So, having jumped in at the deep end, the first camp morning of the trip dawned beautiful and sunny, and I didn’t actually feel too bad.
I got moving, had breakfast, then spent some time organizing all the new flies I’d bought the day before. I also put together my new Redington rod and tried to fire synapses from 30 years ago about how to rig it. There wasn’t much to do – it came with the backing, line, and a leader all preloaded. Before too long I headed out to see what I could make happen on the lake proper.
As it turns out, I couldn’t make anything happen. The Arkansas guys broke camp and left. About the most significant thing to happen at Gourd Lake was my first sad attempts at western casting in decades. I believe there were no witnesses. I am grateful for this. It’s not like riding a bike.
I spent two nights at Gourd Lake, and saw lots of insect activity in the evenings and early morning. I didn’t see a single fish rise. I didn’t see a single fish. I cast woolly buggers with tenkara rods. I managed to get a few dries out with my western rod. I saw no evidence of fish. I don’t know what the story is. I guess mountain lakes can be like this – feast or famine. As it was my very first experience fishing an alpine lake, I was alarmed. I wondered if the problem was me, and if the whole thing was a misbegotten endeavour. After a couple of hours of not even seeing a hint of a fish, continuing casting seemed a little pointless. There was another, smaller, lake up high called Island Lake. Day was nice, I was feeling okay, so I decided to climb up. It was about 700 feet up, over a small pass, at 11,400 feet. I was already at the second highest altitude I’d ever been at outside of an airplane. The highest was in 2012 when I walked to the top of Mount Wheeler at Great Basin National Park, which is a bit above 13,000.
There was a fair bit of snow around Gourd Lake. The climb wasn’t hugely difficult, but as I got higher, it was mostly over snow banks. I didn’t posthole much; the snow for the most part supported me on the surface.
The amount of snow increased as I got higher, and was worrying in terms of iceout. When I finally got to the top, the worries were confirmed. Island Lake, and the ponds in front of it, were still icebound. They were melting and maybe 10% of the surface was open. The outlet was open, and I was half hoping there’d be a concentration of fish. But I didn’t see a hint of a fish anywhere. I’m not even certain it has fish.
Well, it was a nice place to visit, anyway. In early afternoon thunder started rumbling, so I beat a hurried retreat.
I got back to camp late in the afternoon. So far this was a fish free fishing trip, though the landscape was exhilarating. I was still feeling pretty good, and I wanted to get in position to attempt my third target in the Indian Peaks, an unnamed lake way off trail up a mountainside in Thunderbolt Canyon. My permit was for three nights. The climb to the next lake was around 1400 feet through dense forest, so I didn’t want to waste time moving camp in the morning before trying it. But the weather intervened. A massive thunderstorm moved through about 6 pm, thoroughly soaking my camp. I got bounced pretty good with pea sized hail as I hurried back to my tent. When it passed, everything was sopping and I didn’t want to pack it up wet, so I resigned myself to staying a second night. I thought I’d have the lake to myself with the Arkansas crew gone. But just before dark a husband and wife team appeared across the inlet. We shouted pleasantries back and forth and I told them where the driest and flattest campsites seemed to be. They seemed nice enough. But a whole mountain lake to camp on. And of course they had to set up directly across the inlet, in direct sight and earshot of my camp. I just looked on. Works in movie theatres, too.
Two days, zero fish. That part, however, was about to change.