We caught some great brookies and splake - two fish species which I hadn't caught before.  We stayed up there for a while, but T discovered he had a decent sized leak in his waders...so he got pretty cold.  





That night for dinner we had some awesome tin foils with steak, and instant mashed potatoes.  The plan for the next day was to hit up a lake next to Beaver Dam, called Fish Creek.  

We didn't get up too early, since we wanted to have a nice breakfast.  We had some delicious pancakes, bacon, eggs, and orange juice.  I forgot to mention that the trail we took on the four wheelers was amazing.  It was quite rugged and steep through areas and we crossed through streams a couple of times.  The scenery and landscape in the Boulders is beautiful.

Fish Creek ended up being a really fun lake to fish, and there was hardly any wind all day.  In the middle of it there is a sort of island that is very small, but big enough to get off of the float tube and stand ( probably about the size of a large room in a home).  I went straight for the island and ended up having pretty good luck.  I caught some more splake and also some cutthroats.  Trevor and Chris fished along the edge of the lake for the first bit, but didn't have much luck, so they came over by the island.  We fished until about 2 PM until we stopped for lunch.  We had packed some bratwurst in a small cooler and left it on shore.  We made a small fire, found some sticks and roasted the brats.  Even though we only brought mustard and buns, they tasted amazing!!! 




The island



The rest of the afternoon we stayed at Fish creek and continued to do quite well.  Around 6 PM, Chris noticed some other fishermen had started using dry flys and appeared to be catching even more fish than we were.  Chris and Trevor started dry flying and quickly began to catch fish!  Being relatively new to fly fishing, I hadn't fished much yet with dry flies so I was a little hesitant since my streamers and scuds seemed to be quite effective.  Well, after Chris and Trevor started catching more fish, I quickly switched it up, and all three of us started catching even more fish.  Fishing with dry flies is amazing.  Towards the end, I caught an awesome tiger trout about a foot off the shore.  We kept it, along with two other fish for our fish fry that night.  Trevor filleted all three fish in about a minute, and we were off back down the mountain to our camp site.  He also did his special seasoning and breading of the fish. We had fish and chips - it was delicious.

Splake

T and a tiger trout


We debated a lot about where to fish the next day, since we had had good luck with the previous two spots.  We wanted to try out a lake called Blind lake, but we knew we had to hike to it, and had no idea how good the fishing would be.  After much deliberation, we decided to get up early the next morning and fish Blind lake.  

The hike to Blind Lake was about 25 or 30 minutes.  To make a long story short ( and a kind of a windy one) Blind lake ended up being a bust.  We stayed for about an hour and a half, and then decided to make our way back down to Fish Creek.  Blind lake was pretty, much bigger than the previous two lakes, but for whatever reason, we only caught three fish.  

Fish Creek ended up being great again.  It was a little windy, but we decided to start off with dry flying again because it was so much fun, and very effective.  Sure enough, the fish were still interested.  The island ended up being amazing.  Trevor and I fished the island while Chris stayed near the far shoreline.  Chris ended up catching a monster Tiger...approaching 20+ inches (Biggest fish of the trip).  We met some cool guys at the island, who apparently had an even more effective dry fly, because for every fish we caught they would catch 5!  I couldn't resist, so I kicked my way over and asked what the heck they were using.  The guy was nice and pulled out the most simple looking dry fly ever and gave it to me.  While this was happening the wind was strong and it was apparent that a storm was coming in.  The two guys we met decided to scram.  We weren't too far behind, but before we knew it, there was rain....then snow! Yes, SNOW!  We couldn't believe it was snowing on us in June, not to mention there was a lot of thunder and lightning.  We booked it to the shore, and of course by the time we got to shore, it had pretty much ended.  But, it was early afternoon, and we figured we should probably call it quits so we could get home at a decent hour.  I was resisting leaving so soon, but it made sense. (I just wanted to try out the new fly that I was given)

(Sadly, no pictures the third day because our camera fell in the water, and my GoPro ran out of battery the first day)

The trip ended up being really really fun and the fishing was great.  Parker ended up not making it up, as his sickness lasted through the weekend.  He was mad to say the least.  We all hope to make it back up possibly this fall time.  We will see!

1 comment:

  1. Those names sound like characters from a book! So funny. Sounds like a fun trip :)

    ReplyDelete