High Country Lakes

I met up with Jamie (slowdown), Jacob (lostlure), Jim (Silent_Light) and Jim's son, Sam, to head out to the high country for some cutthroats. The high country above Boulder (Indian Peaks) is still covered in snow and its lakes are still iced over, so we headed West in order to access some Southern facing lakes.

This was my first trip to lakes above tree line so I was psyched. The lakes that are 12,000 ft. and higher tend to have bigger cutts and this place was no exception. The upper lake was filled with brightly colored cruising bruisers (why Cameron, what an elegant alliteration) that incidentally had very little interest in eating our flies. Out of the five of us there was only a single cutty landed in the roughly 6 hours we were there, and there was no shortage of experience among us.

However, the beauty of the location trumped the fishing by a long shot and made the experience one I will never forget. I found myself repeatedly gawking at the panoramic vista surrounding the lake. The beauty was overwhelming at times and left me trying to convince myself that I was, in fact, really there.

I accidentally left my camera in the truck when I jumped into Jamie's ride. Luckily, Jamie and Jim brought their cameras and took some awesome photos. Some of the photos are not full quality due to file size optimization for sending through email.

The group making our way through the mountains

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Jamie and I broke ahead and took this photo of Jim and Jacob from way above. They are the specs in the grass just below the snow and scree.
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Some scenery(click to zoom)

A quiet moment of fishing(click to zoom)

Some critters:
Yellow Bellied Marmot

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Rocky Mountain Chipmunk(click to zoom)

Pika

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The sole cutty (duped by Jamie).(click to zoom)

After leaving the lakes we pulled over on a small creek and took our pent-up angler anguish out on some innocent brookies. Catching the 4-6 inch babies felt a lot better than it should have. Jamie and I both agreed that the creek evoked some nostalgia of fishing the tight runs in Virginia.

Jim and Jamie, thanks for the great job with the photos!