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“Here's my routine for extended trips. The one thing that unites everything here is that there is no cooking beyond boiling water:^^^^Breakfast–freeze dried precooked eggs. (precooked is important here)^^freeze dried sausage patties^^freeze dried applesauce^^^^We alternate the above with granola and applesauce. We either package one serving of granola with powdered milk so it is a just add water serving, or eat granola bars.^^^^Lunch: Peanut butter and Rye Crisp with bacon bits and 4 cookies alternating with a hot soup lunch. One of those large cups. We normally repackage the contents and make it in a cup.^^4 cookies.^^^^Dinner: Nuts (different nuts every night) and an ounce of alchohol (Everclear or 151 rum) mixed with Kool-Aid for a predinner appetizer.^^A soup packet (Cup-a-Soup)^^Freeze dried dinner. ^^4 cookies or instant pudding.”
“Virtually no high lakes in the state have truly native populations. Many of the introduced populations are now naturally reproducing. The few that do have native fish are large valley bottom lakes like the Hidden Lakes, Black, Waptus, and Packwood. All the fish in Olympic Mountain high lakes were introduced. Some were planted by Trail Blazers, but that has never been a primary area for the club and all current stocking there is done by the WDFW using helicopters.”
I definitely don’t have a better answer. I think your answer is excellent. I tend to have some lures with treble hooks and some with single in my tackle box. The ones with trebles are there, more often then not, because I was throwing the lure in at the last minute and hadn’t remembered to change the hook, not because I wanted the treble hook on. I always regret having it on when it mangles a fish.
I have found, however, that single, barbless hooks are far less effective at hooking fish when trolling from a raft, where I have to hold the rod between my legs, for rainbows. They hit the lure, come out of the water and immediately throw the hook.
Glad to have you here ltlcleo. I’m a west Sounder living here in Silverdale.”
There is no easy, and no short answer to your questions. If you are catching a bunch of small fish it is possible, even likely, that there are no big fish in the lake. If a lake has fish that are naturally reproducing too efficiently they will become skinny and large headed when they sexually mature at age 3 or 4. There are too many fish for the food supply and they stop growing longer and put all their energy into producing gametes. In lakes with stunted populations you will catch small ones one after another and there will be no large ones in the lake.
Sometimes, you will be in a situation where there is a large population of recently planted fish, and a few large hold overs. Or, perhaps, more frequent stocking or limited natural reproduction such that there are fish of a range of sizes. Every lake is different and I can think of a myriad of contradictory examples to any generalization I make, but here goes anyway. Often the big ones will be down deep. I’ve been to lakes where fish were rising around the shore and fishing was decent. The easy thing to do would be to fish to the rising fish all around the shore. In one particularly good example of this situation I abandoned the 12-13″ fish along the shore and went deep off a rock slide. I worked one spot I liked for 45 minutes with no luck until I figured out the proper depth and technique. I had a strike or fish on 8 of the following 10 casts with the smallest fish going 17″. The technique is to go deep with a reasonably heavy spoon like a 1/4 oz Krocodile and retrieve very, very slowly. Find the bottom by counting how long it takes to sink and time the start of your retrieve on subsequent casts to start just barely off the bottom. Rock slides are particularly productive locations for this technique.
Often large rainbow will cruise the middle of the lake. A flatfish, f5 or f7, trolled in the middle can be very effective. I’ve seen situations were shore anglers might catch an occasional small fish while we couldn’t keep large fish off out in the boats.
I prefer catching fish on flies. There is no good way to keep small fish off if you are using flies. I can remember one partially frustrating day at a lake in Wyoming where the goldens were cruising the shore in schools. One large fish surrounded by a bunch of small fish. I would sneak up on the shore, spot the fish, and catch one of the little ones every time. Most of the time it is a matter of persistence and luck. Last summer I was at a lake with my daughter and we were catching lots of 8-10 inchers from the previous plant. Finally at the far end of the lake I told my daughter to cast her fly over along the shore and she caught a beautiful 16″ CT. It was a matter of putting the fly in a good spot and getting lucky that the big one hit it that time instead of a little one.
Sometimes you just have to get lucky and get to a lake that for whatever reason wasn’t fished much in the previous few years and there are some fish left over from an old plant that haven’t been caught. It might be another 10 or 15 years before fish like that can be found in the lake again.
As an aside, I always fish with a fly rod (5 wt). When I’m spin fishing I just put my spinning reel on the normal fly reel seat and use it as a spinning rod.
I never really care if I catch fish at all. The setting is good enough, fish are just a bonus. Big fish are an extra special bonus.
“I don’t know anything about Frog Lake. It is a low lake. Heather and Pinnacle are both nice but you won’t find much solitude at either. In fact, you won’t find much solitude at any lakes that fit your time criteria. But going in July opens up a whole lot more possibilities. Anything along the I-90 corridor. Mason/Kulla Kulla Lakes, Lodge Lake, Snow Lake, Melawkwa Lake. Loch Katrine (the road is gated so it is more of a hike then the map shows). Take the Crest Trail north from Stevens Pass to visit a bunch of lakes. Janus Lake from Smithbrook Road. Hyas Lake, out of Salmon La Sac fits your criteria. “
Most of the lakes in those shots have fish. You don’t just have to look at big lakes when you do your trip planning.
“It is an easy trail. There are two possible routes. The normal way has been to follow an old road up, but last summer they rebuilt the old trail so you can take a trail all the way to the lake. In the cliffs at the head end of the lake there used to be a large mining operation. They had to build their buildings like ski jumps so the avalanching snow would slide over the tops of the buildings. At the outlet end of the lake there was a 100 room hotel. You can’t believe that to see it now. There is the remains of a small town across the stream on the way in. It is a beautiful location, but the fish are small brookies. Not much size, but you should be able to catch fish. I think it is 3 or 3.5 miles in, but that is strictly from memory and I could be way off.”
“These pics are great. I’m going to have to post my own off topic photo, now. I caught this one over 10,000′ in Wyoming last summer. It is a 23 Snake River finespotted cutthroat. “””
“Lets see, off the top of my head I can come up with a few…^^^^Goat Lake up Elliott Creek off the Mth Loop Hwy is open now. It gets a fair amount of traffic but it is a big lake and if you make your way down the lake you should be able to get away from people. ^^^^Waptus Lake, on the east side, is always a good early season trip. It is a nice leg stretcher and a good one to help get in shape.^^^^Hyas Lake is short hike so it attracts quite a few people, but it is a big lake.^^^^I’ll have to pull out the maps to jog my memory. Sometimes it can help to check in on the trip reports at the WTA website (http://www.wta.org) where you can get a feel for what lakes are open as the summer progresses.^^^^”
“Wow, that is a gorgeous fish. According to the record book that beauty is 3.91 lbs. How long was it? Your advice applies to westside lakes with goldens, too. “
I’m responding to my own post so that it pops out again because I think these upcoming meetings are extremely important. The more people that attend the better. The outcome of these meetings will have repercussions far beyond the park itself.This may well be an important precedent for all future high lake stocking.
I haven’t experienced anything unexplainable. Weird, maybe. One of the most amazing and strange things I’ve ever experienced were weird noises in the middle of the night in the Brooks Range in Alaska. It was a cold, clear night and the northern lights were undulating in the sky while this eerie noise was undulating all around. It was as if the northern lights were making noise. I suspect there was some other atmospheric phenomenon responsible, but I don’t know what it was.
I haven’t been lucky enough to spot any signs of bigfoot or UFOs.
