So I'm getting married in a week. To a sweet Princess Laura. Anyway, I'm not a fan of strippers or drinking to complete obliteration, so to the great disappointment of my man friends, my brother, the best man, decided the best bachelor party would be to take me fishing. Surprise fishing, where I was not told where we were going until we got there.

So all he told me was that we were going camping fishing, so of course it was obnoxious because I had to pack all of my tackle, because I knew not what or where we were going to target fish of which species. So I've got three tackle boxes and an ultra light overnight pack, on account of I had so much tackle it would be retarded to take any clothes that were unnecessary. Of course I packed six pairs of socks. You can never have too many socks on a backpacking trip.

So we got to the Rd. that goes to Lake Spada, and I figured out where we were going. Because I'd been talking about finding out the truth about golden trout in the grieder lakes. So I cursed the fact that I'd packed so much tackle, and I was going to have to root around and remove so much stuff on account of the hike being 3 miles straight up. We left at about 5 o'clock.

BUT before we got to the trail, we stopped at what will now be our secret fishing spot. We stopped for about 30 minutes, and tossed some Joes Flies spinners, and every cast we got hooked up with some fancy cutthroat trout. It was pretty cool. We caught and released about 15 fish a piece, about half were long distance releases on account of we didn't want to hurt the fish too much so we didn't set the hook on the little ones. They were from six to 12 inches long and wild. Very fun.

Anyways, we went on to the trail head and started unpacking my bag. To get there, you drive on the Spada Lake road and it was gorgeous. I've never fished there on account of I don't have a boat big enough, but I'm going to try on my big raft on a calm day sometime. Jack was really excited, and the sun was just going down over the ridge and the owls were out. There was one guy at the trail head that was really cool looking, and he followed us for a while as we headed out.

It turns out the trail to Grieder Lakes is about 3 miles longer than originally planned because they are tearing out all the culverts from the Spada Lake road, and you have to hike the road through the giant ditches that are there. So it took us about an hour to get to the Grieder Lakes trail head Once we got there, it was pitch dark, which was ridiculous. The trail was so over grown with sticker bushes that I had to hold my flashlight pointed straight down just to see the rocks to not step on them. I'm definitely going to bring a machete the next time I'm there. Although over grown, the trail wasn't hard to find, which was nice, and Jack Bauer knew just where to go, the trail was at his eye level, so we followed him. My Ultra Light Ugly Stick stuck out a ways from the top of my pack and kept snagging on branches, but never broke or even got a scratch. Ugly Sticks are the BEST backpacking rods ever, they never break, no matter how much bushwhacking you have to do. So far the trail was really not that steep, and I was just mentioning that fact to my brother when the switchbacks started. Of course, under the cover of the trees not even the light of the brightest start could get underneath the forest to light the way, and it was pitch black, and slightly creepy because we startled several unseen small animals off the trail on our way.

Had there been light, we would have found that we were hiking up very steep switchbacks nearly straight up a cliff face that was so steep, one wrong step and you're toast. It was such a workout that even Jack Bauer, the tireless Jack Russel Papillion, started to drift back to the point that his leash was no longer tight against his life preserver. When Jack gets tired, you know it's time for a break. It was probably good that it wasn't light out, because we had no idea how far we had to hike, or how steep the cliff was behind us. The trail has been washed out a bit and there are several fallen logs that you must jump/crawl over, but it was pretty solid, no mud or slippery places, which was very nice, considering that one false move and you'll fall to get skewered on some rough branch or stump, or just keep falling until you land smack dab in the reflecting pools a mile below.

So of course we forgot to fill up our water bottles at the trail head, and we were dying of thirst. I had brought some Wired 344x for the morning, because by this time it was about 11:30 and waking up at sunrise was going to really hurt without caffeine My brother was like "we should drink something" and I was like "dude, there is so much caffeine in this you're just going to get more dehydrated and it's really gonna be awful". But after about ten more switchback we decided that we had no other choice but to split a Wired. So we did, and even Jack drank some. He HATES anything caffeinated besides beer, which we don't purposefully give to him of course, but which he has been known to jump up on the kitchen counter to knock over and consume as fast as his tiny puppy tongue can lick.

