Fishing blog: Tales of angling adventures from around the world
Welcome to our fish blog! Here you can read more sage advice from anglers around the world. This is the place for news, tips and non-fiction fish tales from mountain lakes to distant beaches. Please feel free to comment and join in on the conversations and share some fish tales of your own!
Crystal Lake
Yesterday Kimball hiked and fished Crystal Lake, elevation 11,520’, in Rocky Mountain National Park. It was a strenuous hike starting out at 7AM and returning at 7PM. She fished Lawn Lake on the way back down the trail. The weather was beautiful but by the end of the day it started to rain on the way out. Wildlife was in abundance; snowshoe hares, marmots, squirrels and a startled big buck with velvet antlers almost ran her over on the trail.
Lawn Lake
She only spent an hour at Crystal because the clouds started building and not wanting to be caught above timberline with lightning. Hopping
across the outlet stream Kim fished from some big rocks high above the lake. When the sun
came out from behind the clouds one could see deep into the crystal-clear lake. Kim saw just a few fish and couldn’t get any takers with her flies but the fish that she saw were huge. They looked to be in the 20” range and the shape of a football. One greenback was totally red, resembling a salmon. Just as Kim was leaving the lake a pack of coyotes sounded off high
Looking down on Lawn Lake from Crystal trail
above the lake, up on the tundra, and echoed their cry throughout the valley. It was awesome to hear!
When Kimball hiked back down to Lawn Lake, she noticed lots of fish rising. Using her fly rod, she caught
many with a parachute Adams, and the spinning rod fly and bubble technique produced several greenbacks on a parachute Adams and black woolly bugger. The fish that were caught ranged between 6” and 14”, most being 12”.
The hike back to the trailhead was LONG and it was raining a good part of the way, but it had been an incredible day for hiking and fishing and seeing lots of wildlife.
Waterfalls and wildflowers
Part of the Crystal Lake trail
On Thursday, August 9, I hiked to Ouzel Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. I was interested in finding out how the greenback cutthroat trout population was faring. Les and I helped, many years ago, in taking out the brook trout in the outlet stream in preparation of introducing the greenbacks into the lake.
I hiked around to the inlet area and fished there. The cruising shoreline trout were very spooky and hard to fish with my flyrod, so I set up my spinning rod rigged with a fly and bubble. This allowed me to cast far out into the lake. These fish would hit everything that I presented to them; parachute Adams, grasshopper, ant.
I did not catch a single greenback! All of the fish were brook trout, all about 10”. They were beautiful, healthy fish. So, even though the park has put up signs at the lake saying that this is a greenback lake and is managed as such, there doesn’t seem to be anything but brook trout now.
On the way back to the trailhead, I fished the creek below Calypso Cascades and caught only small brookies.
It was a gorgeous day for a hike, very warm with high cumulus clouds and no rain and a bunch of hungry brook trout. What more could one ask for!
Brook trout in Ouzel Lake
Ouzel Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park
We like waterfront camping for the fishing and the view. Bella likes it for the WATER!
Holding Asher Beery, our littlest grandson, was the highlight of MY trip!! 
Greenback cutthroat trout
Odessa Lake
Fern Lake
Lake Helene
Yesterday Kimball hiked to Odessa and Fern Lakes starting at Bear Lake. It was a beautiful early morning hike and the views were spectacular from the cliffs overlooking Odessa. The hike was strenuous (10.5 miles) but well worth the effort for the opportunity to catch and release beautiful greenback cutthroat trout in these lakes. Few fish were cruising the shallows in Odessa, so after no luck with the fly rod she changed to the spinning rod rigged with a fly and bubble. The fish were rising far out into the lake and she was able to reach them with this rig. Several 13″ fish and a few smaller ones were caught on a parachute Adams and one larger fish broke the tippet while using a green woolly bugger.
While at Odessa, Kimball met some young boys trying to fish with lures with no results. She educated them on the fly and bubble technique and later met them at Fern and let them use her spinning rod to try their luck. They all got several strikes but the youngest boy caught his first fish EVER!
At Fern Lake the fly rod worked well casting a flying ant just past the drop off, fished from the grassy area on the east side of the lake. The fly and bubble fished far out into the lake and rigged with a parachute Adams, got a strike and a fish on almost every cast. They would first hit the bubble as it landed in the lake, then they’d go for the fly. The greenbacks in Fern were smaller than the ones in Odessa.
The long, steep, rocky down hill hike out to the trailhead was tough on the feet and knees. The mile walk from the trailhead to the shuttle bus stop was a killer at the end of a long day, and it didn’t help that the mosquitoes came out in full force right then.
It was a beautiful and fun day!
Kim Beery and Les Beery hiked up to their favorite lake in RMNP for some good fishing in a hybrid trout population produced from rainbow and cutthroat trout stocking decades ago. The result is today, a sturdy, wild population of beautiful fish in a near perfect habitat. While these cuttbows usually feed on tiny flies, we found they attacked our small flying ant patterns with enthusiasm.
