Back to Big Meadows and Beaver Creek

Yesterday, I went back to Big Meadows to see if the most productive spot for me was still good for catching some nice fish.  After two and a half hours, I only had one strike or bump on my lure -- most of the time, I spent cleaning off my lures when I fished the boulders half way around the lake and not a single strike there.  At least eight out of every ten casts there, I felt I was raking the weeds and algae mostly because the lake was about 18 inches below the level when I left six weeks ago.

Looking around the lake, I wondered how the mountainsides had not burned along with all the other thousands of acres from the recent fires which had been just on the other sides of these mountains.  They were so brown in color from the beetle kill.  The road past Big Meadows was still closed going up to Shaw lake and another lake.

I saw other people with fish on stringers but, they were small fish and most people appeared to be using bait of some sort.  I decided to head over to Beaver Creek reservoir on my way back to the campground to get a look at its water level and see if the fishing might be better there with lures.  When I rounded the last corner to the dam, there was a construction sign and the first pullout at the dam was blocked off with a construction trailer parked there and heavy equipment parked all around the spillway and one big steam shovel setting down in the spillway -- work finally being done so that the water level might again be able to rise one of these years.

The water level in the reservoir looked to be about the same as when I had left and above what it was last year at this time.  I didn't feel like wading the stream to the other side (sometime in the future, I'm sure) so, I drove back past the picnic area where many people were fishing the shore and rocks -- stopped at the pullout above the cliffs.  I climbed down and fished along the boulders below the cliffs and hoped to hook a Kokanee or a Brown -- caught 6 pretty little Rainbows and released them all.  They were all under 12 inches and had beautiful greenish to dark blue backs on them which accented the beautiful red stripes on their sides.

Tomorrow, I will probably head back there and climb down at the next pullout toward the dam -- first place I had caught Kokanee at last year (thought they were Lake trout then).  Weather allowing of course, and it's been raining here off and on all day long as I hope to cook two nice trout from Blue Mesa (should feed me for three dinners including a share with Tiger and Molly).  Raining again now and looks like more coming.