Ep 50: Fishing Backcountry Alpine Lakes, with Ron Belak
Ron Belak is an avid backcountry fisherman and author of several books and many articles. His first book, Fly Fishing Colorado's Backcountry, details how to effectively fish Colorado’s remote alpine lakes and streams. His second book, published in April of 2021, is called The Fishing Guide to 800 High Lakes in Colorado, and discusses 800 lakes in the state that Ron and other anglers have personally fished. He has also published around 80 articles in the Colorado Outdoors magazine. In this episode, we discuss backcountry alpine lakes specifically. Ron details his motivations for getting off the beaten path, the gear he brings for day trips and overnight trips, fly selection, seasonal changes, finding good fishing spots, and much more!
Website: www.ronbelak.com
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. This is episode 50 with Ron Belak on fishing backcountry alpine lakes well I usually just like to start out with a little bit about your fishing background so if you just want to kind of give me a history on yourself there how'd you get started in fishing and the outdoors
Ron
well I started fishing when I was about five years old my father took me fishing I went out in the backyard which was in upstate New York and I cut a lilac branch and fashioned a piece of string and a hook and he took me to one of the local lakes and I believe I caught a little bluegill and so there was fishing in the family with the other two brothers and when I got a little older about 12 or so he took me on my first trout fishing expedition which was one of the small streams there and he didn't think I was going to catch any fish so he kind of sent me in one direction and I went, you know, he went the other direction and I caught a brown trout and and he and I told him that and I put it, we were fishing with minnows at the time and I put it in the bucket and he goes, no, I think you probably caught a chub and then he was really surprised to see that it was a brown trout. So we continue, you know, through high school and college fishing together and I moved out to Colorado in 1979 and I think the first place I went to was the North Fork of the South Platte and then I went down into Cheeseman Canyon and I was kind of surprised in 1979 how many people were in Cheeseman Canyon which was nothing like it is today there were probably 10 percent of the people but I was used to a little bit more elbow room and and so I went up into the backcountry and started fishing. So is that kind of what triggered you to get more of a focus into backcountry fly fishing? Yeah, it was really to pretty much get away from people, have a little bit more elbow room, fishing tailwaters and fishing the free stones at the time. You know, people would fish a hole and then move on and they would probably disturb a mile or so of the stream. And so I thought if I went into backcountry, I could probably have a lake all to myself, which was true.
Katie
Now, how did you make that transition? Did you, you know, buy all the gear and drop everything and head into the wild? Or did you kind of need to dip your toe in? Like, what was that process like?
Ron
Well, I can remember my first backpacking trip in there, and I still had some of my old Boy Scout gear. You know, I had what was considered a modern backpack at the time, which was an external aluminum frame pack, you know, nylon. It was quite heavy. And I had an old polyester filled sleeping bag and a tent that weighed about 10 pounds, but it was nylon. And time. And so the gear was really heavy, but I had some of this already from my older days and went up. And of course, at that time we were fishing with spinning rods and flies and bubbles on there and lures. And that was the extent. We weren't fly fishing, we were fishing with flies.
Katie
Right. I think a lot of people today still do that too. A lightweight spinning reel and a bubble and a fly underneath. And I know a lot of kids have gotten into it that way too, kind of transitioning between spin fishing and fly fishing with a bubble and a fly.
Ron
And some people have 50 years that way and haven't made the transition, but that's okay.
Katie
You know, I think hearing about the gear back then, I'm sure the gear in general has gotten a lot lighter and more efficient just in the design and everything. But I think there's still a lot of people out there too who, you know, they get started and they don't quite have all that ultralight gear and that doesn't really stop them. You know, I remember carrying a four-person car camping tent a couple miles back when I first got started because it's all I had. And I think that's kind of a good thing to go through. I think today it's almost a little bit too easy to just jump into ultralight if you've got enough money and you want to get started. But I think there's something to kind of paying your dues, if you will, by hauling stuff back there that has no business being in the backcountry, but if you want it bad enough, you'll be willing to haul a bunch of stuff in.
Ron
Someone that hasn't gone and purchased the ultralight equipment can really save about 10 pounds or so on their pack going in for a two-night, three-day weekend into the backcountry. It usually starts with the backpack first, and they can lose three or four pounds by buying an ultra weight backpack. And then when you start looking at the sleeping bags and the tents, the tents are the real decrease in weights that we've seen recently in the past, oh, probably five to seven years or so. I think of initially when I went out in the backcountry and I had a 50 pound pack, you know, and, and when Peggy and I would go out, you know, even 20 years ago or so into the Wind Rivers for a week, you know, I would have a 60 pound pack and she would have a 50 pound pack. Well, that's a lot different now. Even with taking a lot of gear along and photographic equipment and extra lenses, you know, I'm down 34 pounds or so, and I could get it down to about 30 if I really had to.
Katie
Yeah, I'll have to follow up later in this interview about the camera equipment because that's something I hadn't really thought of. But I do remember seeing that you were writing some things about photographing your catch. And camera gear is something I haven't dabbled with at all really, but I'm sure it adds a lot of weight. So I'd love to hear how you do that because I'm sure a lot of people are interested in taking some good photos on their trips. Yes. So maybe a good overview just to kind of get rolling here is, Can you just tell me what you like about backcountry fishing? I know we kind of dove into it a little bit. You wanted to get away from the crowds. But can you just give me an overview of what draws you to the backcountry? I'm sure some of it's crowds, but I'm sure there's a lot that's more intrinsic maybe that you like about it.
