Hike Day 6
We'd begin our hike back this day. However, we planned to fish four lakes we'd passed on the way. Three of them were off trail and the other was a major on-trail lake where we had low expectations. We didn't make it over the pass until after noon, and so we decided to split up for two of the lakes. Y would head up over a small pass to check out one lake, while three of us would head to an easier to access lake. Both were about 3/4 of a mile off trail. The idea was to spend an hour scouting the lakes, and then reconvene for lunch, with the possibility of returning to whichever lake produced best, or simple moving on.
As we approached our lake, I was nearly certain it would be barren. You could see the bottom throughout most of the lake. We had circumvented almost the whole lake before we decided on a spot that had potential. Within three casts I landed our first grayling. We caught a decent number of fish before our time was up. Y was waiting for us so we had low hopes, but she had landed the largest fish of the trip, a big cuttbow. She thought there were few fish in her lake, but they were big.
We elected to move on and caught some small brookies at the big lake. Up and over the pass where we were going to fish a lake we did alright at before, but I went cross country to a small lake tucked behind it. Once again, I was prepared for it to be barren until I had looped most of the way around and finally found a deep spot near the inlet. After a dozen casts I was thinking dead, and then I hooked into a strong fish. Halfway in, with high excitement, it shook the hook. I was in agony, as I didn't even know what kind of fish it was!
On the next two casts I caught my two largest fish of the trip, and then returned to get F and Y. We only caught one most fish out of that lake that evening. Guess I should have kept fishing!
