Hidden Lakes fishing: Better than I can make up

Published 2:38 pm Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Exceeding expectations is a big phrase in business these days that most fail to accomplish.

When that happens to me in fishing, I’m pretty shocked because my fishing expectations are remarkably high.

But the fishing the Hidden Lakes chain of lakes (also includes Cougar) was so good last week that I am really glad I walked the 16 miles over two mountain passes.

If I had made this stuff up, I would have toned it down more than a few notches because I would have known that nobody would believe it.

I’ve fished the hidden lakes for a dozen years or so and have caught some big fish. But this year was unusually stellar.

I went with friends Jim Haley and Chuck Morrison. Jim didn’t bring a float tube, so fishing was very difficult for him. Most of the fish were well off the shore in very deep water.

But Chuck and I caught 15 to 20 fish a day nearly all of them between 17 to 24 inches. The biggest was 26 inches. They were mostly rainbow trout, with a few cutthroat and even fewer bull trout.

(I’ve got some photos of Chuck and some fish in the camera. We’ll show them tomorrow.)

The fish were so fat it was hard to find a couple small enough to fit into a very large frying pan and cook it on a backpacking stove. The first time we tried to cook a 24 inches it turned out looking like sushi.

On the last day, we fished nearly all day without landing two 15 or 16-inchers (the maximum size not to spill out of the pan) until the end, when we had headed toward shore and were giving up. Chuck and I each caught one on our last cast and had a double.

The lakes were filled with snowmelt, but not too cold. My rule of fishing high mountain lakes using any fly as long has it was in the color black seemed to work well. I mostly used a black leech pattern.

Chuck favored a woolley bugger pattern called a thin mint, which has a black, brown and olive marabou tail and brown body and hackle.

The fish were feisty, with many jumping multiple times and spitting the hook back in our faces.

We just walked out yesterday and I found myself craving a diet coke (which I had in the car) and what the character called Elaine on Seinfeld used to refer to as a big salad.

After I immediately downed the Coke, we went to a brew pub in Winthrop and settled for a side salad topped off with a buffalo burger and a pint of IPA. And we sat at a chair and table outside along the river.

The chair and table exceeded my dining expectations. But of course I’d just spent the last week sitting on either a log or a rock.