Ron
Yeah, there's a lot more than that. The scenery is obviously spectacular when you get to one of these high lakes, particularly the stuff at or above Timberline. And certainly some of our freestones and tailwaters like Cheeseman Canyon is very scenic as well. But it's really when you get into the backcountry that you really feel like you're part of nature. You're away from the roads. You know, you just can't run back to the car and get your parka if you get cold or so. You're all on your own. I also like the effort that it takes to get into the backcountry. get some really good physical exercise going in, whether it's a day hike or whether it's a backpacking excursion in order to get into there. It's pretty good exercise. So I think the combination getting away from people, the scenery, the exercise, and being out there for a number of days and not just going back to a hotel or to your house is what really draws me there.
Katie
Yeah, there's a bit of a self-sufficiency aspect to it too. Like you said, you can't come back and just grab your parka from the car, you've only got what's on your back. And sometimes you have to make do with things that you maybe should have brought and didn't. And, you know, you got to find a way around that. It's kind of fun to have to figure things out in sketchy situations when you don't have everything you need.
Ron
Oh, certainly. And I went with one friend and he left his reel behind. Oh, no. You know, we always go with two spools, floating line and a full sinking line for fishing subsurface. And he brought the spool, but he didn't bring the reel. Now, I had two rods. I had a nine and a half foot five weight, which I was going to fish in the lakes. And I had a Tenkara rod with me as well. So I gave him my reel to use and I fished with the Tenkara rod, which was deadly on the stream. I caught fish in the lake with it, but it certainly is not the ideal tool for fishing the lake.
Katie
For sure. I think I have a tenkara rod that I use occasionally, but it's definitely more of a small stream rod. I've never used it on a lake, I don't think, and I don't really have many plans to do so either. A little limited.
Ron
I also like high lakes because you can catch some large trout in there as well. Obviously, the small streams are filled with a lot of small trout, and it can make catching fish fun again using a lightweight western rod or a tenkara rod. But better fish are definitely in the lakes. And if you pick your lake well, and you can only do that by having fish a number of these lakes. But if you pick your lake well, I mean, you're going to catch fish just as large as you're going to get on tailwater streams.
Katie
Do you have a preference between streams or alpine lakes?
Ron
Yes, it leans heavily towards alpine lakes when I go. A lot of times the streams, if you're climbing 2,000, 2,500 feet in elevation in order to get there, the streams are really fast flowing. There are a lot of whitewater on them. And so you've got to kind of pick the pools and the slower sections.
Katie
Yeah, I think I'd have to agree. I think streams can be fun if you find the right one. I think if you get just a beautiful meadow mountain stream, that can be some of the best fishing scenery that you can get. But I think lakes are a little bit more reliable in terms of producing fish. Most of them, if they have fish, you can catch fish in them.
Ron
Yeah, and they're really good for dry fly fishing too, because you can stalk fish along shore, particularly above timberline or at timberline. So you can kind of scout along shore and then find fish rising and cast individual fish.
Katie
Sure.
Ron
That's always fun.
Katie
Now, that's kind of a good transition into maybe if someone's trying to plan a backcountry trip, maybe some resources that you use to figure out where you want to go. I mean, not all lakes have, I mean, I feel like most streams that I encounter do, but not all alpine lakes have fish in them. A lot of them, if they haven't been stocked with fish years ago, they're just kind of barren. How do you go about finding where you want to go fish? Online resources, book resources, and feel free to plug your own book too. I know we'll probably get to that at some point, but what are some resources you use to plan a trip when you're going into the backcountry?
Ron
I think the first thing somebody has to do is decide what corner of the state they're going to go into. You know, what mountain range? You know, are they going to go to the flat tops? Are they going to go to the Gore Range? How much time do they want to spend in the automobile getting there? So once you figure out what particular mountain range you want to go into, then you can start drilling down into the resources. I think the next thing you want to do is grab some of the U.S. Forest Service maps for that particular forest and start looking at the distributional lakes and where they are, where the trailheads are, whether or not you have the type of automobile that's going to be able to get into the trailheads, which most of the cases you will. But there are a few, maybe 20% or so that are legitimate four-wheel drive roads. So you have to take that into consideration. And then look at the distance you want to hike. Do you want to do a backpacking trip? You know, any more? You know, I don't want to push it past about 10 miles or so. I've done backpacking trips that have been 12, 13 miles in to get to the lake. But that's a long time to get into. And, you know, we've done some in the San Juan Mountains that have been like that. So kind of know your limits on that. But, you know, I think seven, eight miles is a pretty good distance to go into on a backpacking trip. Day hikes, one way, I don't usually don't like to go over about six miles because that's going to give you a 12 mile round trip. Plus going around the lake. So you're going to have another mile in there. So take that into consideration and then kind of whittle down your lakes. Then it gets to information on are there fish in there? Where do you get the information on that? Well, Colorado Parks and Wildlife does have a Colorado Fishing Atlas, which is an online resource. The information in there, if it's populated, is pretty good. Some of it may be a little bit old, but I'm not talking about decades old, maybe 10 years or so. The problem is that once you get into some of the really distant backcountry lakes, they're not populated. You'll find things in Indian peaks and around the Front Range that has a lot of information in there. But then you're left to these other areas that may not have much information at all. So then you've got to do a little bit more research on that. In the past, what we did was pick up Tim Kelly's guide, you know, and go through that and then look at the lakes. Well, you got to understand that in 1979, when I came here, that was still usable then. And through the 80s and into the 90s, it certainly started to become less accurate. And then there was a major change with stalking in the later 1990s. And Colorado Parks and Wildlife stopped stalking rainbow trout in the High Lakes and started stalking cutthroat instead. So a lot of those pages that you look at, Tim Kelly's, it says rainbows and they're no longer in there. So a lot of that information that Mr. Kelly put together was in the 1950s and the 1960s. And I have a copy of his 1968 guide that's as similar to the one that I bought in 1988. So things really haven't changed on that. So you can get a little bit of information on the internet sometimes. Sometimes somebody posts a YouTube on there going into a lake. It's pretty rare, but you'll find it. A lot of them are hiking excursions, but every once in a while, somebody catches a trout and they hold it up to the camera. I found that a lot of the information that the Forest Service posts is really old. It's a derivative of Tim Kelly's guide. I started in about 1999, started writing on different mountain ranges, and I selected about 23 of these different areas from about 1999 up until just this past year and chose one each year to write about and I visited you know at least 20-25 lakes or so in that mountain range and then published this information in Colorado Outdoors. So the information is scattered through there But I just recently put all that information together and updated it with recent stocking data and stuff and published it in my book, which is the fishing guide to 800 high lakes in Colorado. So that's the most comprehensive and up-to-date piece of information that you'll find on high lakes now.
