There’s a fine line in fishing that anglers – whether they realize it or not – constantly dance around. See, we want the fishing to be good. Filling the role of the terribly bland modifier it is, good can mean lots of things depending on your chosen flavor of angling. Maybe you matched the hatch perfectly on your favorite river. Or perhaps you limited out on walleye or finally fooled the one bass you’ve been hunting for weeks. More often than not, however, good fishing means one thing: lots of fish.
Herein lies the conundrum. We want our fishing to be good, but not necessarily too good. Imagine if every time you went out, you crushed it. Dry fly eats on every cast. Topwater blowups left and right. After a while, fishing would simply be no fun. Automatic catching would remove the skill and mystery from our obsession, like a slot machine that always hits or a dealer who always sends pocket aces your way.
I was chewing on this contradiction as I watched several hundred decent sized cutthroat rise in the evening light of a remote lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. After dodging a few afternoon thunderstorms, I pitched my tent and rigged two rods. This lake wasn’t terribly remote but ignored enough that I was able to snag a last-minute backcountry permit to camp there during the height of the busy season at one of America’s most visited parks. As I gazed out at the rippling surface of the lake, I suspected I was about to get into some good fishing.
I began with my favorite still water pattern, a renegade. Armed with a fresh 5x leader on the end of a 5 weight, I laid down my first cast near a cruising fish and within seconds I watched a thick trout casually change its path to inspect my fly. Spellbound, I watched the type of eat that never gets old: a large trout slowly, yet confidently, swimming up to slurp the fly. When the fish turned, I set the hook and seconds later was looking at my first ever greenback cutthroat in the net.
For the next few hours, I stalked a lake shore littered with ravenous trout. Brookies and cutthroat were both in the mix, charging nearly every bug that hit the water. The actual hatch – a mix of small midges and caddis – was almost beside the point. Anything that I threw got a response. Some of the larger bugs I threw were initially refused, but eventually a willing trout would take the bait. I left the lake at dusk, cloaked in a zippered rain jacket to fight clouds of mosquitoes.
The next morning, I slid through the sparse tree line vegetation to reach two lakes sitting in the shadow of an impressive granite cirque. A fierce wind swept down the 13,000-foot peaks, radiating a rough chop across the water’s surface. I tucked myself into the leeward corner of the lake, adjacent to a melting snowfield that carved a deep drop-off into the shore.
I began throwing another favorite stillwater rig in choppy conditions: a balanced leech under an indicator. Within minutes, the first bobber was down, and I was looking at a round, 15-inch cutthroat in my net. I saw a few rises and quickly abandoned my indicator setup for a dry fly. I spent the morning cycling between my dry fly rod and a secondary streamer setup I had brought along. Both produced plenty of fish, all hard-fighting native cutthroat.
Summer time, and the living is easy. At the height of summer, when the sun drenches the mountains in heat, the oppressive cold of February is far from any backpacker’s mind. The fish, of course, know differently. Winter is always around the corner, and any piece of protein could mean the difference between surviving the dark months of thick ice and scant food or ending up as a carcass in the depths of an indifferent lake. With this in mind, these trout thought nothing of scarfing down a size 8 chubby in a watershed that holds few, if any, quarter-sized terrestrials.
On the final morning, I returned to the wind-swept lake near camp, made one cast, and caught a single fish. The sun reflected off its red gill plates and illuminated the inky spots along its tail. As it swam off, I could have sworn it made a beeline for the nearest hatching midge.
In the balance, fishing is very rarely good. That isn’t to say the average outing isn’t fun. Slow days are still punctuated with excitement. Impossible conditions give way to feelings of achievement when you finally get something in the net. But every once in a blue moon, the fishing is simply lights out. When the stars align and you can do no wrong with a rod in hand, it’s best to fill your cup and leave grateful. After my first and only fish of the morning, I cheerfully packed my tent, gave a nod to a passing bull moose, and headed back to the car.