- This topic has 18 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 11 months ago by
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Hi all,
I’m new to the forum and high lakes fishing too! First off, I want to thank you all for the incredible wealth of knowledge that you are sharing in the forum to further the sport.
A little about me:
I’m 24 and live in Seattle. I grew up fishing coastal rivers in Grays Harbor and Pacific counties. My favorite summer hobbies were fishing cuts on the Middle Satsop and North Rivers and plenty of hiking. Since moving to Seattle for school I haven’t been able to do nearly as much as I would like of either of those. I recently graduated, but now work in Seattle and have gotten into hiking the Cascades. I ran into some guys fishing trout in alpine lakes this past weekend and it got the fishing juices running again 🙂So a friend that I hike with and I are going to start fishing some high lakes in the central Cascades. We are planning to hike into Copper Lake and Malachite and toss a couple of lures (we already picked up some chrome/blue Kastmasters and some brass Thomas Bouyants) around. I’m sure that we will have a great time whether we land any fish or not, but any tips or tricks would be appreciated.
Thanks again for manning this wonderful forum and enhancing the sport of high lakes trout fishing.
Gary Knowels
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Welcome aboard Gary! I’m more into the mission than the fishin’ but I’m sure someone on here might be able to help you out with tips. I’ve always used spinning gear and had luck with lots of different stuff over the years. I don’t feel like I know enough about why I’ve had luck to offer an opinion on gear.
I do know that you are going to have a great time at Copper and Malichite. On the way in, below Trout lk you’ll pass a Doug Fir that has to be close to 1000 years old…. Give her a big hug for me!
Remember to buy a freshwater fishing license – The revenue pays for the fry we plant in the high lakes and keeps the hatcheries open!
Good Luck – :camping:
Mick Scott -
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If you ask more specific questions you could get more response. Its good to find people that know what they are doing and go fish with them. Mountain fish are fickle at times and brain dead biting machines other times.
There are some tricks. Dont make noise, or wear bright clothes. Usually your first few casts in an area are your best shot. Being able to cast further out or having a raft helps wonders. Some of the small lakes will be good fishing for the first 20 minutes and then the fish get spooked and your are done. Moving to different parts of a lake, often the more remote spots get better results. Its rare to get the bigger fish next to the big campsite or log that everyone else uses.
Dont use bait or treble hooks unless you plan on eating the fish. Thats the newbie info I would say helps the most.
Leave no trace!
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Thanks for the tip.
I guess the thing that I most would like assistance with is how to fish spoons for trout in lakes. In my past I have predominantly fished for trout with bait (night crawlers, sand shrimp, eggs, even salmonberries) in rivers. I am unsure of the techniques of fishing spoons.
Regardless of whether I know what I’m doing or not, we should have a good time making stuff up and enjoying what mother nature has to offer.
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Spoons are easy. Brass with some orange works the best for most high lakes. I put my thomas boyant directly on a swivel without a leader. You dont add any weight either. Just cast and reel in. Sometimes they hit it right away. Sometimes you need to let it sink a bit first. Some times you should let it sink a lot. Sometimes reel in faster sometimes slower. You never really know whats going to make the fish bite at it. You also need to set the hook to as they are just nibbling at it.
I use a treble hook with the barbs pinched back if I need to actually catch a fish to eat or for a survey. Then I switch to barbless. Barbless works better if your hook is hyperdermicaly sharp. bring a hook sharpener.
If you use bait the regulations say you have to count every fish towards your limit whether you keep it or not. Best not to use bait anyway as most high lake fisherman folk will think you are a jerk.
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Thanks,
I was planning on avoiding bait, as I don’t want to keep a 7″ fish, but might keep a decently sized fish for supper and I didn’t want to deal with carrying the bait up the trail.
I appreciate the help and will keep a log of where I fished, what I caught (if anything at all) and report back to the board. I will be taking the camera, hopefully I will be able to snap some pics of gorgeous fish.
