The Fish are always bigger...
Post date: Sep 8, 2011 6:41:55 PM
During our last backpacking trip, P was having a pretty good time fly fishing in the lakes of the Ansel Adams Wilderness; Rutherford, Sadler, Vandeburg...and even a lake with no name on the Yosemite side of Post Peak Pass.
And the fishing was pretty good, too. He was catching plenty of 8-12 inch rainbows and brook trout like the one at right (and letting them go as well--he wants these fish to be around for him to catch on the next trip. And for his grandchildren to catch, too, when they eventually arrive!)
Each lake offered slightly different conditions, and slightly different results. At Sadler, the rainbows were only taking his fly when it was moving...but the brookies would hit the fly as it landed on the water. At Rutherford Lake, he was finding the fishing a bit slower, but more rewarding---each fish was a good foot long, and they were fat, well-fed and really beautiful.
(No--he doesn't have photos of those fish, because that's the one day he snuck out of the tent during naptime and left the camera in the tent. But they really were that big, honest!)
So imagine his reaction when he got back to our camp at Rutherford Lake and heard that M had climbed the nearby ridge to take a look at Anne Lake in the canyon below. "Oh, the fish were really jumping down there!" she said. "And they were so big, I thought they were otters at first!
Well.
P quickly made a mental note to camp at Anne Lake next time and catch trout the size of otters.
The next day on the trail, we ran into a group of guys who were hiking down the Fernandez trail, and P noticed that one of them had a fishing net on the outside of his pack.
"Did you guys do any fishing up there?" he asked.
"Yeah," they replied. "We fished at Anne lake for quite a few hours."
"Really?!?" P was all ears at this point. "How did you do?"
"Well, between the five of us we caught three fish---two small ones and one that was about twelve inches."
P now has an asterisk next to that note about Anne Lake. And maybe M isn't such a good judge of fish size after all.
Still...it wouldn't hurt to go back and see for himself.
That's Anne Lake in the photo above. Nice, huh? See any fish?