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I don’t seem to be able to keep a rod that long without breaking it. I once broke two rods on the same trip. It was a 13 day trip so I had to spend most of the trip with a rod cobbled together from the two I’d broken. And then there was the time I broke my rod while my fishing partner was catching a 9-pounder. He got the better end of that fishing day. And then there was the…
Most likely, what we call Montana Blackspot are Yellowstone cutthroat from the hatchery at Yellowstone Lake. They used to ship up to 40 million Yellowstone cutthroat eggs a year out of that hatchery. They went all around the world. In total, they produced 818 million eggs over 50 or 60 years. We stopped stocking MBS at right about the same time they stopped shipping eggs from Yellowstone so I’m pretty sure that’s where our fish were coming from.
Here’s one I caught this summer in a high lake in Montana where they are native to the drainage:
Nice job tracking that down. It must be Hericium abietis. H. americanum is only found east of the Great Plains.
I had an idea about that mushroom, but when I looked up the details I realized I was wrong. It is a coral mushroom of some kind, but beyond that I can’t identify it.
That’s the right spot, but Found Lake sits out of sight down in the valley. That’s Snowking Lake that sticks out in the middle.
Here’s a 20 inch Yellowstone cutthroat my wife caught in the Absoroka-Beartooth Wilderness in Montana. The best fish I managed to catch on the trip was 18.5 inches.
Beautiful photos. It is unfair to the rest of the beautiful shots to pick out a favorite, but this fish spoke to me.
Thanks for posting that list. My favorite item was right at the bottom: the sun hat with the top cut off. That’s a great idea. Too bad I don’t have enough hair to do that. That does lead me to a question, though. I don’t see a rain hat. In the rain did you use the hood of your poncho? Was the poncho something you adopted for the PCT trip? How did you end up liking it?
Did you end up using the fishing rod enough to justify the weight?
Those Air Force surplus rafts were our inspiration. We used them, too. But they would wear out and then they stopped being available. It was in the mid-seventies that my uncle started coming up with his own ultra-light versions and in the late seventies that we came up with our rafts. We started selling them in 1980.
There’s another discussion of the article in this thread.
The rafts we’re using are Curtis Rafts. They are 20 oz rafts that my dad and I used to make. We retired about a year and a half ago after 26 years. The best current alternative is the Alpacka Raft out of Alaska. They are designed for river running so they are heavier and more expensive, but they make excellent products.
There is definitely lobbying we can do. Letters and phone calls to your senator would be a huge help. I’ll see if I can come up with some more specifics and post that here.
Thanks for posting the link, Sean. That’s me in the top photo.
The bill to clarify the NCNP enabling legislation passed the House so the big thing that we need to do now is get it through the Senate. That needs to happen right away or we’re not going to be stocking in the park until it does. If we can get that legislation passed stocking will continue
The guy who named the two lakes on the right was an old Trail Blazer named George Kniert. When he was asked, many years later, what the names meant and why he named them he couldn’t remember.
You could put an RV park in the flat area where the inlet comes into the lake in the middle of the picture.
The standard climbing route up the peak goes by the lake that sits in the hole on the left side.
I haven’t found the lake that sits out of sight at the bottom.
Two and a half is a tough age for high lake fishing. They are getting to be too big to carry and they can’t walk very far yet. So you have to look for something that is a drive to or short walk. Drive to lakes like Leech and Dog on White Pass are good bets. There are a lot of interesting drive to lakes down by Mt Adams. For short walks try something like Kelcema off the Mountain Loop Highway. Or Lodge on Snoqualmie Pass. Mirror Lake, east of Snoquamie Pass is a reasonably short hike.
I’ve been in to the Hiddens 3 times, but not in many years. That’s the first I’ve heard of a cutthroat coming out of any of those lakes. There were some stocked there in 1975. They also stocked brookies in 1972. We’re really lucky they aren’t still there.
Someone with a sense of humor named the lakes. Instead of the mundane Lower, Middle, and Upper they are:
First Hidden
Middle Hidden
Big Hidden