Cheers,
Gary
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I’m pretty certain there’s a way to submit surveys through this site that the info will be used to make management decisions for the lakes you visit. The more data the better. If you’re interested you might want to PM Brian, the site moderator.
I’ll echo what Josh said about asking specific questions to get better responses.
Oh, and welcome to the site.
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Gary –
You might review this guidance, which we spent a fair amount of time developing:
http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/high_lakes/
Good luck!
Bob
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@bob pfeifer wrote:
Gary –
You might review this guidance, which we spent a fair amount of time developing:
http://wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/high_lakes/
Good luck!
Bob
What a great page Bob! Thanks for sharing.
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I made it up to a few of the lakes on the West Fork Foss River this past weekend. Left the trailhead at about 8 in the morning and quickly got to Trout Lake. There were quite a few fish surfacing, although most seemed on the small side. I tossed a spoon in for about 2 minutes and pulled in a 7″ Brook and fished for another couple of minutes to no avail.
We continued up the trail as it became considerably tougher and steeper. The sights of the valley and the spectacular waterfall were a joy. When we neared the top of the ridge where a side trail shoots off to Malachite we headed that way. We lost the trail in a matter of minutes and despite our confidence that we could find the lake by bushwhacking along the outlet stream we decided to head right to Copper. We at lunch there at about 11:00 and fished for about 45 minutes near the outlet with no bites or fish sightings. We ran into some campers that said there were a few fish surfacing the night before just before and after sunset. We also spent some time near the inlet with similar results.
We moved on the Little Heart and did some fishing there with no luck so we headed back down. We stopped at trout again and did some fishing, pulling in 2 more little Brook trout and a gorgeous 11″ rainbow, all of which were sent back to fight another day.
The day was clear, warm, and beautiful. It was one of the best days I have had in recent memories despite not catch a lot of fish or big fish. Now its time to plan another trip and another wonderful day.
Gary
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So what’s the deal? Are these last two newcomers the latest means to sneak advertising onto a website? I mean numerology and bicycle garmins and kids bigwheels? Check out the links at the bottom of their posts.
Edit- My reference to the last two newcomers are not talking about posts still visible. Those sneaky posts have been removed.
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I’m glad I’m old. I had and and still have NO interest in clicking on the excrement some pinhead has under his or her post. If they don’t feel it’s important enough to put into the body of the message, I ain’t interested AT ALL.
But boy I sure agree that I have zero interest in anyone who would scab on advertising to their post. No, I take that back. I wish they were dead.
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It’s not advertising, well, not a direct one. They want to get high score at Google and other search engines. The more links exist to a specific site the higher rating the site gets in the search results. So, people are trying to create as many links to their sites as they can. Using public forums for this purpose is quite common.
I suggest to take those messages down.
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Good catch, Dave. I removed those two posts. The first one was interesting because I’d been watching it when it was first posted and it did not have the signature links. They actually went back and added those later. But it became really obvious when I looked up the IP address and it had been posted from the Philippines.
The second one was a bit less obvious. It was posted from a Virginia IP address, had content that didn’t add to the discussion, but did contain specifics about our site, and the links weren’t as obviously random as most spammers. But a quick google revealed that particular slime had posted these sort of generic posts on boards all over the net.
I am in almost constant battle with these spammers. They seem to come in waves. It was really bad a couple months ago when I was having to delete one or two posts a day. There are major ISPs in some countries like India that are completely banned from posting to the forum at all.
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My apologies to all for overreacting last night. What I meant to say was “I wish you were mentally and physically incapable of cluttering up this forum with your spam.”
I am not surprised that Brian is having to work endlessly in the background to fend off these “people”.
I wonder how many people remember what it was like in the early days of the Internet. Absolutely NO ads whatsoever, just free and easy communication. I knew it was too good to last; it was just disappointing in how fast it was corrupted. That said, I would gladly pay a monthly fee to some entity if I could get the benefits of the Internet without the ads and hacking and spam.
I think the clubs should gift Brian (and his helpers, if any) with an annual financial bequest just to show our appreciation of the endless work going on to keep these sites working well.
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