COLORADO TROUT ANGLER: 9-2-12 Headed off to the Spirit In The Sky

Gonna go there when I die.

As I said I would, me and the bro got to get up to the Loch this last weekend. And of course, guides luck! Take the client, great weather. Take a day for yourself, bad weather. That's right. It was windy as heck all day. We got up there real early and I figured that the wind would die once the sun came up. It did not.

But we fished on. It was just real slow at the lake, although we both managed one a piece; both on ants. We knew they were in there; we just couldn't see em' because of the waves. And to me, the fun of fishing this lake is sight fishing and watching them eat off the top all day. I could have tied on a nymph or even a streamer; it just wasn't the rush I wanted. So we decided to head up the mountain and begin by fishing the creek in between Loch Vale and Glass Lake (A.k.a. Lake of Glass). Too bad this was the ugliest looking creek ever:

Or not! The beauty of this place was incredible, as you can see on my really cheap camera here. I mean for a not so great camera, look at that shot. Wow! It was truly unbelievable. Just below here was a section where the river bottom is completely full of granite slabs and you can see the trout just all over them. Awesome.

We fished/explored/fished/explored here for the better part of 3 or 4 hours. We both managed 2-3 cutts and I was very surprised at the size of the fish in this really small stream. Very healthy. They were all caught on beetles, tan/brown/cinnamon Elk Hair Caddis (EHC), CDC Caddis in olive, and a samll Royal Wulff. Really buggy area though; it was nice. We continued to work on towards the falls below Glass Lake. You can actually see them in the first picture above the lines of boulders on the left.

And talk about a hike. Straight up this staircase trail. Very tiring. But once you get there it's quite the site looking up:

And then you have to really 'scurry' to get up and around this. We took the long way and went around. Not recommended. Take the trail on the right side of the falls. If you can't get up here, you can't get down later so think about that. We just didn't figure out until the hike down that it wasn't as bad as it looked going up. So stay right. And once you finally get to the top:

That is the view from halfway between Glass Lake and Sky Pond. My camera really did it an injustice. We did not fish here as my bible, Fly Fishing Rocky Mountain National Park, says it is not the best fishing; especially when windy. So we trekked on. Here is a view of the waterfall right below Sky Pond. Again, my camera sucks. Hopefully, I will post some of my bro's pics.

And then the destination was complete as we arrived at Sky Pond. What a really cool lake. The color of the water was just amazing blue. That is the actual color of the water. 'Oh my gosh holy crap amazing blue'. Look for it on your kids Crayolas soon. Sky Pond:

The fishing report here was simple: sunny with no wind = good fishing and cloudy with wind = bad fishing. Well there wasn't much of the former so we managed only three brooks here. But as the bible said, they were very healthy. I will definitely come back here again some time under better conditions and look for the little piggy that I know waits in there. Really good shelves in this lake for sight fishing, by the way. I recommend staying on the northeast or southwest corners, or even the straight east where the outlet is.

Well another day in the books was complete. We headed down the mountain and got back to Glacier Gorge TH (GGTH) at about 6:30. Overall feelings on the day were sort of mixed on the surface:

Goals: pound the heck out of The Loch. That did not happen.

Alternative goals: complete fishing the entire spur of the Loch Vale trail and catch fish in all sections. That mostly happened.

I only threw maybe 3-4 casts in Glass Lake, but I don't have a major desire to go back there, although I will always return to the Loch for sure so I now know the alternative when that isn't fishing so well.

Another shot of Icy Brook in between The Loch and Glass Lake: