I had been wanting to get up to Trap Lake for a few years after reading about it and seeing pictures of the Westslope Cutthroat that live there. That day finally came this past Saturday as my wife and I headed out to hit the trail in the morning before the toughest part of the hike became too hot. Arriving at Hope Lake first I spent a little time casting small lures there, but the action wasn't great and the main target was Trap, so we moved on. After taking time to get some pictures of the incredible surroundings above the lake, we headed down to the shore and I deployed a 1/8oz gold and crimson Kastmaster; the old standby, and probably my all-time favorite lure for targeting trout in lakes. On my second cast at the small meadow at the north end of the lake I hooked up with a decent fish but had it pop off fairly soon. Pretty quickly I began moving counter clockwise around the lake, casting as I went.

When I fish Kastmasters I will often retrieve them with a twitch thrown in every now and again. In some cases the fish won't even look at the lure if you don't twitch it, and in other cases they want nothing but a straight retrieve. Today they were somewhat interested in a twitching retrieve, but most of the hits I got came on a straight retrieve relatively early in the cast. Nothing really surprising there. What was surprising however was where the fish were holding. I fished from about 2pm to 3pm, and the lake was in totally clear sunlight the entire time. As such, I was expecting fishing to be tough, and any willing biters to be found in the depths beyond the drop off. Note, Trap lake has very clear water and gets deep fast, probably a good 12 to 15 feet deep only 20 feet from shore. But what I found, both by getting hookups and by seeing rises, is that a lot of fish were in the shallows, sometimes as shallow as just two or three feet and pushed right up against the shore. Maybe they were picking bugs off the surface that were falling out of the bushes, but whatever they were doing there it definitely surprised me considering the bright sunlight.

I capitalized on this by employing one of my favorite techniques when along an unimpeded lake shore; casting parallel with the shore rather than out. By doing this and continuing to move down the lake shore after putting a few casts in at each spot I stopped, I essentially ended up getting another hookup every time I moved another 20 or 30 feet down the shore. I will add that even though I was casting into relatively shallow water, I would still always let my lure sink either all the way to the bottom or at list to a mid-level depth before starting my retrieve. This is standard practice for me when fishing trout in lakes and something I also believe to be very important to drawing strikes unless you are fishing structure on top of the water, or the water you are fishing is so deep that the fish may be suspended off the bottom. I only fished for an hour because the sun was starting to bake me and I knew that we had a good hike back to the car, but in that one hour I landed four beautiful fish with many other hits thrown in. And when I say beautiful, these fish truly were. Normally I associate alpine lakes with smaller fish (Trap Lake sits at over 5000'), but every single one of the fish I landed were close to a foot long or more, and were very fat. Some of them were as chunky as Coastal Cutthroat that you might catch in the fall as they swim back upriver from feeding in the salt. I didn't stop to take measurements, and I released everything I caught, but I estimate the biggest one for today was close to 13.5" and filled up my hand with its girth quite nicely (note, the one in the picture was not the biggest).

I know we are in the middle of salmon season right now, but if you are looking for a low-key break from all of that then consider giving a high altitude lake a shot before the weather turns bad. This is just my conjecture, but I imagine that the fish should be getting fat and acting aggressive right now as they get ready for the winter, and this is probably the time of year where you will find yourself most likely to catch a true "high altitude" trophy. For me, the incredible scenery, the catch ratio for just an hour of fishing, and the quality of the fish earned this trip a solid 5 in my book.

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