Long story a little bit shorter, we got to the lake at 1:30, after leaving the car at 9, that made the hike four and a half hours, with about two 20 minute breaks. At the summit, there was a sign that warned of bears that freaked my brother out quit a bit, which eventually kind got to me too. Something along the lines of don't leave food next to your camp site, don't hike with dogs, if you do see a bear walk slowly away, if he follows wave you arms and hoot like a crazy person, if he attacks fight him off ass hard as you can as a last resort and as an even laster resort play dead and pray that the bear will leave you alone and alive, and not so maimed as to not be able to hike back down the giant cliff. I've ran into black bears before, even a mother with cubs, and it was unnerving, but that little picture didn't sit well with us.

So we set up camp and I went to fill up the water jug. The camp sites were really nice, they even had fire grates, tent places and were debris free. We camped at the upper lake and in the light of the fire that we started could make out a bunch of drift wood. So, even though we were dying of thirst, we boiled some water before drinking it, because my brother knew as certain as the sun will rise that Laura would kill him if I got beaver fever a week before the wedding. This was the most torturous thing ever, and the water did not taste that good. I swear, next time we're bringing those pills you put in the water, because drinking warm water with ash in it is just annoying. You never know if the ash is ash or a bug.

Of course my brother couldn't sleep. After the wired. And there were mice scurrying everywhere and other creepy crawlies making noises on all sides. There were several time where I'd be in mid slumber when I jolt awake to my brother bolting straight up and exhaling sharply with a near yelp. "What was that?!?!?!" he'd say. Just a mouse. This time he'd unzip the window, "NO! Not the bear pack!" Which we';d strung up twenty feet in the air, a hundred feet from camp, out of reach of any animal with all our food. Every noise seemed to startle him, which in turn caused me a sleepless night, and both of us were pretty tired in the morning. Of course Jack slept right through it.

In the morning it was a different story. Big Grieder Lake is awesome. Not the kind of awesome where somebody tells you they just ordered pizza and buzz wings and you're like "awesome!". The kind of awesome that can only come from witnessing one of creations finest works of art. The lake sits in a crater, surrounded by cliffs. The cliffs are almost 2,000 above the level of the lake. Fir and Hemlock trees sparsely populate the sides of the cliffs and the rest is covered by brush and flowers and boulder chutes, evidence of winter time avalanches. The outlet of the lake where the campsites are is populated by the outcome of these avalanches with a giant log jam, the perfect hide-out for the fish that inhabit this crystal clear lake. The Lake is deceivingly big, when you're out on it you can lose perspective because the cliffs dwarf the lake in sheer scale, and make it seem like you could almost get to the other side of the lake with a brisk jog. This lake is crystal clear, with about 30 to forty feet of visibility, with little to no aquatic vegetation and is populated by a large population of native trout, that you will see rising and jumping all across the lake as soon as the sun rises. I mean, it was one of the most magnificent things that I've ever witnessed. Straight from a fly fishing magazine. The weather was sunny, and the sky in the morning was lit up orange and red and the cliffs were silhouettes against the cirrus clouds, creating a fiery bowl of fluffy clouds reflected against the mirror of undisturbed water of Big Greider. That is except for the myriad of fish jumping in the water.

Needless to say, I scrapped the idea of carrying in my big Seahawk 400 this time. We had gone out and my brother had gifted me with two little one man rafts, $19 a piece. So that's what we fished from. I used my trusty Kastmasters, and Joes Flies spinners. The fish in this lake, although PLENTIFUL, are wiley smart and almost unfoolable. With my polarized glasses I could see three, sometimes five fish swim ultra fast like up to whatever I was throwing, where they would stop and just look at it. If they did hit it was such a short strike that getting a decent hook-set was so difficult it killed me. I probably got about twenty to thirty long distance releases and three times that amount of super short takes before I landed a fish, the first of which I landed on a live night crawler which the fish promptly ate all of and swallowed the hook.

