I went up to the uintas with some buddies to try our luck at this elusive fish. It was a beautiful day up there. A little windy ay times but very nice overall. When we first arrived at the lake we made our way around the lake looking for that Golden spot and catching a few Brookies along the way. I was using my fly rod and had hooked up with 4 or 5 little Brookies in our jaunt around the small lake. On about my 6th or 7th fish I struck gold! I couldn’t believe my eyes at first. It was a brilliant specimen. All colored up in it’s spawning getup. I netted the fish and went to get my camera out when I realized I had left my camera in my backpack that I had dropped off over by all of our other gear! Crap! I made sure the fish was secure in the net and in sufficient water for it to breathe and took off running to get my backpack. When I returned to the fish with my camera I found all was well and proceeded to take a bunch of pictures. The fish was released and I finally started to feel my heart stop pounding from the adrenaline rush I had just experienced. Being still early in the day I thought I might have a chance at catching another but it was not to be. We ended up catching a bunch of very small Brookies the rest of the time and cooked a bunch up right on the lake shore. My buddy showed me how to prepare and cook them in a way I had not tried before. They were delicious! Doesn’t get much better than eating fresh caught, pan fried fish on the shore of a beautiful alpine lake. Two of the fish we caught were what I am calling grayscale Brook Trout. I have never seen fish like them before. They were Brook Trout but without the color. Only blacks and whites. I have now caught every species/sub-species of trout in Utah. To top things off, my buddy and I stopped off on the Weber just as it was getting dark to try our luck. Within a few minutes I had on a nice fish. It ended up being a fat Brown of about 18". After that I put my rod away and figured my day couldn’t get any better. A fitting end to a great day! Here are some pictures.
welcome, let me point you to some basic guide lines here:
HOT SPOTTING:
When a poster of a new thread does not wish to ID a certain body of water, NO MEMBER will reply giving the name of that body of water. In the same regard, if a member wants to post all the details on a spot they fished…they can do so without being harassed for hot spotting as long as the fish were caught in a legal manner and no laws were broken.
If someone chooses to ignore this rule and post the name anyway or harasses a member for making the post, their post will be edited with a PM sent warning them that what they did is not allowed. If that member chooses to ignore the warning, then it will be grounds for banning that member.
Congratulations. I just want to encourage everyone to keep their limit (8 if brookies in the Uintas) of fish in the handful or 2 of waters with goldens in Utah. That way maybe somethng positive can come out of the recent attention. Glad you enjoyed a few of those brookies to help the cause.
Like I said in some previous posts, anyone can do a little research and do a little hiking… get to “those” lakes and do a little flyfishing and whamo. Golden. Will you catch one every trip? From the sounds of it no, but that might be why they are so special. Aside from how striking they look.
I very seriously doubt very many of those golden’s get rough treatment. To me, it sounds like if you are up there chasing after something - it’s the golden’s and you probably know they are rare, and you probably know how to handle a fish properly.
Just posting pictures of these amazing fish will make others want to catch one. Even if they have to go through the time to search what lakes they are in - if you want to get one, you’ll do it, and it’s not super difficult. That was my original sentiment in the other post. Just naming the lake is not a be all end all. If you really wanted to keep these fish secret, you would not post any pictures of them on popular forums like this.
But, I love the reports, and love the pictures. And I don’t think every yahoo who goes up there and catches a golden is going to abuse the resource. Just my 2 cents, thanks for a great report and pictures.
Congratulations. I just want to encourage everyone to keep their limit (8 if brookies in the Uintas) of fish in the handful or 2 of waters with goldens in Utah. That way maybe somethng positive can come out of the recent attention. Glad you enjoyed a few of those brookies to help the cause.
I agree. Eat all the Brookies you can out of this lake!
So the $10 question is did they go up “there” to chase golden’s because of someones post, or just because they are a unique trout variety to encounter?
They are mighty colorful, though quite small all I’ve seen - at least of the Utah ones.
Yet them brookies - cute as they are - seem even smaller.
Can’t say I love the photo in the grass. Just saying in recent light of discussions about handling or harassing certain fishes.
I would be curious to know about this “new way” to prepare the brookies. Nothing like fresh fresh trout on a campfire.
Thanks for bringing your pictures over. Nice to have them right here to view, rather than going out to flickr.
Pretty shots there.
So the $10 question is did they go up “there” to chase golden’s because of someones post, or just because they are a unique trout variety to encounter?
They are mighty colorful, though quite small all I’ve seen - at least of the Utah ones.
Yet them brookies - cute as they are - seem even smaller.
Can’t say I love the photo in the grass. Just saying in recent light of discussions about handling or harassing certain fishes.
I would be curious to know about this “new way” to prepare the brookies. Nothing like fresh fresh trout on a campfire.
Thanks for bringing your pictures over. Nice to have them right here to view, rather than going out to flickr.
Pretty shots there.
The fish was on the grass for probably 5 seconds. Just enough time to snap the shot and then back to the water. It was released in fine spirits.
We filleted the little fish so that just the small strip of meat was all that was put in the pan. Bone and skin free. Lots of butter, a dash of onion powder and garlic salt were used to season the fish. With the little fillets it only too a matter of a couple minutes and they were done. And yes, the Brookies seem to be a lot smaller than the few Goldens there. The Golden was the big fish of the day.
