A few years back Krusty and I teamed up to form the Obscure Lakes Program. The purpose was to fish many of the general regs lakes that hold fish but are seldom fly fished. I have noted over the years that fly fishermen can be a bit uppity about the water they fish wanting to fish a name brand lake with guaranteed big fish. That of course leads to crowds like you see at Chopaka and many other fly fishing only lakes. I don't like crowds and feel that a lot of lakes have fish dying of old age that rarely-if ever-see an artificial fly. That is fertile ground for the OLP!
Today we visited one of those obscure general regs lakes, a small put-and-take lake with very limited shore access. I had pre-fished it last week and knew it had lots of fish, albeit small, but had hooked two that were far bigger than the average 10-11'' cutthroat. Having my partner along today we gave the lake a serious going over and had a near perfect day of fishing. We probably hooked close to 40-50 fish apiece and landed at least 25 of them apiece. The big surprise was that some of the fish were heavy up to 16'' and there was quite a variety. We caught some big rainbows along with a big brook trout and the surprise of the day was a beautiful tiger trout taken late in the day. As fishing outings go I would give this day an A+ as it checked every box for satisfaction and big grins!
Fishing was just off the charts at times with fish hitting right at the boat as we retrieved our flies to cast again. There were big numbers of fish, enough big fish to keep it interesting and 4 species for variety. And no one else on the lake-the best part of all. We have 3 more lakes on the radar for the immediate future but all are high elevation with bad roads that have probably been damaged by recent downpours. All hold cutthroat and should provide some good dry fly fishing. We'll get to those soon.
Start your own OLP, there are probably some fish near you that would love to attack a fly if they just got the chance.
Today we visited one of those obscure general regs lakes, a small put-and-take lake with very limited shore access. I had pre-fished it last week and knew it had lots of fish, albeit small, but had hooked two that were far bigger than the average 10-11'' cutthroat. Having my partner along today we gave the lake a serious going over and had a near perfect day of fishing. We probably hooked close to 40-50 fish apiece and landed at least 25 of them apiece. The big surprise was that some of the fish were heavy up to 16'' and there was quite a variety. We caught some big rainbows along with a big brook trout and the surprise of the day was a beautiful tiger trout taken late in the day. As fishing outings go I would give this day an A+ as it checked every box for satisfaction and big grins!
Fishing was just off the charts at times with fish hitting right at the boat as we retrieved our flies to cast again. There were big numbers of fish, enough big fish to keep it interesting and 4 species for variety. And no one else on the lake-the best part of all. We have 3 more lakes on the radar for the immediate future but all are high elevation with bad roads that have probably been damaged by recent downpours. All hold cutthroat and should provide some good dry fly fishing. We'll get to those soon.
Start your own OLP, there are probably some fish near you that would love to attack a fly if they just got the chance.