Katie
Now, regarding your book that you mentioned, what all is included in it? If someone gets it, what are they expecting to see about each lake? I assume it mentions maybe what you're going to catch, strategies for catching fish. I assume there's probably some things about the hiking conditions, things like that. But what all do you learn about each lake in the book?
Ron
So each, there are a series of chapters in there, about 23 chapters, and each chapter discusses a specific mountain range, like there'll be the South San Juan Wilderness Area, and then maybe there'll be the Gore Range. And so there, you know, I'll talk about strategies for fishing in the gore range and patterns and stuff in the introduction. And then I'll get into a description of the trails, how far it is to get to the trail, what sort of elevation gain, size of the lake, you know, maybe the depth if it's important. What I caught when I was there, what is traditionally stocked. With covering 800 lakes in 190 pages, you can't give four or five paragraphs on each lake because it would be 400 pages long. Volumes. Yeah, they're volumes. There are 300 color photographs in there, which are photographs of the lake, trout, scenery, wildlife. And this was one thing that used to bother me a lot about hiking guides is there were very few pictures or they were black and white. And so you didn't really get a good idea of what it looked like around the lake and stuff. So I've got color photographs in there. I've also have portions of U.S. geological maps in there as well, the seven and a half minute quadrangles. So you can look at these areas and there's about, I think about 65 maps or so in there. And you can look at these maps and see the proximity of lakes to each other and the type of terrain that you're dealing with in there as well. Now, there isn't a lot in the book on strategies and techniques, mainly because I cover that in my first book, which is Fly Fishing the Colorado Backcountry. And that's in another 190 pages and 42 chapters or something that, you know, a couple of chapters on ice out, fishing dry flies, fishing small streams, fishing with a 10 carat rod. you know, what patterns to use at different types, entomology chapters and stuff. So the second book that I wrote on the fishing guide to 800 lakes is really kind of the supplement to that. Or a guidebook. This is where you go to find out what are in the lakes.
Katie
Okay. Now, going back to kind of figuring out whether there might be fish somewhere or whether you want to go somewhere. In addition to stocking reports, do you ever like look at the lake satellite imagery and just assess whether, you know, it could hold fish? Because a lot of the time I feel like, you know, there could be fish somewhere that are stocked and then they don't hold over. And like you said, that older book that you used to use is kind of out of date because things change. Just because it had fish in it at one point doesn't mean it has fish now. So are you assessing anything via imagery to determine, you know, this looks like a likely that fish still are versus this probably died off a year or two after being stocked?
Ron
Yes, I do. You know, initially all we had were really the topographical maps and you could tell a little bit from that, but not a lot. You know, you could tell where the deeper areas were along the cirques and sometimes you could tell if there were shelf areas in the lakes just by looking at the contour lines, but a lot of times you couldn't. And so you'd get to a lake and you wouldn't know if it was shallow on shore and a fly rod wasn't something that you could use there. And, oh, I should have brought my waders, you know. And so you roll up your pants and you get out there and then you find out that the water is really cold and you don't for about a half an hour. So, yeah, I use Google Earth and Google Maps to take a look at the satellite photos. Sometimes I do that to pick out the trails, although it's a little bit more difficult because they come and go in between the timber. But you could get a feeling to some degree on whether the lakes are shallow or not. Sometimes you can see the rocks sticking up. Sometimes it's the color of the water. You have to be careful, though, because those Google Maps are spliced together, and many of them are different years that they spliced together. And sometimes you have lakes that were photographed maybe in June and they were up around Timberline and you look and they're frozen.
Katie
Right.
Ron
So I do that to some extent, but it's not the fail safe. Fortunately, the 800 lakes that I wrote about are 600 of them I visited and fished myself. And the other 200 are ones that I got good information from perhaps outfitters, biologists with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and then other fishing friends that I know and trust. Some people, and you know the people that their fishing abilities and stuff like that, you can judge on that. And obviously the biologists are really good. And that's something that we don't, which is a gill net.
Katie
Right. They'll find out if there's fish in there.
Ron
And they'll tell you, yes.
Katie
Yeah, that's pretty cool that, you know, like you said, you can kind of assess things based on maps and imagery and stuff, but there's really no substitute for just going up and wetting a line somewhere because, you know, at the end of the day, there could be fish somewhere that are basically inaccessible without, you know, like a belly boat or something like that. There's other places that you can easily fish with no waders and you have plenty of room to back cast and stuff like that. it's just really hard to know for sure until you get somewhere. And you can feel like you know a place really well by looking at it via a satellite image. And then you know a thousand times more within 10 minutes of showing up there. So that's pretty cool that everywhere that you mentioned in your book was actually visited by a person who wrote a report back, obviously, about it.
