JAG107
07-07-2010, 06:02 PM
Well, decided to try Rock Creek area for the first time, instead of the usual Bishop Creek Drainage. I guess it was pointless to take the boat up there, because 20 mins into my maiden trolling run on Rock Creek Lake, my 4hp Yamaha's prop quit engaging, so we had to paddle in. Besides a quick skunk, the wife baby and I got eaten alive by the skeeters. :EyePop:
So, Saturday we hiked out of Mosquito Flats trailhead on up to the easy-to-reach lakes as described in Jared's awesome book. After a couple casts into Heart Lake with only a couple chasers, I decided we should start up at Box and work our way down. Let me just say that besides having some of the cleanest water I've ever seen in any lake, it was just stacked with life. After an hour, having bites on nearly every cast, I had landed 23 brookies and one little wild bow, all caught on a 1/12 oz gold kastmaster. These little guys would not take any plastics, which to me seemed weird. Also, we spotted a big hookjawed bow probably over 24" just cruising around in the shallows, not even glancing at the lures or other smaller brookies swimming around him.
Heading down to Heart's inlet, we see ANOTHER bruiser bow, in the shallows again, same story. Didn't have any luck at Heart or Marsh really, besides another few little brookies, so we called it a day. Spent about an hour in the eve tossing stuff into Rock Creek by the East Fork campground, which was simply boiling with smallish browns eating flies off the surface. They were super spooky and I had no luck. I tried fly&bubble, worms, salmon eggs, irons, nothing even got a second look. Oh well...
Sunday we did the same thing as Saturday, hiked up and fished a little while at each lake. Only this time, my first cast into Heart got me a nice 7" brown! We then went up to Long Lake, which was not nearly as stacked as Box, so we just ate lunch there, caught a couple brookies and headed back to Box. Nailed a few more brookies, missing some of the bigger ones by the big rocks, but did get a big surprise on my last cast on our way out past the outlet: a Golden Rainbow hybrid! I had no idea these were up here, so today I had caught 4 different species! I only got a crap camera phone pic, which I still haven't figured out how to get it to the computer, but I'll post the pics when I get them.
Thanks for reading!
So, Saturday we hiked out of Mosquito Flats trailhead on up to the easy-to-reach lakes as described in Jared's awesome book. After a couple casts into Heart Lake with only a couple chasers, I decided we should start up at Box and work our way down. Let me just say that besides having some of the cleanest water I've ever seen in any lake, it was just stacked with life. After an hour, having bites on nearly every cast, I had landed 23 brookies and one little wild bow, all caught on a 1/12 oz gold kastmaster. These little guys would not take any plastics, which to me seemed weird. Also, we spotted a big hookjawed bow probably over 24" just cruising around in the shallows, not even glancing at the lures or other smaller brookies swimming around him.
Heading down to Heart's inlet, we see ANOTHER bruiser bow, in the shallows again, same story. Didn't have any luck at Heart or Marsh really, besides another few little brookies, so we called it a day. Spent about an hour in the eve tossing stuff into Rock Creek by the East Fork campground, which was simply boiling with smallish browns eating flies off the surface. They were super spooky and I had no luck. I tried fly&bubble, worms, salmon eggs, irons, nothing even got a second look. Oh well...
Sunday we did the same thing as Saturday, hiked up and fished a little while at each lake. Only this time, my first cast into Heart got me a nice 7" brown! We then went up to Long Lake, which was not nearly as stacked as Box, so we just ate lunch there, caught a couple brookies and headed back to Box. Nailed a few more brookies, missing some of the bigger ones by the big rocks, but did get a big surprise on my last cast on our way out past the outlet: a Golden Rainbow hybrid! I had no idea these were up here, so today I had caught 4 different species! I only got a crap camera phone pic, which I still haven't figured out how to get it to the computer, but I'll post the pics when I get them.
Thanks for reading!