Fishing, and hunting reports (share yours)

[beeinak]

On the topic of projectiles, I’ve been tempted to dust off the bow and try for a fox or two.

Any recommendations on fixed 2 blade double bevel broadheads? I’m so far out from it that the manufacturer of the last lot is no longer in business.

Any recommendations for traditional shafts would be good too.

Zwickey for solids and Muzzy for non. Both great.

 

[oldmanwilly]

Going through old photos, here's what's left of an old boar I took some years ago.

Looks to me like he was a righty:

 

[Wishfulthinker580]

Went for a walk at mom and dad’s this evening

 

[Retired UPS Driver]

Went for a walk at mom and dad’s this evening
View attachment 2912311

But did you eat it? Gramps always said if you shoot it you eat it, that was the rule, and it taught you well.

 

[carnifex knifeworks]

Feral hogs are delicious

 

[SpyderPhreak]

Fishing and camping trip a week ago at Blue Mesa near Gunnison, CO. Great trip, if not a bit on the hot side in the 90’s most of the week. At least it cools off into the 40’s at night…

Target species were Kokanee Salmon, Lake Trout, and Perch. We did well, basically brought home limits of salmon (10 each), and ~30 Perch in the one afternoon we targeted them.

The pollen has been crazy here. This is the intersection of Hwy. 285 and Hwy. 24 near Salida, looking West at Mt. Princeton (14,197’). That’s a BIG wind-generated dust devil you’re seeing out there, filled with pine pollen… I’d estmate it goes up well over 13’000’ in the air, the ground is ~9,500’



Here’s more of the same. CLOUDS of pollen in the air on the West side of Monarch pass on the way home!



Some of the fish pics at the cleaning station from a couple days.







A couple of the nice fish. 18” fat salmon and a Brown.





And a dink Perch lol…



Smoked the salmon up in the Recteq pellet grill last Sunday, after an overnight soak in a salt and brown sugar brine. Here’s the first batch right after I put it in, I had to do 2 batches we had so many filets!



Took about 4.5 hours at 180º. I diluted about 1.5 cup of honey with 3/4C of water, and glazed some of the filets every 20 minutes or so. Those honey-glazed ones turned out AMAZING! We have a local product here in Colorado called “Honey Smoked Salmon”, and this is WAY better!!!



Was a GREAT trip!!!

 

[SpyderPhreak]

Did a short backpacking trip over the past weekend. Camped at ~10,750'. Back in the forest, several hundred feet away from the trail, to get away from people haha.

All that bright green undergrowth is a type of Bilberry plant (Vaccinium Scoparium) with edible berries. Unfortunately, they weren't quite ripe yet and were pretty bitter.

A bunch of lakes in the area. Fish in all of them. This was one of the upper ones, just below timberline here, at almost 11,000'.

Waterfall!!! (You can also see it in the pic a couple above if you look closely.)

One of the fish... (Brooke Trout)

This lake was just a bit below our camp, ~10,680'. We got our water from the creek flowing out of it.

And another fish.

Waterfall between these two lakes.

All this only ~90 minute drive from my house in the far SW part of the Denver metro area. Colorado is pretty awesome...

 

[Jabrni]

Did a short backpacking trip over the past weekend. Camped at ~10,750'. Back in the forest, several hundred feet away from the trail, to get away from people haha.

All that bright green undergrowth is a type of Bilberry plant (Vaccinium Scoparium) with edible berries. Unfortunately, they weren't quite ripe yet and were pretty bitter.

A bunch of lakes in the area. Fish in all of them. This was one of the upper ones, just below timberline here, at almost 11,000'.

Waterfall!!! (You can also see it in the pic a couple above if you look closely.)

One of the fish... (Brooke Trout)

This lake was just a bit below our camp, ~10,680'. We got our water from the creek flowing out of it.

And another fish.

Waterfall between these two lakes.

All this only ~90 minute drive from my house in the far SW part of the Denver metro area. Colorado is pretty awesome...

Sounds like an awesome trip.

 

[SpyderPhreak]

Sounds like an awesome trip.

It was! Just too short.

 

[adluginb]

Did a short backpacking trip over the past weekend. Camped at ~10,750'. Back in the forest, several hundred feet away from the trail, to get away from people haha.

All that bright green undergrowth is a type of Bilberry plant (Vaccinium Scoparium) with edible berries. Unfortunately, they weren't quite ripe yet and were pretty bitter.

A bunch of lakes in the area. Fish in all of them. This was one of the upper ones, just below timberline here, at almost 11,000'.

Waterfall!!! (You can also see it in the pic a couple above if you look closely.)

One of the fish... (Brooke Trout)

This lake was just a bit below our camp, ~10,680'. We got our water from the creek flowing out of it.

And another fish.

Waterfall between these two lakes.

