My son Tal and I heard rumors of big golden trout in the Wind Rivers. So this year we decided to head to Wyoming for our annual fishing trip.  The trip to the lakes took just about as much time as if we’d flown to Australia.  We drove from Denver to Lander where we purchased a pass to go across the Reservation. From there, we took an hour drive over a bumpy dirt road. After spending the night, we saddled our horses for four hours over a rocky trail to our base camp.  Tal rode Itchy and I had Spike. Both were great horses, except Itchy kept trying to scratch himself on every tree.  Our base camp looked up at the heart of the Wind Rivers.  As you can see, the scenery was fantastic.

From our base camp, we either rode or hiked up to a different lake each day.  Travel time was about the same because the trails were so difficult we often ended up walking our horses.

 The lake with the golden trout doesn’t have a name or a trail. We had to bushwhack it up a really steep mountain for a couple of hours until we found it. When we got there, the wind was really whipping across the lake, making it really hard to toss our flies. And these fish weren’t easy to catch, but we managed to get a few to shore.  They have all kinds of beautiful colors, pink, purple, orange and yellow.  Kind of like a cutthroat in a flower patch.  We didn’t break any records, but we had a really fun day.

 We catch and release all our fish, so these two are still happily feeding away.

 We spent the rest of the week catching some really nice cutthroats. Super fun watching them flash as they shoot up from the bottom to hit your fly.  Hopefully we can go back next year.