Gettin' High and Seein' Red

A lot of folks think Tuesdays were made for sitting behind a desk.

Nope.  Tuesdays were made for wet wading high mountain creeks.

I loaded up Uprising's mobile HQ transport and headed up to one of my favorite mountain creeks.  This time of year, the creek hosts thousands of spawning kokanee salmon - as well as a late season flavilinea mayfly hatch.  And hoppers...lots of hoppers.  While the salmon are a pleasant diversion, the real allure of this creek is hungry cutthroats that rise consistently to a well-placed dry fly. 

 

I enjoyed/endured a steep and arduous hike which involved a fair amount of bushwhacking.  It was well worth the effort. 

  

I carried two rods - one with a dry fly set-up for trout and another with a nymphing rig for kokanee.  The cutthroats responded well to a flav cripple imitation and the kokanee responded to a crimson red egg pattern.

After hiking about 6 miles with a few hundred feet of elevation gain, I was pretty stoked to come back to a trailer with a fridge, bed and stove.  I had the entire campground to myself as I sat under a full moon and ate the bowl of peanut rice noodles my wife handed me on the way out the door.  I slept like the dead and had a great breakfast with a pot of black sludge coffee in the morning. 

 This is what life is all about.