Days 52-55, July 11-14, Northern Wyoming

If you read my last post you may have gotten the impression I wouldn't be fly fishing this week.  That was what I intially thought, but life is full of pleasant surprises if you're open to them.  In this case, because I was unable to fish in the usual places due to continuing high runoff, my long-time buddy Chip and I were prompted to consider alternatives we normally might have rejected.  As always, there was a lesson to be learned, or relearned:  when I'm forced to change, more often than not the new experiences I have are more interesting than the old, repetitive experiences, if for no other reason than that they are new.

Specifically what happened is that on day 53, after a day of rest and relaxation at Chip's cabin, we took Chip's canoe to Luce Lake - a spring-fed beauty that lies at the base of the Beartooth Mountains north of Cody, WY.  Chip had been there once, many years ago, but I had never seen it.  As we carted the canoe down to the lake shore after a quarter-mile hike from the parking area, we immediately understood the potential for a good day on the lake; just a few feet off shore there were several large rainbow trout cruising in shallow water.  So we launched with great expectations under a crystal sky and aimed for an area where we saw fish rising under a set of overhanging trees.

I came armed with both a fly rod and a spinning rod.  The fly rod was a 5-weight Sage XP loaded with a sink-tip line on an Abel reel.  I started with the spinning rod, however.  On the first cast a trout hit my lure hard, but I was unable to hook him.  That led us to believe we would be catching fish left and right.  It turned out it wouldn't be quite so easy, in part because the breeze picked up and a little rain squall moved in.  Still, we each caught several large rainbows and a couple of smaller ones, including one on a suspended red midge fly on the fly rod.  Here are a couple of examples of the fine, fat Kamloops rainbow trout we brought to the canoe and released:

That's Chip in the first picture, and me in the second.  My only regret was that I didn't leave the sink-tip line in the car and bring a floating line instead.  A couple of fly fishermen casting dry flies from the west shore were having a fine time catching trout that were cruising the shallows there.  Still, no complaints.  We caught beautiful fish in gorgeous surroundings and shared one end of the lake only with ospreys and this yellow-headed blackbird:

The next day we got off to a slow start but eventually drove Camelot high into the Bighorn Mountains to the edge of the Cloud Peak Wilderness.  On the way we passed numerous rivers and streams flowing very high and fast, but we were encouraged because the water in the streams flowing directly from the mountains was much more clear than what we saw elsewhere across the Bighorn Basin.  We settled into our campground that evening, took a short hike around West Ten Sleep Lake, and cooked a tasty steak dinner over a campfire before being driven inside Camelot by a rain shower.

Day 54 dawned brightly.  Chip and I carried the canoe to the lake and launched it into gin-clear water, paddling toward the north end of the lake where West Ten Sleep Creek flows into it.  Again I carried two kinds of rods, but soon found that the fly rod was the most productive.  Even though we saw very few rising fish, we discovered that a dry fly cast into areas around underwater shelves and current breaks had an excellent chance of being consumed by a hungry brook trout.  It was great fun, but our primary objective for the day was to hike up Middle Ten Sleep Creek to Mirror Lake, which we proceeded to do in the afternoon.

Early in the hike we fished briefly in a long meadow where the creek was clear and slow even though the water level was high.  I tied on a size 10 (i.e., large) Royal Wulff dry fly and, in short order, caught several orange-bellied brook trout.  Some were larger and even more colorful than the ones I managed to photograph, but here's an example or an average brookie from the meadow:

Soon we were ascending a non-trail along the precipitously-dropping creek, aiming for the lake a couple of miles up the slopes of Cloud Peak.  As it turned out we had missed the main trail, and as a consequence had to endure a certain amount of confusion along with some bushwhacking and rock-climbing.  Our reward was that we found another couple of high meadows where the creeks were teeming with visible brook trout and the scenery was outstanding.  Here's a little peek at what we encountered:

You may notice I'm wearing a rain jacket in the picture above.  Just before the photo was taken we ran into a light shower, which later became a thunderous downpour, causing us to seek shelter under a thick stand of trees.  But we were soon climbing and fishing again.  The trout weren't complete pushovers but we caught a lot of them, including this fabulous young cutthroat that Chip captured with a small spinner:

We never did make it to Mirror Lake, having taken a wrong turn when we were within a half mile.  Fortunately we ran across the main trail on the way back, and had a much easier time of it hiking down the mountain.   We made it back to Camelot as the sun settled on the western ridges.  I made us each a large bowl of fusilli with a spicy tomato sauce and we enjoyed our final evening sitting by a tall campfire.  A couple of deer paused to graze about 20 feet away as a full moon ascended, peaking through a stand of tall lodgepole pines.  It was a fine end to a day of adventure and discovery.  Deja vu for Chip and me; we've made many a hike like this one and stretched our tired legs before many a warm fire by a mountain lake.  It was on a trip much like this one, some twenty years or so ago, that I first decided to learn how to fly fish after seeing Chip catch several huge cutthroats on a bubble and fly with his spinning rod on a lake high in the White Cloud Mountains of central Idaho.

I'll turn a new page tomorrow, aiming Excalibur toward southeast Idaho.  Before I leave Meeteetse we'll probe the foothills of the Absaroka Range in one last attempt to find a clear-flowing stream in our usual stomping grounds nearby.  I'll let you know in the next post how that goes.  I'll leave you with this shot of Excalibur and Camelot, with Chip's canoe perched on top: