TRIP: Uinta Day trip
DATE: 8-3-2019
When the 8 of us pulled into the Crystal Lake Trailhead and saw that the parking lot was not only full of of vehicles but also full of people with their gear waiting to hike in I wondered if we would get a spot to fish on Washington Lake. The lake is bank full right now. It hasn’t been this high in several years! We had to park 1/2 mile below the Group Camping areas, so we got plenty of hiking done on the way to the lake!!!
The fish were active on dries:we skated ant and beetle imitations, some used baetis, others fished underneath with damsel fly imitations. Close in, the fish that were catchable were mostly tiger trout in the 12″ range. We had on intrepid Club members put on the lake in his kick boatd and caught mostly rainbows. He said they were larger, but nothing real big was caught.
The good news is that everyone had an opportunity to cast to rising fish! It can be difficult to find water that is cool enough to maintain the trout’s appetite. The Unita lakes are great in the hot part of summer for that!
The weather cooperated with us too. It is monsoon season and often the Unitas get the brunt of that. Yesterday, we saw some dark clouds and heard the rumbles in the distance, but the storm blew through without “dumping” and the fish came back “on” as soon as the sunshine hit the water. Later on in the day however the storm came in earnest. We were walking out by that time and were grateful to have had a full day’s fishing without rain!!