Dang. Between road closures and wildfire smoke, it's getting hard to access the lakes I was hoping to visit this summer. Last Tuesday we headed east on I-90 to check out a small lake that "someone" had suggested gets 80 Rainbows every other year and could be interesting. And just E of North Bend we ran into a cloud of smoke; for which my wife has little/no tolerance. We turned around.
The forecast for the following two days looked acceptable, so Wednesday we drove to the popular trailhead and headed up the valley of giant concrete columns. If you've ever been there, you know the place. It was a bit hot, and the trail is churned into dust, but things were looking OK.
Two lakes nestle in a high valley and there were day hikers all around the lower one, even midweek.
I'm kind of allergic to crowds in the backcountry so we hustled up to the higher lake and found a quite decent campsite looking down on the water.
We spent the afternoon lazily exploring about and I did some fishing. Nothing showed itself but I wasn't feeling very keyed in to the mission either.
We hoped to have enough energy the next day to scramble this nearby peak. I haven't been up that in 30+ years, and my perception of difficulty has changed.
Around dinnertime the upper lake started showing signs of life. There was a fish cruising and taking bugs off the surface. No hurry, no splashy rises, just big lazy slurps that displaced a lot of water.
I grabbed my fly rod and (delicious!) meal pouch, and clambered down to the shoreline to wait for an opportunity. The fish would show, disappear, wander off and reappear; but never seemed to be within range. At one point I watched a large adult stonefly swim clear from one shore to the other unmolested. It made enough commotion to attract any fish within sight, telling me that there just weren't many around.
I eventually gave up an headed off to bed. During the night I awoke to the smell of smoke and worried that we'd be bailing out in the AM. The next morning the air wasn't too bad... or all that great. I'm and early riser and so apparently was the big one. I posted up on a rock, fly rod in hand, and waited; hoping the fish would come my way and the smoke would go somewhere else.
Neither of which happened, and by the time I got back to camp my wife was packed and ready to leave. Skunked and smoked out.
I may go back to try that scramble. Bring fishing gear?
And since we don't allow useless fishing reports here, I had to get out to another local lake yesterday and redeem myself.
The forecast for the following two days looked acceptable, so Wednesday we drove to the popular trailhead and headed up the valley of giant concrete columns. If you've ever been there, you know the place. It was a bit hot, and the trail is churned into dust, but things were looking OK.
Two lakes nestle in a high valley and there were day hikers all around the lower one, even midweek.
I'm kind of allergic to crowds in the backcountry so we hustled up to the higher lake and found a quite decent campsite looking down on the water.
We spent the afternoon lazily exploring about and I did some fishing. Nothing showed itself but I wasn't feeling very keyed in to the mission either.
We hoped to have enough energy the next day to scramble this nearby peak. I haven't been up that in 30+ years, and my perception of difficulty has changed.
Around dinnertime the upper lake started showing signs of life. There was a fish cruising and taking bugs off the surface. No hurry, no splashy rises, just big lazy slurps that displaced a lot of water.
I grabbed my fly rod and (delicious!) meal pouch, and clambered down to the shoreline to wait for an opportunity. The fish would show, disappear, wander off and reappear; but never seemed to be within range. At one point I watched a large adult stonefly swim clear from one shore to the other unmolested. It made enough commotion to attract any fish within sight, telling me that there just weren't many around.
I eventually gave up an headed off to bed. During the night I awoke to the smell of smoke and worried that we'd be bailing out in the AM. The next morning the air wasn't too bad... or all that great. I'm and early riser and so apparently was the big one. I posted up on a rock, fly rod in hand, and waited; hoping the fish would come my way and the smoke would go somewhere else.
Neither of which happened, and by the time I got back to camp my wife was packed and ready to leave. Skunked and smoked out.
I may go back to try that scramble. Bring fishing gear?
And since we don't allow useless fishing reports here, I had to get out to another local lake yesterday and redeem myself.