Ron
Now I'd say 95% of the time when you get up to a high lake, you know, fishing it for a couple hours, you're going to find out if there's trout there. Yeah, you'll see them or catch them. Every once in a while, though, you'll get to a lake and these are usually lakes up around 12,000 feet, you know, 11, 8, 12,000 above timberline, deep lakes that you'll get up there and you'll swear there's nothing on there, but then you'll see the gill net surveys. And yeah, we caught 30 trout may range between these sizes. That happens once in a while, not very often, but you'll find that. Another thing is with stocking, Parks and Wildlife does stock lakes that winter kill. And winter kill is an absolute. Sometimes maybe 40% of the fish will die. Sometimes 90% of the fish will die or will be complete. And it kind of goes in cycles when you get a really, really cold spring, heavy snowpack during the preceding winter, and the lake doesn't ice out until three or four weeks later than it would on a normal year, the lake might winter kill. And some lakes have a history of winter kill because they're pretty shallow.
Katie
Yeah, I think that's what makes it so hard to use that older info is that so many lakes do change over the years. And even the population dynamics, even if it's not that it's killed off, but maybe you go up there thinking you're going to catch one species. And, you know, there was a small population of a different species that ended up taking over and things just change so quickly, it seems, over the years. that I feel like even information that I find from maybe 10 years ago, I take with a grain of salt, unless there's some pretty solid evidence that things haven't changed too much.
Ron
That is one good thing about Tim Kelly's guide is that he'll tell you where brook trout were and lake trout. And brook trout, for the most instances, are still there. Brook trout are almost like diamonds. They're forever. once they're stocked, they're usually there. I've only run across maybe two or three lakes where the brookies have died out. And some of that is, is, is, due to winter kill. Um, a couple of other instances were mine drainage that leaked into the, into the lakes and killed off the fish. But generally, if Tim Kelly said they were brookies, in, you know, probably about 85% of the time they're still there. And some of the lake trout are still there as well. Although we're talking about, you know, surveys that were done in the 1950s and 60s. Now, which species do you
Katie
find to be a little bit less hardy? Are you talking cutthroats and rainbows? I know you mentioned lakers and brown, or sorry, lakers and brook trout. You didn't mention browns, but I also don't feel like I catch a lot of brown trout in the high lakes.
Ron
So... No, I'm trying to remember if I, you know if I ever caught brown trout up really high I've caught them in some reservoirs on the Grand Mesa you know that are 10,500 feet or so that were stocked with with browns and they do pretty well up there. I recently went went to some lakes looking for brown trout because a friend of mine told me 15 years ago that he caught browns in there. Well I went up there last summer and I caught all cutthroat they were really nice cutthroat but the browns that had died out and as you know browns browns don't reproduce in the in the lakes neither do the cutthroat or the or the rainbow trout and so they have to be stalked on a periodic basis probably one of the hardiest fishes is the brook trout but it has a tendency especially in those you know lakes kind of middle elevations lower than timberline down to maybe 10,000 feet. They seem to over reproduce. So you get a lot of small brook trout with large heads and skinny bodies. Yeah, I've definitely seen those before.
Katie
And I feel like when the cutthroats get big, they get big. But when the brook trout get big, they almost get elongated and bulbous. I didn't know why that was.
Ron
You can find good brook trout in some of the flat tops and up on the on the mesa as well the grand mesa and some of these lower elevation lakes around 10 000 feet and below because they're very fertile you know they're volcanic soil there's a lot of phytoplankton so then there's a lot of zooplankton and then there's a lot of macro invertebrates with that that the trout eat so there's they're very rich a lot of scuds in particular. So the brookies will get nice and fat in those lakes, but that's a small percentage of the lakes actually.
Katie
Now, speaking of the species, do you have any species in particular that you prefer catching? If you had all else equal, all size equal, do you have a favorite or a couple of favorites?
Ron
It's the cutthroat really, mainly because they're, you know, the native fish in Colorado. And like you said, they do get large. They do put on weight. You can catch cutthroat up to about 20 inches. They seem to top out, you know, right around 20, you know, maybe 21, 22. I've known some friends that have caught some at 25. Of course, you know, I usually subtract about three inches from estimates. But, you know, I've seen 20 inch and I've caught some 20 inch cutthroat in there and they're really beefy. They're thick-shouldered fish. Some of them can be, you know, a little bit stubborn, you know, it just depends. They don't hop on things. They don't get to be 20 inches by eating everything.
Katie
Right. So moving on a little bit to maybe some of the actual techniques, gear, things like that. If somebody is looking to get started in this, maybe they've, they know how to fish, that's not the issue, but they're looking to kind of move into the back country and work their way toward getting off the beaten path a little bit. What's some gear that you recommend both fishing-wise and if someone maybe wants to do an overnight trip for the first time? What's your gear recommendations for that?