All this only ~90 minute drive from my house in the far SW part of the Denver metro area. Colorado is pretty awesome...

 

[adluginb]

SpyderPhreak messed that post up^

Looks like where I’ve been a couple times camping upside of Silverton.

 

[SpyderPhreak]

SpyderPhreak messed that post up^

Looks like where I’ve been a couple times camping upside of Silverton.

Beautiful area, the San Juans are my favorite part of the state, but much further away from home.

 

[Big DJ]

Beautiful, I love Colorado except the traffic.

 

[Pàdruig]

Did a short backpacking trip over the past weekend. Camped at ~10,750'. Back in the forest, several hundred feet away from the trail, to get away from people haha.

All that bright green undergrowth is a type of Bilberry plant (Vaccinium Scoparium) with edible berries. Unfortunately, they weren't quite ripe yet and were pretty bitter.

A bunch of lakes in the area. Fish in all of them. This was one of the upper ones, just below timberline here, at almost 11,000'.

Waterfall!!! (You can also see it in the pic a couple above if you look closely.)

One of the fish... (Brooke Trout)

This lake was just a bit below our camp, ~10,680'. We got our water from the creek flowing out of it.

And another fish.

Waterfall between these two lakes.

All this only ~90 minute drive from my house in the far SW part of the Denver metro area. Colorado is pretty awesome...

Awesome! Beautiful scenery.

What kind of fishing kit to you bring when backpacking?

 

[SpyderPhreak]

Awesome! Beautiful scenery.

What kind of fishing kit to you bring when backpacking?

Great question D!

It depends haha. For the CO mountains, it's pretty much just Trout fishing, so that dictates what to bring. Usually, that was an old Eagle Claw convertible rod (can be set up for either a spinning rod or a fly rod), and some flies, spinners (Mepps, Rooster Tails, etc.), and small crankbaits. Issue with this is bringing 2 reels, one fly reel and one spinning reel. Mainly depends on if we'll be fishing streams or ponds/lakes. I'd only use the fly rod for streams, but either works in ponds/lakes.

However, lately, I've been moving away from this and instead just bringing a spinning rod. Then, I can use spinners, cranks, and with a fly bubble, flies too (either dries or nymphs). Plus, fly casting distance is greatly improved with a bubble, so you can really get those flies way out in the lakes. Most of the creeks are small enough that I can still lay a fly down without the heavy fly line, so technically that's possible still (but the fish in the creeks are usually tiny, like fit in the palm of your hand tiny).

In some cases (as was the case this past weekend), the shallower, closer-to-shore fish were really spooky, and while they were still feeding some on dries and emergers, they were being really selective and catching wasn't happening. There were a couple guys fly fishing, and not catching anything. After awhile, they came over and asked how we were catching fish while they weren't. Bait? (lol, no...) We were catching on small grasshopper and ant patterns, just WAY out from shore. They'd seen the surface bites, but couldn't figure out what we were doing, as they'd never seen or heard of fly bubbles.

So with this kit, you're pretty well setup, and it takes up very little weight/room. I'll take a picture of what I took later tonight. It's 3 small boxes; one nymphs, one dry flies, and one of spinners, etc. A pair of forceps, clippers, and a spool of 6# leader material (since I put braid as the mainline on all my spinning setups).

If you look closely in the first couple of lake pictures, you can see the braided fishing line on the water, and our 2 bubbles at at the edge of the shallow and deep water right where it turns to dark green. The flies are ~6' from the bubbles.

 

[SpyderPhreak]

Pàdruig here’s the fishing gear (minus rod and reel).



Assortment of various dry flies and nymphs. Sometimes matching the hatch doesn’t work, and they just want something else. The big brown and yellow grasshopper with orange and white indicators worked best, even though there’s none like that at 11,000’.

Dries; Beetles, ants, grasshoppers, gnat clusters, mosquitos, cicadas (lol), stimulators, yellow sallies.


Nymphs; purple perdigons, red San Juan worms with tungsten beads, caddis, prince nymphs, pheasant tails, zebra midges, and a few other misc. ones. Note most have beads, so they sink on their own from the bubble, depth based on the leader length.




A bunch of different spinners and such. Sometimes they want something moving.


I’ve used similar kit successfully in the Sierras too.

 

[Pàdruig]

Great question D!

It depends haha. For the CO mountains, it's pretty much just Trout fishing, so that dictates what to bring. Usually, that was an old Eagle Claw convertible rod (can be set up for either a spinning rod or a fly rod), and some flies, spinners (Mepps, Rooster Tails, etc.), and small crankbaits. Issue with this is bringing 2 reels, one fly reel and one spinning reel. Mainly depends on if we'll be fishing streams or ponds/lakes. I'd only use the fly rod for streams, but either works in ponds/lakes.

