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Two buddies and I went on an epic 49 mile, 5 day hike/fishing trip in the Lake Chelan Sawtooth Wilderness. Actually caught only one small cutthroat trout in Lake Chelan itself on the the morning of August 25th, but caught 25 cutthroat trout in an hour the morning of August 21 and 2 the evening of the 20th in an alpine lake above Lake Chelan. That morning and the night before, fish were feeding on the surface all over the lake. I decided to try out some dry flies since I never legitimately caught a fish on a dry fly before, excluding bass poppers. I had two rods with me (which was probably a mistake since the extra weight added up over the 49 miles...killer!), a fly rod and a small ultra lite spinning rod. I took a cheap SouthBend no-name dry fly to see if it would work. If this worked, I figured any fly would work. I tied it to the end of my fly rod tippet and casted some nice soft presentations...It looked just like a small mosquito falling on the water. Then a few seconds later, BAM! Trout on! A small Cutthroat with beautiful colors. It was dark so I thought it was a brook trout for a moment since it looked really dark grey and had multi-colored spots. Caught one more before I had to go help buddies setup our camp for the night after they rested from our brutal 5000' climb in 7 miles. No pictures the night of the 20th. Then I work up early the morning of the 21st and threw out the same dry fly. Did the same thing, casted nice soft presentations on the fly line and BAM! 10 inch cutthroat. Repeated this 24 more times in one hour and then I had enough. We had to get packing and ready for our next 4 days of hiking. The Lake Chelan Sawtooth Wilderness is absolutely amazing with it's views of mountains, fields of wildflowers and wildlife! Be ready to get destroyed by the elevation though. I estimate we did at least 15,000 feet of climbing through out the trip, including the 5000' first day and Courtney Peak at over 8000'. The makers of the trail must've not thought any hikers would take this trail or something because it was absolutely brutal. The only humans we saw until we descended back into Stehekin were 4 hikers early the second day.

We originally planned to hike down to Stehekin from Purple Pass at the end of our trip, on Saturday, but 3 of the last 4 nights were unbearably cold, so to avoid spending another night freezing to death, we booked it on day 5 of 6, 11 miles and 6900 feet down to Stehekin. Once in Stehekin, I caught one more cutthroat trout on a fly but using my spinning rod and bobber. There were hundreds of what appeared to be lake trout eating bugs off the surface all morning! I thought they were swimmers splashing around, but when I woke up and went down to the lake, there were nothing but hundreds of fish eating off the surface of Lake Chelan! All were too far out to get with my fly rod, so I got only one with the spinning rod.

If you're going to fish the alpine lakes in the Sawtooth, bring only ultra lite gear. Your feet, back and ankles will thank you. :)

Kaptain King

8/27/2012 9:33:00 AM

That sounds like an amazing camping trip! I like the siz of the head on the second picture - you know you have an alpine fish when the head is damn near the size of the body. The temps were below freezing? I bet that made for a long day - but that is what a nap is for.

Cool trip and great pics.

clarkhess122

8/27/2012 10:48:00 AM

That looks awesome! Views and good fishing are the best!

MotoBoat

8/28/2012 9:29:00 AM

That is a big hiking trip. Nice photo's of some very hansom, or pretty fish. Very colorful Seen many types of wildlife? Bears, deer, grouse, cool birds or Bigfoot? LOL!

Lord Of The Fly

8/28/2012 8:32:00 PM

Thanks guys. @KaptainKing: yeah, the temps were below freezing last Tuesday night, but were in the 70-80's during the day below 5000' and prolly 50-60 during the day around 7000'. Sleeping in warm weather in Stehekin on Saturday was much appreciated. @MotoBoat: Saw lots of mule deer and even had three come up in to one of our camps. They didn't seem to be afraid of humans at all...prolly cuz the place is so remote they hardly see them. We also saw about 6-8 grouse, red and grey hawks and these white and black birds known as Camp Robbers, since they tend to steal food from your camp when you're not looking. Also saw lots of marmots and even had one chase another one right at us. It looked like they were charging us! Chipmunks and squirrels everywhere. No official bear sightings. I thought I saw one through some trees a ways off but couldn't confirm. We did see a paw print of one and lots of bear skat...full of berries. No Sasquatch sightings this year.

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