Ron
Well, if I owned a fly shop, I would invent all kinds of gear that you need to buy. That's what the industry does. Yeah, I think most of us have the type of gear that we would, at least fishing gear that we would use in the backcountry, especially on high lakes. Anywhere from an eight and a half to nine and a half foot fly rod, five weight is really good for the backcountry. I don't go any lower than a five weight unless I'm fishing a small stream and I can't use my 10 carat rod then I'll I'll use a seven and a half foot four three or four weight on the small streams but for fishing the lakes I would I would really suggest the nine foot five weight on that I like stiffer action rods and and so people have that and they have a floating line and you're going to have your nine foot leader. As far as other lines are concerned, I would certainly suggest buying a full sinking line and not a sink tip, but a full sinking line. And out of a belly boat, I use when I do fish out of a belly boat, which in the back country is not very often because they're very heavy. So I try to tailor the lakes that I go to that where I don't have to get into a belly boat. But if you're fishing from a belly boat, one of these highlights, you probably want to use a type five or a type six full sinking line. That is, it sinks five inches or six inches a second. If you're casting for shore, you can get by with a type three or type four. They're a little bit easier to cast, but then the little bit heavier lines. But those are really important, especially for fishing ice out, for fishing streamers and woolly buggers, because you want to get down in the water. You want to get down towards the bottom, and that's where the fish are going to be, and prowling along shore. So, as far as rods are concerned, I think we've covered that, and reels. Maybe waders on some of these lakes. It just depends whether or not there's a shallow shelf. Usually, when you're up above timberline, you don't have to worry about that. There's usually deep spots at and many of those lakes up above timberline but waders are or at least wading pants you know are are usually pretty good to take along and you don't have to take your wading boots you can usually take take along an old pair of tennis shoes or running shoes that save a lot of weight on that going in and flies well I don't know we'll probably talk about flies later there there's some favorite patterns but I kind of favor the tried and true patterns for catching fish and there's a lot of older patterns that that people neglect now for latest gizmo that you can read in fly fisherman magazine or something you know but well we'll probably talk about flies in in a while I don't take along a vest you know I have a little fanny pack or a little pouch or something. You know, I try to be minimalistic on that. I've got a lot of flies stuffed into a two or three really thin plastic boxes. And so that doesn't weigh much. And of course, you know, I take along some strike indicators and a little bit of weight along with that, your hemostats and stuff, nippers that you'll take along, but you don't, the vest is just added weight. So you won't need that at all.
Katie
Yeah, glad you mentioned the waiter, like not taking wading boots, because that's something I actually kind of discovered in the past couple of years, because I would always haul my wading boots up there. And I would usually try to take waders to get out on some of those shelves. But we started taking our Tevas up, just our sandals, because you can wet wade in them if you don't end up needing to wear your waders. And then if you do want waders, you can throw those on. And basically, you just have to walk a little slower so you don't bang your toes on rocks accidentally. But they weigh so much less. And then they can be camp shoes. They basically function as everything else you need around camp, but they weigh so much less and take up so much less space. They can be strapped to the outside of your backpack. So I think that's our new go-to. I think I'm done carrying wading boots into the backcountry unless I'm belly boating.
Ron
Here's another tip that people might appreciate. But when they first came out about, I don't know, 30 years ago or so with the Vibram soles on wading boots, You know, they went away from felt and started to put, I think L.L. Bean may have come out with the first Aqua Stealth. You know, they basically use the rubber that you find on climbing shoes and they put it on the bottom of a pair of wading shoes. And then everybody started doing that. Well, you can actually hike in those things. And so you don't need your hiking boots and then your wading shoes. Obviously, your weighting shoes, the size is a little bit bigger. But if you wear an extra pair of socks and you're just going in about three miles or so, you can use those as hiking boots as well and then save on the weight that way. Then you don't even have to carry your Tevas.
Katie
Yeah, when you were saying that, I was thinking that. I was like, oh, I wear like a half size up or maybe a size up depending on what's available. I usually buy my hiking boots, sorry, my wading boots like off eBay or something because I get good deals from people who got the wrong size. But it usually means that I'm maybe fluctuating a size up or down depending on what's available at the time when I buy them. But yeah, I wouldn't want to hike in my wading boots, but I could see if the design's right and I've got the sizing down just right that you could do both.
Ron
As far as just a day hike when you're going, you know, a day pack is fine. My day pack's probably a little bit heavier than most because I take along a lot of layers of clothing, you know. And in June or July, it's really nice to take along an extra T-shirt. By the time you get to these places above Timberline, you're just soaking with sweat. And so the first thing is I take my shirt, you know. I don't want to sit around there with that breeze blowing, you know, and all of a sudden it's 20 degrees cooler than it was where I stopped at or started at the trailhead. So you want to take along, obviously, adequate rain gear when you get up there and water for the hike up. I like to take along a SteriPen as well when I go on a day hike, and then I can just use the UV there to sterilize the water. Or you could take up, you know, some chemical mixture as well to purify the water. I haven't had many problems drinking water, but I did get sick a couple of times over 40 some odd years of doing this. And you don't want to get sick. So I would definitely recommend that. And, you know, I always take along topographical maps, unless it's a lake that I've been into a dozen times or so, you know, here in the Front Range. Take along topographical maps, compass. I have an altimeter watch. I usually go with a friend that has the USGS maps downloaded onto his phone. If you do that, just be aware that you can only see so much of a topographical map on an iPhone or a Samsung phone. You can't see the whole thing, you know. And so that mountain range over there that you're looking at isn't going to show up on your phone. But what's good about the phone is the GPS. It'll show you where you are in relationship to the trail.
Katie
Yeah, I think in conjunction is the best way to use it. having a full map as well as the phone. And I use the phone for like quick, quick access, you know, just got to verify, you know, which, which fork in the trail am I trying to take here? But have that map there in case you need a bigger picture.
Ron
Yeah. And how much farther do I really have?
Katie
That's true.
Ron
Take along, you know, food and snacks. A whistle is always good. Many, many day packs have a whistle, you know, either on the sternum strap or on the side. you never you can never tell what's going to happen I've been involved in three rescue operations actually four three when I was either day hiking or or backpacking and into places that I just stumbled upon these situations and two of them involved having the helicopter people wow oh wow You can never know what's going to happen. I don't like walking staffs. I find them very distracting and I have pretty good balance, you know, from skiing and stuff. But they really are helpful in crossing streams or crossing logs. I do have a waiting staff when I go fishing a small stream or something. I'll take that along with me. It folds up. It's usually in a little waist pocket. So that's a good idea. And if that helps your knees, that's good.