The whole point of this trip was to try and catch the fabled Golden Trout, which I'm sad to say I don't think we did. Most of the fish that we caught were from 8 to 14 inches, and they did not absolutely glow with that yellow sheen that you see in videos and pictures. But they did have Golden Trout markings, striking white tips on their fins and a golden sheen to their back, which leads me to believe that the Golden's that were planted in this lake have been interbreeding with either the native cutthroats, or other rainbows, and when I got home I looked at pictures of Rainbow Golden hybrids and I now even more firmly believe that this is the case. They were striking fish, wild and crazy strong fighters once you hooked them, but they weren't the Golden Trout that you'd expect. I don't know how long ago they planted this lake with them, but it's possible that some first generation or second generation Golden's are still in the lake, as it is a GIANT and deep lake, and in one day I simply did not have the time to fish it entirely, or learn how to fish it best.

The annoying thing about the lake is that close to shore there are flocks and flocks of biting flies, which I later found to be one of the only things that the fish wanted to eat. Little black guys, followed me on my raft from shore, and their were fish rising like crazy within 2 or 3 feet of the side of the boat. They weren't spooked if I didn't paddle and if I let the wind drift me down the lake, the flies would follow and Jack would try like the Whack a Mole Game to eat the jumping fish all around us. Unfortunately, my brother did not have a fly in his kit that looked like those flies and I as a new recruit to fly fishing couldn't cast very well and just ended up scaring the fish away. If anybody know what those flies are, let me know, because I'm going to buy or tie twenty flies that look like them.

These were pretty much the entirety of what the trout were eating during the day, after we managed to catch about three decent size fish we had lunch. When you're backpacking in to a camping fishing trip, you don't bring that much food on account of sometimes you're just going to have to eat the fish you catch. I don't feel bad about not C&Ring these fish as 1. They tasted so fresh and good grilled on a fire that it made it almost impossible to entertain guilt about keeping it 2. There are literally THOUSANDS of fish in this lake. Lots and Lots and Lots and Lots. 3. On further investigation and dissection, it turns out that these trout were STUFFED with those little black flies. Their stomachs were so full that they were rock solid with hundreds of undigested flies. It was kinda creepy, but now I know that these annoying biting flies are probably the only thing that will catch these fish all day.

We fished from the top of the lake to the bottom all day, until about 7 pm when we left. The very top of the lake has a breathtaking underwater drop off that held so many fish, where I hooked into a quite large fish, that I got to shore and then self released as I bent to pick it up. This was disappointing as it flashed a brighter yellow than any of the other fish, and I feel may have been the closest thing to a true golden I could catch.

We packed up and on the way out fished Little Grieder. Which was the BEST idea EVER. I don't know what it was, but the little lake held the same fish as the bigger lake, only they were desperate. They hit harder than any other trout I've ever caught on anything in my whole life. You could see them from 20 yards away racing each other to get to your Kastmaster. And with my ultralight setup they would double the pole over and scream the line out, dance across the water and come to shore gorgeous. The first cast out I was ready for the subtle takes and follows as on Big Grieder, but when my rods was nearly ripped out of my hands by a hungry Golden Rainbow, it was game on! It may be because the fish get swept down the falls from the big lake into such a small one and have to compete for resources, or it could be that it was just that time of day when they were eating voraciously. It was from about 7:30 pm to 8:30 pm that they absolutely tore into our gear almost every single cast. It was so fun. We worked our way from the outlet down the side of the lake through the several campsites on Little Grieder before we called it a satisfying and totally worth it day.

The hike out took less than half the time it took in, and we made it home safe and sound, sans-bear attack. Jack Bauer has never slept so well in his life.