Live Outdoors!

Outdoor Adventure Log

Pathfinder

Aug 14

Posted by Erik & Michelle in From the boat

With a front moving in from the North we weren’t sure if we could go out this morning.  The winds came up strong last night and things cooled off real fast.  But, the winds died and at 5:30 we woke to all but calm.  We were in the water by 7am and fishing within another half an hour.  Once again, the fishing at Pathfinder was spectacular.  This Reservoir should be great fishing for years to come if we can continue getting enough moisture to keep it full.  We decided to keep 8 rainbows for the smoker and we were able to turn back another 6 or 8 fish.  What a great day!  It was cool, maybe 60º and just a slight breeze.

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Pathfinder

Aug 10

Posted by Erik & Michelle in From the boat

This was supposed to be a two day trip.  We got to Pathfinder at 3pm on Monday, we found strong winds and huge waves awaiting us.  We decided not to put the boat in the water and worked on organizing the boat and camper instead.  In the morning the wind was still blowing, although not quite so hard.  So, we decided to brave the waves and give it a try.  It was a rough ride to our honey hole.  When we got there it was a lot of work to keep the boat on track especially when we needed to kill the kicker when a fish hit.  But the fishing was phenomenal!!  We caught 15 or more fish and kept 10.  As we worked our way back to the ramp we realized that all the other boats had stayed in the bay where all the waves were rocking and rolling- we had been all alone.  We made the right choice fishing the other side of the reservoir.

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Seminoe

Aug 8

Posted by Erik & Michelle in From the boat

This trip actually started out at Pathfinder on Saturday morning.  We arrived, as usual, very early and instead of hitting the water we hit the mussel patrol.  When we topped the hill at the reservoir we realized it was quite windy.  But, since we had driven this far we decided to give it a go.  The waves were 3 and 4 foot and very hard to maneuver.  After a couple of hours of getting beat up by the wind, we had only put 2 fish in the boat (we couldn’t get to our hot spot) and decided to throw in the towel.

From Pathfinder we turned south-west and drove to Rawlins to re-fuel before hitting Seminoe.  We planned on pre-fishing the lake before Erik’s Uncle Butch and friend LC showed up Sunday morning.  The wind was not as bad, but still a nuisance.  We spent some time fishing some areas we had caught fish in several years ago, but only boated 2 walleye- we were looking for trout :)  An older fellow told us to go way up in the Platte arm and we decided to do just that, but to wait until morning when the guys were with us.  After picking Butch and LC up in Sinclair we made our way up the Platte arm and started trolling along rock cliffs.  Within moments LC had a fish on.  Unfortunately it came off before we netted it.  The rest of the morning we had several fish hit, several more on and ended up putting 4 in the cooler.  We were a little disappointed that we couldn’t show Butch and LC better fishing, but they had a good time and got to take home some fresh trout and that is what really matters!!

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Pathfinder with Max

Aug 2

Posted by Erik & Michelle in From the boat

Our bestestest friends have the most incredible little boy you will ever meet.  Maximus. He is 4 years old and can name every animal that inhabits or once inhabited this planet.  This kid LOVES the outdoors and will be a great conservationist as an adult.  Most importantly, Max has a great passion for his family!

We are very excited that Max is finally old enough to be involved in our outdoor adventures.  Not just watching, but taking part in all aspects of the trip.

We left Casper just after light this morning in hopes of catching enough trout for our friends Sherry and John to can for the tastiest treat you have ever tried.  Max and Michelle sat in the back and talked about trout, alligator gar, grouper, volcanoes and quite a few other things in which Max is an expert.  We trolled Pathfinder for several hours and had an amazing day boating more than a dozen fish.  Max did a great job reeling fish in, netting, placing fish in the cooler and telling many, many, many stories.  Watch max catch fish here!!

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Cloud Peak Wilderness

Aug 1

Posted by Erik & Michelle in fly fishing

This backpacking trip was a 9 mile trek from the truck to our base camp.  We entered the wilderness Friday at 1pm.  Besides Scout, Gordon (79 1/2) and Chad joined us.  We were fortunate to have cool cloudy weather on the way in to this area.  We hiked for 2 1/2 hours from the Ranger and made camp at 10,000 feet.  On the way to camp we saw elk tracks all along the trail and woke both mornings to cow calls and young bulls.  Saturday morning we were able to watch the large herd from a hill near camp.  We watched elk and ate coffee and doughnuts before climbing another 525 feet to the lake we planned on fishing for the day.  After arriving at the the lake we boulder hopped for another 1/4 of a mile to our favorite fishing spot. The fishing was good as usual on the lake with all the cutthroats between 17″ and 20″ with most being seen before casting to.  We fished till mid afternoon and then headed back down to camp and dinner.  The next morning we had bacon and fresh trout for breakfast while listening to elk mewing and even bugling in the background.  The hike out was uneventful except for some picking of unbelievably flavored strawberries and a 20 degree temperature difference by the time we got off the mountains.  Watch the video!