Katie
Yeah, I like the trekking poles on the downhill climb out if I'm carrying a heavy pack, especially if I've stayed in and have tent, cooking gear, stuff like that. My knees, I feel like, are saved on the way down by trekking poles. So I'll take them on those hikes for sure. And I think a lot of people are benefited by that.
Ron
Oh, yes, definitely. And those things are really light now. They're not the aluminum shafts that we used to have. The carbon fiber technology has really come a long way in just about everything. If I'm going on a backpack trip, obviously, I take my lightweight backpack along, a good sleeping bag. They have sleeping bags that only weigh two, two and a half pounds that will take you down to about 20 degrees or so. Sleeping pads as well. Those things have become extremely light and extremely comfortable. The Therm-a-Rests, as well as other companies make these things. Tents, that's the technology that's really taken off. The ripstop nylon has gotten a lot thinner. You know, the fiber poles and stuff. I like a full tent. You know, I have a two-person tent, which is really a one-person tent if you're six feet tall.
Katie
I mean, that's how all the tents are. I feel like you got to add one person to whatever, however many people you actually want to put in there.
Ron
It weighs two pounds, 10 ounces with the footprint on there. And I can bring in my, my backpack into the tent after I hang my food in the trees and take out the toothpaste. You want to hang that in there because varmints like toothpaste, soap, bears will eat soap. So anything anything like that, even dental floss because of the mint in there, you know, they'll eat that. And so hang that stuff in the, in the trees, and then you can bring in that pack with you in the tent. I've had, I've had packs that have been destroyed by varmint. So that's why I like to bring that, that backpack into the tent. Yeah, I agree. I always like to bring my gear inside.
Katie
Just, I like to have it with me for quick access and I don't want it to get rained on. But I think that's part of the reason that I always have to size my tents up a little bit because, you know, if I want to sleep me and one other person and then both of our gear, we're probably looking at a three-person tent. And that's not super common. So sometimes then you end up at four or you have to be comfortable with the person and be able to sleep pretty close by.
Ron
And you're in the tent with two other guys for three nights. It's not really pleasant.
Katie
I mean, ideally, if you're going on a backpacking trip with somebody, you probably know them fairly well and you can probably sleep pretty close if you need to.
Ron
I would recommend earplugs bring along. As people get older, they snore more. But there's another reason to bring along earplugs. If you're in a windstorm and it's batting the tent, you know, it'll keep you up at night, you know. Or one of my favorites are birds in the morning. They start at about 430 or so. and they can keep you up, especially the robins. And, you know, it's at that time you don't want to get up yet because it's too early yet. They're chirping away. So, and I love birds. I do a lot of birding myself, but those earplugs really keep out that 4.30 blast of the cacophony or dawn court.
Katie
You don't want to go birding at 4 a.m.
Ron
No, no, not at all. And as far as fires, I don't do fires in the backcountry. I really haven't done them in 25, 30 years now. I've gone to backpacking stoves. You know, we first started to use the MSR whisper lights. Those things are really heavy and they run on white gas, but they're indestructible. You know, if you got snowed on four inches, no problem. You pump it up, you go out there and you light the things. I've gone back to the canister stoves because they've gotten so much better that run on LP gas out of a little canister, the pocket rocket, you know, it weighs four ounces, it screws in there, and you just have to know how much, how many times you can boil a liter of water out of one of those canisters of gas, and that saves a lot of weight going in over the whisper light, And backpack stoves are less impactful on the environment. You know, you're not having to go and, you know, cut off a lot of branches and stuff and look for firewood. A lot of places along the lake have been scoured for decades looking for firewood. And so it's a lot less destructive. And a lot of the wildfires in Colorado are human in origin. And a lot of them are started by people in the backcountry fire getting away from them. So it's best not to have a campfire unless you're in a campground, you know, and you've got the grate and everything there to contain the fire.
Katie
Yeah, or at the very least, I know, you know, at some of the more popular lakes, there'll be existing fire rings that people have used for, you know, years. I'm more inclined to use something like that than to just build a fire in the middle of a grassy field that has not had a fire in it before.
Ron
Yeah, definitely. That would be the preferred option. And, you know, we usually even set up our camp stoves, you know, right around those fire rings and reuse the campsites that have been used in the past rather than going off and trotting out and, you know, trampling the vegetation. You use it where it's already trampled down in bare earth.
Katie
Finishing up gear, I wanted to know, do you take a net with you in the backcountry, or do you forego that and just try to grab your fish when they come in?
Ron
No, I take a net all the time. Most of the time, I take a folding net. Usually only weighs about a pound. Usually has an aluminum handle. I haven't found one with a carbon fiber handle yet. but aluminum handle it folds on itself and and like I said usually only weighs about a pound you know 17 ounces maybe I i like to get the fish in quick rather than the play them and it's easier to land the fish with a net than having to hollow it up towards shore and it's it's less harmful to the fish as well.
Katie
Do those fold-up nets have the rubber netting? Because I know the rubber netting is supposed to be a lot better for the fish's skin, not as abrasive as the kind of the mesh net. But I feel like a lot of the fold-up nets I see are more of a mesh or a fabric kind of netting, which is not great.
Ron
It is more of a fabric, but some of the fabrics are coated. So it's just not cloth rubbing up against the...
Katie
Okay. So it's like maybe like a waxy coating of some sort.
Ron
Yeah. Waxy coating or they're like the same material as a measure net. If you've seen some of those.
Katie
Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I know what you're talking about.
Ron
Instead of strings, they're kind of flatter.
