Enough with the sightseeing, we had some fishing to do! We quickly donned our waders, strung up our fly rods, consulted with Steve on fly choices and headed for the lake some 400 yards away.
As we headed for the lake, Steve started to set up camp.
Steve said some fish would be cruising the shoreline and might take a dry fly, but most fish would be deeper and that bead-head nymphs under a strike indicator would be most productive. MS was first to catch a Golden Trout, a small female that had an overall azure blue tint to the entire fish. It didn’t look much like the Golden Trout that AB had caught a couple months earlier in the Kern Valley of California. Apparently the fish had taken on the color of the lake water, as fish often do, as a method of camouflage.
MS also caught the second fish, and the third, forth, fifth and sixth! Several of them were male Golden Trout and they were brightly colored just like their California cousins.
We had to remind MS that "Wyoming Cutt Slam" rules were in force for this trip. The YG use "Cutt Slam" rules when we’re after a new species. Simply; after an angler catches a new species, he’s to "holster" his fly rod and move to an "assist" role, helping one of the other YG members by scouting fish, netting, photographing, etc. until all members have caught the new species…..then it’s back to every man for himself. Since MS wasn’t able to come on the ’04 Wyoming Cutt Slam trip he might have missed the "rules" session. It didn’t take too long before each of the YG members had caught their first Canadian Golden trout, followed by several more. Yahoo!!! Oddly enough, after MS was released from the "penalty-box" his hot hand went cold. Everyone was catching fish except for Mike, which he let us know about in no uncertain terms. But it wasn’t too long before he was catching them again.
The fish were beautiful; golden in color, a large red stripe down the lateral line, parr marks, large black spots on the tail, bright red gill plates, white tipped fins and a bright orange/red belly. Spectacular!
About that time Steve walked down to the lake to see how we were doing and to let us know that lunch was ready. We told him that we’d caught about 20+ Golden Trout. He said, "HOW MANY?", "Do you guys know that many people come up here and only catch one or two trout, some don’t catch any!"
It was hard, but we stopped fishing and hiked back to camp for lunch. Steve prepared sandwiches, brownies, salads, and more for our lunch this day - everything tasted great!!.......and the view from our camp chairs was unbelievable. MS spotted a few mountain goats on the surrounding ledges and there were goat tracks in the mud near the lake.
We asked Steve about Grizzly Bears in the area? He said there were definitely many in the area, but they seldom come to this altitude due to the lack of food…..although, he added, they do come over these ridges when they’re migrating from one area to another.
After lunch we hiked around the area, looking at the falls from the upper lake. GK and Steve hiked to the far end of the lake to peer over the 900’ falls while the rest of the Gang returned to the lake for more fishing.
We were all trying different flies in the afternoon and had caught several fish on dry flies. The YG had also commissioned YG member and Master Fly Tier, Jeff Morgan (see 2004 (or was it ’03) trip), (www.donnerundblitzenflies.com) (check Jeff’s website to assure it’s correct) to tie us some special flies that we’d asked him to design for high altitude alpine lakes. Jeff researched the types of insects that would be around a high mountain lake in late August and tied each of us a couple dozen interesting & unusual flies consisting of a half-dozen patterns. Beetles, white chronomids, emergers, google-eyed bugs, (Get full info on Jeff’s flies from fly box) All the patterns caught fish and I’m sure these fish had never seen these patterns before. By the end of the day we’d caught over 50 of these beautiful fish.
Oddly enough, Alberta fishing regulations allow a person to take one of these beautiful fish….as long as it is 14" or more. Personally I can’t imagine why anyone would want to take one of these rare fish. If it’s a trophy you want for the wall, taxidermists now days can make a beautiful replica from a photograph and if it’s trout you want to eat, well hell, there’s lots of rainbows in the lower rivers, why eat a fish from a stock where only a thousand exist?
There were three fishers at the lake prior to our trip. Their copter picked them up shortly after we arrived. We heard a story that one of the men in their party caught and killed a Golden Trout, then showed it to a guide and asked him if he thought it was 14"? No….was the answer, more like 10". When the guide (this party didn’t have a guide) returned to the helipad, he contacted a Canadian Fisheries Officer, who was waiting for the party when their chopper landed. Speculation was that the fine might be $500 or more…….and confiscation of all the anglers gear! Nothing to mess with….don’t be breaking the law, especially when you’re the guest of a foreign country! I can’t say that I feel bad for the angler, he should have known better. Ok, Ok, I’m off my conservation soapbox.
We returned to camp where Steve had prepared a wonderful dinner of Pasta and Chicken with salads and brownies for dessert. It would have been great to celebrate catching our first Canadian Golden Trout with a drink…..but the bottles were tossed out during the trying to "make weight" process.
During dinner the conversation turned to Canadian politics, especially the Province of Quebec. Seems the Quebec-ian’s (being of French decent) feel that they are not respected in Canada, even though every sign and can label in Canada is in two languages, English & French. (observation: must be quite an extra expense to do that) The Quebec-ian’s are so upset that they have voted to secede from Canada and become a sovereign country. (Humm….you’d think they’d check U.S. history about the South, didn’t turn out too well for them.) Apparently France has indicated support for the secession and has vowed to support their effort. Canadians are quick to remind Quebec that if they secede they also get to take their share of Canadian National debt with them. It seems that the Western Provinces generate a large portion of the Canadian income with mining, fishing, logging, natural gas, oil and tourism; while Quebec seems to continually vote to shorten the workweek and increase government support programs. Some residents of BC & Alberta are so disgusted with Quebec’s antics that they are ready to vote to become the 51st & 52nd States of the United States!! Wow, I’d vote for that! BC & Alberta are awesome Provinces; the U.S. would be lucky to have them join us but given some of our US approaches to conservation we might just screw them up – maybe overall it is better the way it is although all things being equal (and they never are!) the YG would welcome BC and Alberta to the party!!
Exhausted and elated we headed for our tents. GK & AB shared a two-man tent while the rest of the group had their own smaller tents. The tents were pitched on rock, so all were glad that we’d brought bed pads, except for AM who’s air-filled unit decided to leak during the night, which left him sleeping on jagged rocks all night. The weather was also changing, a front moved thru and the wind blew….blew hard…all night. The tents would flap and shake violently, then the wind would stop…..Oh, it’s finally quit….then it would blow again, even harder. Some slept pretty well, others caught catnaps between squalls. The temperatures dropped into the low 30’s overnight and the next day was cool and overcast.