Shenanigans!

Yes, I have been incredibly lax in my updates. Given the fact that all the places I want to fish are buried under feet of snow, I decided to do a large, all inclusive post covering the trips I made in the 2009 season after my last update.

I made many trips, and got to enjoy most of them with my girlfriend.

The first bit of High Country fishing that I have yet to catalog was my trip to visit family in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. I fished the Cimmaron River in New Mexico for a ton of nice sized wild Browns and Rainbows. It is a beautiful little tailwater fishery. Very lush surroundings and a thriving fishery. Despite its relatively diminutive size, it is purported to have 3,500 fish per mile! I fished EHC dries for the most part and had around 8-10 fish an hour for the 3 days I fished! What a blast!












After the Cimmaron, I fished a nearby lake for wild bows tailing in the shallows on Damsel nymphs. After hooking and breaking one off in the first 5 minutes, I spent another 5 hours searching for another bite. I eventually managed to get this one on a bugger and a sinking line.



After that, we headed to the mountains of southern Colorado to visit my hometown. I got to spend about an hour chasing these under appreciated beauties in moving water with a fly rod. Pretty sporty indeed!



The next day, I headed to the private property that my aunt and uncle care take for a wealthy Texan oil man. This property has two lakes that have BIG, MEAN, fly crushing Rainbows! Oh man, what a blast. These fish were stocked as fingerlings, and have grown to be very wild in their habits and appearance. In the 7 or 8 hours that I fished, I caught probably thirty fish on buggers and dries all between 17 and 22.5 inches. These fish are fat, and they fight like no other Rainbows I have ever seen. A complete blast watching these fish daintily sip a size 16 Elk Hair Caddis and then go ballistic when you drive the steel home!













That was it for my trip home to the Rockies, and man it was great. I love the California high country, but those mountains back home call to me on a daily basis and have a draw to them that is all their own.

I was gonna do a quick synopsis of the season and do it all in one post, but I can see now, as is often the case, that once I get started talking fishing, it gets really hard to do a cliff notes version, so I will do the recap in several posts for ease of browsing.

Desolation Wilderness Death March Jun 23rd

The plan for this mission was a a trip up to the trail less lake of Kalmia. Total of about 5 miles one way. The first 2.6 miles sees a vertical gain of about 2200 feet! Somewhere around mile 1.5 I pulled my groin. Last mile and a half is a completely trail less route that involves about 500ft of elevation gain, then the mile and a half of side hilling. Snow fields, wet granite , and big boulders. Some scrambling on all fours.

We basically sidehilled that entire mountain in the back ground. From out of frame to the right, all the way to that big bowl on the left. It was gnarly. Add in a pretty bad groin pull and it was pure Hell. Believe you me, this photo belies the scope and brutality of this part of the trek.

This is after we made our ascent and were beginning the long off trail side hill to the bowl.



We finally arrived to this gorgeous little gem, still surrounded by snow at the end of June.

I was in so much pain that I just laid down to rest while my buddy fished. This lake hasnt been air dropped since 2004 so we were hoping to find few, but large Volcano Creek Golden Trout. After being there an hour, and seeing nothing, we decide to pack back up and drop the 500 trail less feet of elevation down to Azure Lake.

Check out Tahoe in the background, some 2800 feet below! Gorgeous!

As we were tearing down our rods, I watch a 9" and 13" Golden go cruising by. Bastards! We of course re-rigged and tried to catch them, but to no avail. So we tried to get down to Azure. Here is a taste of what ALL of that off trail section looked like up close. Beautiful, but brutal.

Even after my rest, my injury was killing me, and really holding my buddy back. We were unable to drop down to Azure due to cliffs and decided it was not worth the huge amount of detour that would be neccessary, so we opted to fish Eagle Lake that was only about a mile away from the car. As soon as we reached the trail, with about 3 miles to the car, I told him to go ahead to Eagle Lake and leave me behind, to go at my own, miserably slow pace.

After a very very slow and tough hike, I made it out. No fish, no bites, plenty of pain, but nevertheless a good trip. Gorgeous, inhospitable country.