Fishing high mountain lakes (PHOTO HEAVY)

[PFUNK]

Thought I would post up some pictures from a back country trip I went on last August with my girlfriend, a buddy of mine, and his girlfriend. This was a trip into the Rattlesnake Wilderness just out of Missoula, MT. The Rattlesnake is really a diamond in the rough. I believe of all wilderness areas in the country, the Rattlesnake is the closest to any major cities. It's only a 10 minute drive from my front door to a trailhead! However, for our trip we took a little different approach. To get into the most remote lake, it would be a long uphill climb on the trail, so instead we headed to the ski lodge and rode the lift to the top. From there, we had a couple mile hike to Murphy peak. About half of this was on a trail, but after that we would be blazing our own trail all the way to our destination, Sanders Lake. We got off the ski lift at around 1 PM and started our hike. We passed one person who was heading back from climbing to the summit of Murphy, but after that we would not see another person until the final day of our trip. Here is a picture of me standing just off murphy peak with a heck of a drop behind me!

That was about the end of the fun for day one. We would not be able to follow the ridge line all the way to our destination because of some nasty cliffs and impassable areas. We studied the map and picked the ridge that we would dive off of and drop down a few hundred feet in order to sidehill around the nasty terrain. Well, we ended up dropping off the wrong ridge somehow and had a SLOW go getting down some steep and slippery rock faces. After several hours we were around the bad stuff and starting to climb again to get back to the main ridge top. We made it to the ridge top just as darkness was setting in and were forced to set up camp in the black of night and cooked up a quick mountain house meal as we were all starving after the difficult hike in. Here is our destination from atop the ridgeline.

We slept in a little past sunrise the next morning, as we all needed it, but we were eager to bust out the rods from our packs and start catching some trout. Here is a shot of our camp setup. It is usually an island but after a dry summer you could reach it without getting wet!

It didn't take long to land the first fish, as Ashley quickly hooked up with a cutthroat! The turquoise blue water was amazingly clear, and you could watch trout racing up from the depths to hammer your spinner!

She was really taking it to me that first morning and caught another cut with great color a few casts later.

We caught a lot of trout that morning, many that were small but provided loads of fun. Needless to say, we really ate well that day trying to regain some much needed energy after spending a lot on the way in. Here's an action shot of my buddy sending a cast into the depths.

For such a small lake, it is hard to believe but it reaches depths over 200 feet! Actually, it is part of an emergency water system that was developed for Missoula years ago, along with several other lakes in the Rattlesnake wilderness. We took a break to head over and check out the drop on the other end of the lake. Here Ashley and I pose with "the heart" of the Rattlesnake in the distance.

This next one shows the sheer cliff that the lake sits atop, and you can see a waterfall pouring out from Sanders.

The weather at sunrise the next morning was beautiful again, and the lake was like glass which allowed for some perfect photo opportunities. Here the sun is shining on Mosquito peak.

And there wasn't a ripple on the water.

I had the hot hand the second morning, pulling in a bunch of fish like this on spinners and a few on dry flies.

We fished that morning and kept another meal of fish, which we would pack along with us to our next stop... Glacier lake. Here is the gang with camp back up on our backs and ready to go!

Glacier is a beautiful lake but does not have fish in it, so we stopped there for some pictures and a bath before cooking up our lunch. It may have been August, but the water in all of these lakes was VERY cold. Skipped a few rocks to pass some time. The ridgeline above the large rock scree in the background of this photo is where we would be ascending to next.

We were now on an actual trail that would climb up and out of this basin and back up to another ridgeline running south. This would take us a couple more miles and we would then drop off to our next camp. We hadn't decided which lake we were going to hit just yet. This next photo looks back down on Glacier lake (we ate lunch on the far end), and you can see it was a bit of a climb up and out of there!

We were hoping we could drop off and spend the next night at Big Lake, but we knew from our topo map that it may not be possible due to how steep the descent was. Indeed it was too steep, and we decided to continue on to McKinley lake, which we were hoping still had the large rainbow trout that Montana FWP reported it to have on what would be the equivalent of Minnesota DNR's "Lake Finder". A look at a couple lakes along the way. Our destination lies behind the ridgeline just on the other side of the larger lake, and at the base of the larger mountain peaks farther in the distance.

(continued)

[PFUNK]

We arrived at McKinley with enough time to fish a late evening bite, but came up empty with zero fish! I did have a follow from what looked to be a nice rainbow though, but aside from that there seemed to be FAR less fish in this lake. Here we are in camp that night, having a fire and relaxing.

The next morning the fishing wasn't much better, but I was able to hook up with the rainbow that followed the night before! I saw him following when my spinner was almost all the way to shore, so I let it sink to the bottom and he slowly kept cruising towards it. He got hung up but one small twitch off the bottom and he came right back and HAMMERED it.

Unfortunatelty, that would be the last fish landed on our trip! The next day we would travel another mile or so and again drop down to another set of lakes called Twin Lakes. I think upper twin looks like a duck's head...

Unfortunately, these lakes seemed to be completely void of fish, which was news to us. We had picked our stops based off of sampling data from the early 2000's or even earlier. I suppose because of the secluded nature the fisheries biologists don't get to survey these lakes very often. Oh well! By this point we were all getting pretty worn out and the next morning we would make the final push out. This would be several miles long but we would enjoy eating ripe huckleberries along the way, and once we dropped down low enough, the thimble berries were also plentiful! This last photo is us at the wilderness boundary.

From here we only had about 3 miles to the trailhead. We were pretty exhausted when we got out, but this was one trip I will never forget! If you ever get a chance to do a trip like this, DO IT! Being in a remote area so close to a city of over 80,000 people is a pretty great feeling. The solitude with a few good friends just can't be beat!

[leech~~]

Very cool you guys Rock! I have been out that way and fished for some Cut's when my sister live in Bozeman, but never did a pack in like that! Wow!

[Nightcrawler]

sat back and enjoyed your trip with you.

[PFUNK]

Glad you liked it!