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Fishing this lake is not for the faint of heart. Or those with heart conditions, haha.
So fresh off Friday's salmon success, Saturday is hike up a mountain to chase unicorns day. My hiking partner is working graveyard so I was hoping to hit the trail at first light, but instead we hit the trail at 9:45. It's a fairly substantial drive out there.
Now my hiking partner doesn't look like she's an athlete ... but she's done triathlons while 75 pounds overweight. She has way more hiking experience than me, so I let her lead. Well, the pace she sets is death march. We hit Bear Creek in 30 minutes, trailhead at 50 minutes, then in 1 hour flat we're up the steep part. That's with stopping to take pictures of mushrooms and a frog probably 8 times, and me demanding a 2 minute break about 5 more times. I'm dying. She's laughing. 8 minutes later we're at Little Grieder, we poke around a bit, see some trout in the water, then pound out to Big Grieder. There is a couple up there camping, other than that we're alone.
My hiking partner is a veritable force of nature, and I am in better shape all around than anyone I know other than my friend who beats people up in a ring for a living, and honestly I'm not sure if even he could have kept up the pace she set. If you attempt this hike, do not plan to make it in 2 hours. Plus, on the lower stretch there are numerous scrambles through ravines, 1 in particular steep enough to be sketchy.
The trail, by my standards, was in awesome shape up to the end of Little Grieder. Then it gets sketchy. We pick our way half way down Big Grieder to where the trail pretty much ends, and there's a pretty large flat rock. Perfect for boat launching. Inflate the raft. We see trout rising. As we're loading the raft one rises 8 feet off the boat, looks at me, gives me the finger, and slowly swims away. Ok trout. It's on.
It's a little cloudy, a touch of wind to provide a solid drift, I start fishing, my hiking partner eats trail mix. About 10 minutes in I get a bite, but no hook set. Then BAM, multiple runs, pole tip pulled into water, really carries on .... no pic as this was not what I was here for and I can only post 2, but a 12.5 inch rainbow. Not skinny. Really solid fish. Time passes, next hookup a sweet 10 inch fish, super yellow, looked like legitimate half and half golden trout / rainbow ... but my hiking partner fumbles with the camera, it pops off the hook, bounces off the raft, lands in the water, I grab the tail but of course that slips out, and it's gone. You'll have to take my word for it, but the golden shine was entrancing. Way more so than the pics, which clearly are mixed fish. Again, a solid, healthy fish. These are not scrawny.
More time passes, I catch ... I think 3 more, one about 8-9 inches not really memorable, another about same size which is in the pic has a nice yellow shine, and another little guy in the pic which was less yellow but you can see the shadows of the big golden trout spots on his side. By this time we've drifted clear to the far end of the lake. Ugly clouds coming. Hiking partner not enthused about getting rained on, so I start rowing. Didn't even come close to beating rain. We're both wet. I let her off at the rock, try to keep fishing, it stops raining, but the wind totally stops and no more drift. I dont want to get too far away as there are clearly bears in the area (scratched trees on way in), no more bites. She yells it's getting late, it's 4:45. I paddle in, wow takes SO LONG to deflate boat through little tiny holes, we depart 5:15. Again at death march speed.
Thirty minutes we're back to the steep spot, 55 minutes down, we jog from trailhead back to bear creek saving 7 minutes, back to car at 7:15 in the dark.
I did better on the way down. Didn't have to stop and rest so much. Still, I couldn't believe she was leading a pace DOWN HILL that was causing me to be out of breath. That pace though, holy cow, hard on the joints going down. My knees were not pleased.
All in all, awesome hike, awesome to catch a fish, let alone more than one, let alone a huge rainbow and some with really solid golden trout markings. But did not get full breed golden, so .... I guess I'll have to go back and try again!
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from whorde.
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