Posts Tagged wilderness

Popo Agie

Jul 23

Posted by Erik & Michelle in fly fishing | No Comments

Snow, snow and more snow. Much more snow than we have ever seen before. The mosquitos were pretty numerous too, but good ol’ deet does the trick. If anyone ever tries to sell you some other product to keep mosquitos away, DON’T FALL FOR IT. We decided to try three different alternatives to deet this trip; 1. citronella bracelette, 2. skin patch, 3. buzz off bandanas. None of them even came close to keeping the bugs away. We even had all three going at the same time and still the only thing that worked was the deet.

We stayed the first night at Tomohawk lake and caught severl brook trout for breakfast before heading for Thumb Lake a several hundred feet above.
As far as the fishing, it was more like being in the mountains in June, the fishing was somewhat slow. On the upside, Michelle hooked her first ever golden trout; although it got off just before landing it

It is still always good to get the backpacks on and live in the wilderness for a few days! On the way back to the trail head, we ran into some friends of ours from Casper, Ken and Amber Christianson.

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Tags: backpacking, cutthroat trout, golden trout, island lake, national forest, popo agie, silas, tomohawk, wilderness, wyoming

Cloud Peak Wilderness

Aug 1

Posted by Erik & Michelle in fly fishing | 2 Comments

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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Tags: backpacking, cutthroat trout, wilderness, wyoming

Popo Agie Wilderness Backpacking

Jul 22

Posted by Erik & Michelle in fly fishing | 1 Comment

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!!!