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Tongue River Reservoir

Jul 28

Posted by Erik & Michelle in From the boat

This is a trip we love to make every year.  Catching crappie through the ice is one of our favorite winter activities, but we don’t have a lot of opportunity for large numbers of crappie out of the boat in the summer.  One of the things that is fun about panfish is the size of the gear.  We use mirco and ultra light rods and 2 to 4 lb line when fishing for these small giants.  Mary and Gordon came with us and we put in at Toungue Tuesday evening around 5pm.  We started at our usual spot, an island near the dam. After striking out on the crappie there we moved over a few bays and fished some private docks. We found some schools of crappies relating to one dock and started catching a few 10″-12″ fish.  A rainstorm moved off the mountain and rained on us for about 45 minutes so we put the rain cover up on the boat and jigged vertically in 18′-23′ of water during the storm. We ended the evening keeping 14 crappies and two nice perch. We threw back some smallmouth bass and the smaller crappies.  At 6:30 a.m. we were back on the water. No luck everywhere we tried except for back around the docks, where we fished till 11:00 catching more crappies, smallmouths and a bonus walleye.  It was a fun trip!

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Pathfinder

Jul 24

Posted by Erik & Michelle in From the boat

We weren’t planning on getting a new boat, but……. We got a new boat!!!  Her maiden voyage was trolling for trout at Pathfinder Reservoir.  We got stopped by the Game and Fish on the way in for the mussel check, so we didn’t get on the water until around 7:30.  The boat is basically the same as our other Crestliner, only this time we added a downrigger, a 5hp kicker motor and an amazing trolling motor that has GPS technology built in.  By afternoon we had brought more than a dozen big trout (they are growing like weeds out there) and learned all about the new rig.  We took the boat for a nice ride up the canyon before heading home.

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Popo Agie Wilderness Backpacking

Jul 22

Posted by Erik & Michelle in fly fishing

What a great trip of backpacking and fishing.  We hiked 12 miles in four days and fished 4 different lakes.  Two of the lakes we fished had small but feisty brookies, one lake had big cutthroats cruising and feeding all hours of the day and the last lake had nonexistent golden trout that had already moved deep.  Scout made this trip with us for his first time carrying his own backpack.  He did a great job of staying with us over big boulders and up steep slopes never slowing down.  This year the mosquitos followed us up the mountain further then usual not stopping until we reached nearly 11,000 feet.  We used a therma-cell mosquito repeller around camp but it had a hard time working at our main camp at 10,500 feet with such little oxygen in the air.  The last afternoon and evening that we were camping we were swallowed up by the clouds and had three different thunderstorms move through with lots of rain/hail, wind and thunder.  It was a neat experience making one remember how tiny we are on this planet.  We found out when we got home this was part of the same storm that killed a climber and stranded 9 other climbers in the Tetons.  Thank you, God for keeping us safe!!!


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Fish Lake

Jul 16

Posted by Erik & Michelle in fly fishing

We headed up to Dubois to go fly-fishing for big cutthroats.  We took Gordon and Scout with us this trip. We got to the lake on wednesday evening, in time to fish for a couple hours before dark. Erik got into several good fish when he first got into the float tube but the bite only lasted about a half hour before the fish shut off.  The next day was good fishing around a sunken island in the middle of the lake after it warmed up form a 38 degree overnight low temperature.  We kept 4 cutthroats for dinner and breakfast.  Their stomachs were completely filled with leeches.  After a good breakfast of bacon, fish and cantaloupe and some more fishing we headed back home around noon on friday.

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Pathfinder

Jul 10

Posted by Erik & Michelle in From the boat

We wanted to get our folks out for a morning of fishing so Gordon and Mary joined us at 6:00 a.m. for the drive to Pathfinder.  WOW are these fish growing fast!  We landed several fish over 20″ with all being over 17″ and very fat.  We fished again around Bird Island and then Wolf Point, pulling rapalas between 2.7 – 3 mph.  In the end we threw back and lost a dozen or so and we kept 9 to smoke.  After filleting them only 8 would even fit in the smoker so we had fresh grilled trout on the grill :)

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