Katie
Like on a, my belly boat has something like that, that has like a ruler that almost sits across my lap. And it's more of a slippery plastic material than it is a mesh. I wonder if that's kind of what it's like.
Ron
Yeah. The cloth is really tough on fish, you know, because it can wipe off the slime. And these coatings that they put on are a little better. Or one can use a measure net. I have a friend that takes one up. It just doesn't fold on itself. And the smaller ones weigh about what the folding nets are. The folding nets are really hard to find, by the way.
Katie
Yeah, I've noticed that. I looked online for one, and I remember thinking, what else can I type in except for folding fishing net and there weren't a lot of results, but I thought I must be typing in the wrong thing here because there weren't a lot of things coming up.
Ron
That's because the profit margin on those is very low. You go into a fly shop, they want to sell you the Broden or something even fancier with the native woods and the plastic mesh and they'll cost you 120 bucks.
Katie
You know, I've stopped with the wooden nets. I stepped on a wooden net one too many times and broke it. You know, I landed a fish and I'm busy with the fish that I kind of just tossed the net down to do something and stepped on it and broke it. And I've moved to just an aluminum, a big aluminum net. I got at Bass Pro Shops for 20 bucks. I could run that thing over with my car and it wouldn't hurt it. So I'm on that train now.
Ron
Well, and you can find really good rubber nets for about $30. You just have to go to the Bass Pro Shops or the Walmarts or whatever. And, you know, they don't have a brand name or they may be Cortland or something. And I have one of those on my belly boat that I use. It's heavy. I wouldn't take it in the backcountry, but it cost me, I think, $28 or $29, you know. I've had it for 10 years.
Katie
Yeah, the wooden nets look nice, but I feel like they're always a little bit too small. and I'm always worried about just cracking one. And those big aluminum nets that have no brand on them are exactly what I want. I know you can spend a lot of money and get the nice carbon nets too, but I'm not looking to spend $100 plus on a net.
Ron
If you want to, that's fine. I'm not discouraging anybody. It's what your budget is and what you feel you're getting out of the item that you buy.
Katie
So moving on to flies. I know you mentioned flies a little bit, and maybe we can move into that now. I'm sure there's a wide range of flies you use depending on the season and everything, everything from dries to streamers. But maybe just go over the basics of what you're looking for, maybe different seasons, choosing your flies and, you know, streams versus lakes, things like that.
Ron
Okay. Let's start out with lakes first and start out with the first fishing that you would do, which would be during ice out. And so I already talked about using a full sinking line. So you're going to be using a lot of streamers. And probably my favorite pattern is a black leech, black marabou leech. You know, I can tie one of those things in about three minutes. If I really want to get fancy with it, it might be five minutes. And it's deadly. And marabou, as you know in the water moves and it moves in a lot of different directions so it gives a lot of life to it I fish those mainly in black in some other places if I know there are damselflies dragonflies like when I fished in Argentina I fished those things in an olive a lot or if I going to fish Delaney Butte up there. But if I'm going into backcountry, it's usually black. Some of the lower elevation and middle elevation lakes do have leeches in, so they know what that looks like. Black is really good for rainbow trout. You'll catch some brookies, a lot of cutthroats, but for, I know there are some big brookies in there, I'll do a white bunny leech for those and fish for brook trout with white. It seems like char, whether they're brook trout, lake trout, dolly vardens, they really like that color white for some reason.
Katie
Do you know why or have you just found that as a pattern over the years?
Ron
I've just found that over the years. You know, just for some reason, I catch more brook trout on the white and I'll switch over to the black. I'll still catch some fish, but not as many, you know.
Katie
Okay, I'll give that a try.
Ron
Sometimes during the day I'll fish black and I'll catch more fish on the black one, but by and large it's the white, white bunny leech or royal coachman streamer that was invented in 1892, I think, and it's still effective, but the bunny leech is a lot easier to tie. Just strips of rabbit on that. I also fish a number of soft hackles. Partridge in orange is a really good one. Again, that's the world's oldest recorded fly, which goes back to the 1490s, I think.
Katie
Really? I didn't know that.
Ron
Yeah. Partridge in orange, partridge in yellow, partridge in green, maybe when you have caddis is a good one. But that partridge in orange is one that I would definitely have in my box. There are some other wet flies like the professor that I occasionally use and black pennell, which are English flies. I talk about this in my first book. I've got a chapter in there on soft hackles and then another chapter on that on wingless wet flies. And so all of those things I fish like little mini streamers, you know, on the sinking line and strip them at various levels. muddler minnow is another good one that that you would want to use sometimes horn birds work in that situation to add ice out when you get into the hatches at high lakes a lot of your hatches are going to be midges you're going to have midges from as soon as the lake ices out until it it it ices up in the fall. All elevations down low and up high probably start out with bigger midges first, usually black bodies, white wings, and they get progressively smaller and lighter in color as the season goes until you get to those size 26s and 28s and you really can't do anything about it. But things like a simple black gnat is really good and about a size 18 and 20. I tie the black gnat, not the traditional duck, you know, wings on there. I'll use white. I actually have a piece of a chicken neck with white wings that aren't dyed that I'll use to form the two wings on that thing. Black body, white wings, you can see it under any kind of conditions, whether it's sunny, you'll see that. And if it's cloudy or if it's dim light, you'll see it on the water. It's whether or not the white or the black shows up. Black parachutes, I fish down from size 18 down to about 22. I usually don't fish anything smaller than 22 because I can't see it on the water anymore.
Katie
Yeah, it's pretty hard once they get that small.
