For alpine fly fisherman, there's almost nothing more exciting to chase down than cutthroat. Personally, I'm a big fan of any adventure that requires hiking into. The more effort it takes to get to, the less likely the destination is to be crowded with people and disrupted by the chaos of everyday life. If I'm going into the wilderness, I don't want accessible, I want wild. I want solitude.
On a recent trip to Colorado, we visited a place much less remote than I'd typically prefer for some hiking and fishing - Brainard Lake Recreation Area. Thankfully, when you're on the hunt for cutthroat trout, the nature of the classically elusive fish inherently leads you away from the crowds and into the backwoods. We spent two days in a row exploring different lakes deep within the Recreation Area. We searched entire bodies of water, and when we would finally hit a pocket of cutthroat, it was hard to pull us away. If we had just stayed on the trail, didn't press on into higher elevations, didn't follow our instincts, we never would have found them.
We landed dozens of beautiful, vibrant, native Colorado cutthroat over the course of two days. We couldn't have been happier with the treasure we found high in the alpine!
Anyone else love fishing for cutties?
