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Forest and Lonesome Lakes in Pierce County are in need of surveys. Both are drive to lakes. I recommend avoiding camping at those lakes on the weekend, especially Lonesome. Forest has a population of goldfish and surveys on their abundance and size is particularly welcome.
Hyas is a flat and easy hike, but a popular spot. Squaw Lake, in the same area, fits your parameters. And the Hi-Laker new member trip will be there on 6-7 July.
Janus Lake would be a nice spot. Josephine, Swimming Deer, Trap, Mig, or Susan Jane would all be good. While we are in the Stevens Pass area the Grace Lakes can be a fun hike if you enjoy the interesting detritus while walking through the ski area.
Down by Mt Rainier you could go to the Deadwood Lakes. No official trail, but there is a way trail. Sheep Lake is right on the trail and nearby. The Dewey Lakes are a short hike the other direction.
Twin Sisters Lakes are nice. Or off White Pass you could visit Hell Lake, or go the other direction to Cramer Lake and from there visit however many lakes you want to visit. But watch for mosquitoes this time of year. They can be brutal in that area.
That was a few off the top of my head. There are many, many more. Perhaps someone will come up with some more ideas. I’m sure I’ll think of a bunch as soon as I hit submit.
Mostly you should just keep what you can eat. If there is snow around you can pack fish in snow, but baring that it can be difficult to keep fish cool enough.
It is also worth keeping in mind the number of fish stocked in some lakes. In small lakes there might be only 20, 50, or 100 fish stocked so it can be really easy to take a measurable percentage of all the fish in the lake. In other lakes the fish are spawning out of control and the more fish you take the better.
Joshua, the lakes in the blast zone were ice covered when the mountain erupted. That saved the fish from the initial blast. There was a productivity spike as nutrients were washed into the lakes and for a while the fish grew larger. But I believe that in the lakes were the reproducing populations survived they have all settled back to their pre-blast stunted states.
You know, we are going to need to learn more about fishing in Newfoundland. The more photos the better!
When I need the fly to be dry I will normally blow it dry before every cast.
You can tie flies with closed cell foam that will float no matter what. Flies like that normally float very high and are often used for visibility in running water. I imagine there might be someone who has come up with foam patterns good for fishing with a bubble in still waters, but I’ve never used one.
I don’t have a particular floatant brand that I favor. Perhaps someone who knows more then me will chime in.
Yeah, that happens frequently and it is always frustrating. Sometimes it just means that they are hungry and you can laugh it off. But sometimes it means that they are keying on something on the surface. In those situations you want to get your fly floating. This can be accomplished with a new fly, or by adding floatant, or sometimes it will work to reel a bit quickly so the fly floats to the surface. The latter will depend on the fly and how the fish respond to a moving fly. All the various variables are what make it fun.
For weighing fish we are looking for the total weight prior to cleaning. Don will have small, light scales available for purchase so you can weigh them lakeside.
Those are coastal cutthroat (CT) trout. Spotting for westslope CT is much different. The red slashes under the jaws are prominent in most of the pictured fish. CT also have maxillary (upper jaw) that extend past their eyes. Otherwise coastal CT look a lot like RB.
Fish guts should have their air bladders slit so that they sink and they should be thrown well out into the lake so they are out of sight. That will help return nutrients to the lake that the fish will otherwise have utilized.
Looks like you had a fun day!
I remember that TR from nwhikers!
There is a tiny bit of history about the Twin Lakes station in the old Game Department document on the origin of state brood stocks on the Trail Blazer website. Basically, they were talking about it in 1916 and were taking eggs by 1921. They take eggs (westslope cutthroat) in May and June which are then taken to the Chelan Hatchery for rearing. From there fry are sent to hatcheries around the state for stocking. There are traps on inlet streams were fish are captured and spawned. I’ve never been up there when they are spawning fish, but that sure would be fun. I will try and see if I can come up with a contact person.
I’ve never been in there so I can only speculate. I would go in from the roads to the east or take the Little Bald trail up the ridge. The Bumping River would likely be tough to cross, especially early in the season.
I don’t think that using a GPSr is cheating. You still have to plan and execute your route and can’t just follow the arrow.
The text is awfully small. I’ll get that fixed.
In the mean time, you can always increase the size of text in a web page by hitting Ctrl-+ on a Windows machine or Command-+ on a Mac.
I just took a look and thought that maybe they had finally hooked the stocking info into their stocking database so that it would automatically stay updated. But 2018 stocking is not showing so that can’t be the case.
Here’s a fish I caught last year that ran over 23″. No bait necessary!
[url=https://flic.kr/p/24Mb5u6][img]https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7903/40548971373_980944349d.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://flic.kr/p/24Mb5u6]23+" RB part 1, Brian Curtis[/url]And the vast majority of the fish in the Big Fish thread were caught on lures or flies. I hate bait fishing, too. Even if the fish are deep there are lots of ways to fish the bottom without resorting to bait.
Hopefully Tony will come around and post a photo of his behemoth.
The term predator in the way we often use it is a bit of a misnomer. All trout and char are predators. But we often use the term predator to refer to species that are more likely to prey on fish. The size of high lake fish is determined by a combination of how many groceries are in the lake and how long the fish lives. Invertebrates that make of the bulk of high lake trout diets live mostly in shallow water so the more shallow water a lake has the more productive it generally is. Small, shallow lakes are often better than big, deep lakes. The best high lake prey for trout are fresh water shrimp in the family gammarus. Unfortunately, most lakes are not suitable for gammarus, but when they are there and the population has not been suppressed by overpopulated fish, you know there is a possibility of large fish. And they can get very large. There are no specific state records for high lake fish, but three overall state records (westslope cutthroat, golden trout, and Atlantic salmon) came out of high lakes. I know people who have caught rainbow up to 8 lbs. And turning to predators (in the fish eating sense), a Hi-Laker caught a 37″ lake trout a couple years ago. While trout will eat vertebrates like certain species of salamander, they do not make up a significant portion of the diet of any high lake fish.
There aren’t too many Trail Blazer signs left out there! That was a nice find. Was it a rectangular sign?
It probably wasn’t a mackinaw because there is only one lake over 4500′ with mackinaw (Eightmile) and it doesn’t have EB. A very occasional EB will turn to a diet of fish so that even in a lake full of stunted little EBs there could be one or two bunkers. The North Cascades National Park found an EB in the 3 pound range in a lake full of stunted fish when they poisoned the fish out of one lake. There have also been some experimental and some illegal plants of brown trout and other predators. But even those rarely get to the sizes you are describing. There are lakes that can grow fish that size that are not predators, but they aren’t lakes that are full of brookies.
