In Search of Goldens

After doing some research i have found several lakes within a reasonable drive that apparently contain some goldens. me and tirko set out this morning at 0700. along the way we saw the usual suspects, some deer and a few elk. once off the highway it was 11.5 miles up the dirt road to the trailhead.on the drive up we had to maneuver some blown down trees and a little snow. when we got to the trailhead the was a campsite set up already. as we were gearing up two dudes crawled out of the tent. i don't want to speculate but, maybe there was some brokeback mountain shit going on, not sure. i know if i'm camping with another guy, i'm using my own tent. once geared up we set off on the 3.5 mile hike to lake #2 along the trailhead, that's one of the ones that is supposed to host goldies. the trail follows a beautiful stream littered with little waterfalls and some sweet pools only one of which we fished and had no luck. the trail at this point was still covered with lots of snow. the only way we had an idea of where we were going was cause i talked to one of the campers and he said they had hiked back to the first lake so when the snow covered our trail we just followed their foot steps. most of the snow would hold us but there was a couple of spots where i fell through to my waist and some of the trail snow pack i know would have been over my head, lots of it left, which made for some slow going. we finally made it to the first junction in the trail and instead of veering to lake #1 we started working our way around it to get to lake #2. the problem here was still lots and lots of snow and no foot prints to follow. when we did see some dirt we couldn't tell if we were on the trail or not but kept winging it in hopes of getting on it. we made it almost to the other side of lake #1 but felt that we weren't even close to where the trail should be so instead of chancing getting way lost we made our way down the ridge to see what lake #1 had to offer. when we got to it we saw the there was still some ice on it and we were going to be limited to just the one side of the lake. wasn't about to try and hike our way around all the snowpack to the other side. the surroundings were beautiful as most high altitude lakes are. tirko geared up with his spin rod quickly hooked up and landed a nice cuttie. i started with leeches, then went chironimids and then buggers. an orange beaded bugger got me rolling. i got into a handful of fish landing 6, all cutthroat. tirko landed a few more as well. it was definately the best day, fishing wise, that we have had here in montana yet. the weather was great, the scenery was awesome,and the fishing ended up pretty good. it just sucks that we didn't get back to the golden pond. next time!