However, lately, I've been moving away from this and instead just bringing a spinning rod. Then, I can use spinners, cranks, and with a fly bubble, flies too (either dries or nymphs). Plus, fly casting distance is greatly improved with a bubble, so you can really get those flies way out in the lakes. Most of the creeks are small enough that I can still lay a fly down without the heavy fly line, so technically that's possible still (but the fish in the creeks are usually tiny, like fit in the palm of your hand tiny).

In some cases (as was the case this past weekend), the shallower, closer-to-shore fish were really spooky, and while they were still feeding some on dries and emergers, they were being really selective and catching wasn't happening. There were a couple guys fly fishing, and not catching anything. After awhile, they came over and asked how we were catching fish while they weren't. Bait? (lol, no...) We were catching on small grasshopper and ant patterns, just WAY out from shore. They'd seen the surface bites, but couldn't figure out what we were doing, as they'd never seen or heard of fly bubbles.

So with this kit, you're pretty well setup, and it takes up very little weight/room. I'll take a picture of what I took later tonight. It's 3 small boxes; one nymphs, one dry flies, and one of spinners, etc. A pair of forceps, clippers, and a spool of 6# leader material (since I put braid as the mainline on all my spinning setups).

If you look closely in the first couple of lake pictures, you can see the braided fishing line on the water, and our 2 bubbles at at the edge of the shallow and deep water right where it turns to dark green. The flies are ~6' from the bubbles.

Pàdruig here’s the fishing gear (minus rod and reel).

View attachment 2949801

Assortment of various dry flies and nymphs. Sometimes matching the hatch doesn’t work, and they just want something else. The big brown and yellow grasshopper with orange and white indicators worked best, even though there’s none like that at 11,000’.

Dries; Beetles, ants, grasshoppers, gnat clusters, mosquitos, cicadas (lol), stimulators, yellow sallies.
View attachment 2949805

Nymphs; purple perdigons, red San Juan worms with tungsten beads, caddis, prince nymphs, pheasant tails, zebra midges, and a few other misc. ones. Note most have beads, so they sink on their own from the bubble, depth based on the leader length.
View attachment 2949802

View attachment 2949803

A bunch of different spinners and such. Sometimes they want something moving.
View attachment 2949804

I’ve used similar kit successfully in the Sierras too.

Thank you for all the info and the pics, my friend. It is very helpful. I've been wanting to put together a fishing kit for my backpacking setup for awhile, but I've never really took the initiative. The fellas I've gone with in the past are either just hunters or they neither hunt or fish. One of my brothers and I have a couple of elk hunts planned in the upcoming season, so I am getting my kit sorted. I need to go practice as well, it's been awhile since I've shot my bow.

 

[Mendoman]

Did a short backpacking trip over the past weekend. Camped at ~10,750'. Back in the forest, several hundred feet away from the trail, to get away from people haha.

All that bright green undergrowth is a type of Bilberry plant (Vaccinium Scoparium) with edible berries. Unfortunately, they weren't quite ripe yet and were pretty bitter.

A bunch of lakes in the area. Fish in all of them. This was one of the upper ones, just below timberline here, at almost 11,000'.

Waterfall!!! (You can also see it in the pic a couple above if you look closely.)

One of the fish... (Brooke Trout)

This lake was just a bit below our camp, ~10,680'. We got our water from the creek flowing out of it.

And another fish.

Waterfall between these two lakes.

All this only ~90 minute drive from my house in the far SW part of the Denver metro area. Colorado is pretty awesome...

It is awesome that you take the time to get out there and enjoy the natural wonders around you. Sometimes it’s easier said than done.

 

[SpyderPhreak]

Thank you for all the info and the pics, my friend. It is very helpful. I've been wanting to put together a fishing kit for my backpacking setup for awhile, but I've never really took the initiative. The fellas I've gone with in the past are either just hunters or they neither hunt or fish. One of my brothers and I have a couple of elk hunts planned in the upcoming season, so I am getting my kit sorted. I need to go practice as well, it's been awhile since I've shot my bow.

Bow hunting Elk is a big undertaking! Definitely not easy! Good luck!

It is awesome that you take the time to get out there and enjoy the natural wonders around you. Sometimes it’s easier said than done.

100%! This was my youngest's first backpacking trip. We tried to go last summer, but just couldn't get it to happen. She had a great time!

 

[Pàdruig]

Bow hunting Elk is a big undertaking! Definitely not easy! Good luck!

Thanks, man. I haven't gone in a few years, so I am pretty excited to get back out there. I am not a religious person but getting within 30 yards of a raging bull, with him screaming and dancing, is as close to a spiritual experience as one can get. Elk are amazing creatures, and I have immense respect and awe for them.

I'm sure I'll be posting a bit as we get closer. I've been working on getting myself back in hiking shape and assessing my gear. Going to take my bow into a local shop soon to get it checked out and tuned up.