Every once in a while, you plan a trip to a new water for big fish. After all the research, you know the fish are there and anglers have been catching them recently. In our case, we decided to fish a massive body of water in Southern Colorado for Northerns in the morning and Trout later in the day.We made the two and a half hour drive and had some high expectations about the quantity and quality of the fish we were going to catch. It was going to be a great day………….

Little did we know the storms were brewing in the mountains and we had to fight terrible rain all morning. And of course, we saw NO Pike!! We decided to fall back on Trout fishing; we felt confident we would land quite a few. We proceeded to fish for 5 hours and did not see as much as a bite. The worst part was, WE TRIED EVERYTHING!

Just before we left with our tails between our legs, I decided to try one last pattern my cousin Anthony told me would catch big Trout. I double hauled that sonovabitch out there, and what happened? A big trout ate it up. Not once, but twice.

I landed him and we left; some with our tails between our legs and other’s not.

Thanks Anth!

Fern Lake is a gorgeous high mountain lake in the middle of Rocky Mountain National Park. I made the 8 mile roundtrip hike with my friend Matthew and we really timed it right. The ice had just come off the lake and the Greenbacks were really keying in on Pink San Juans and small Chironomid patterns.

We found most of our fish right at the inlet, but big fish were seen cruising all day long. This is really a great hike and a good place to relax and catch fish. All of the high mountain lakes under 10,500 feet are icing-off, so check them out.