Ron
Yeah, but when you tie them with Zeylon, you know, for the parachute, you know, you can pick up that white on water. And of course, you want to match, you know, the color. If you've got gray midges, you'll want to tie a gray parachute or brown, you know, brown parachute. things like merging patterns a zebra merger the black midge merger works really well in a 18 to 20 size when the midges are coming up you can fish RS2s in the film also and and just about any of your tail water flies you know a lot of people have RS2s betas and stuff you know that stuff will work as imitations on midgets as well. It's just that you have to be aware of where the fish is feeding on it. If it's feeding in the film and taking them in the film or if it's feeding on the surface. Parachute is good because it sits low. Partially in the film, partially on the top, they'll take that as a dry or as an emerger. A lot of times they'll only take the emergers and they won't take the drives. Other hatches, I wouldn't go to High Lake without an Elk hair caddis. You know, that's probably the best caddis imitation Elk trots. I tie them in size 12 down to size 20, and the 20s are really good, you know, and when the fish are taking midges, they'll hit that too. But my favorite is a size 14 or a size 16 to fish. And I time in a variety of colors. You know, I like the blonde elk hair, but I've got gray ones, occasionally black. And then orange. Orange works pretty good. It's an attractor pattern. And probably one of the most productive flies when I'm fishing a high lake is the orange asher, which is basically a Griffith snap, except it has an orange dove body. I put a tail on it for a little bit of balance on that and, and then just wind your grizzly hackle around it. A two minute, two to three minute tie, very effective in size 16. I'll put a bead head on that and drag it in the film.
Katie
Oh, interesting. I've never heard, heard of an Asher with a bead on it.
Ron
Yeah. And it's, it's interesting. I i discovered this once at trappers lake probably about 25 plus years ago there were a lot of us out in belly boats there was a whole group of us six I think I mean we must have had twelve thousand dollars worth of gear out there and somebody came up in his blue jeans with a spinning rod and flying a bubble and he was just killing them out there and we caught maybe two or three fish between. So when you're fishing with a, with a fly in a bubble, you know, after about two casts, what you're doing is you're pulling that fly in film. And so you're really fishing in a merger. And, and so, and you're, and you're reeling it in, in the film. It's really hard to keep those flies up on the top with a spinning rod, unless you continuously dress them, you know, Most people don't do that. So they're fishing in a merger and it's deadly. Well, I said, how can I do that on fly rod? So I started experimenting and I put a bead on the thing. And I usually fish them a little bigger, about a 12 or 14. And you'll have all these fish coming up and dimpling and sucking on the pupa that are suspended in the film. And you throw that thing out with your fly rod and start stripping it in the film and they'll attack it. Not all the time, but it works quite often.
Katie
This is a bit of a side tangent, but I've actually found the same thing fishing down here for panfish. I actually was out just yesterday and cast out a copper john, which is usually, you know, you can catch fish every cast and they weren't interested. And then I saw some what looked like rises out in the pond. This is just our local city park pond. And I put an elk hair caddis on, cast out. They didn't want that either. So I started stripping the elk hair back in, maybe an inch under the surface. And then it was just like fish after fish. And I was surprised at how such a small change completely changed the outcome. But yeah, just an elk hair caddis sunk down and stripped back in. They wanted that, but not the elk hair on the surface or the copper john under the surface. So I think a lot of people overlook dragging a dry fly just under the surface and stripping it like a nymph. But that can sometimes turn things around really quickly.
Ron
Yes, and I even tie some elk hair caddis that are weighted in order to fish specifically like that. Although, if you don't, if you didn't wrap lead around, you know, the hook shank before you tie the elk hair caddis, like you said, you just drown it and you let it sink and you pull it in. And it's amazing how many fish will hit that. Or you can use a larger gold-ribbed hair's ear, which will imitate, you know, a caddis pupa coming up to the surface. And you pull it up, let it settle, pull it up, let it settle. The other hatch that people will occasionally run across is the calibaetis. You know, in the flat tops and up on the Grand Mesa, you have a lot of calibaetishatches up there. And you can usually fish the spinners as opposed to the duns. The duns will come off and you can fish those. But the spinners are the ones that are really good fishing the spinner fall. What happens is the spinners get, they either stumble onto the water or they get blown onto the water. And these are mating spinners, you know, and they're not spent spinners. and they'll fall on the water or get blown on the water and a fish will come up and gulp them. And you can imitate those with either an Adams or a mosquito in about a size 14 or a 16, either a traditional Catskill-tied pattern with wings up or a parachute pattern. You know, parachute Adams is obviously a deadly fly. Other mayflies that you'll get, people that fish up above timberline may run across a gray drake. It's not all that common, but sometimes it can be prolific. I've run across a few spinner falls of gray drakes during the middle of the day, afternoon, and they were size 12. And it's like green drakes. You know, they're just, the spinners are just falling, you know, and the trout are going nuts. And you use big atoms and big mosquitoes in a size 12 or so. So those are really good. I carry a few spent spinner patterns for the calibaetis. And some pheasant tails imitate the calibaetis nymphs. And that's probably about what you'll find as far as hatches on high lakes. You know, you don't get betas up there. You got the cowl betas instead. And on streams, the hatches, well, let me finish up lakes because there's a technique that people usually don't think of using at lakes. You know, when you don't have a hatch on there, you'll go searching and you'll often search with, you could search with that orange asher or an elk hair caddis, you know, and look around for fish and you'll find a, you know, a couple of fish cruising and you can usually coax them up. But another technique, you can short line nymph in a lake, and you would rig up your nine and a half foot five weight, just like you would if you're going down to Cheeseman Canyon, nine foot leader, a little bit of a thingamabob, and then a distance usually from your thingamabob to the first fly, about five feet. and a trailer maybe about 14, 16 inches with a second nymph on there. And you could use a little bit of split shot up above if your nymphs aren't weighted. What works really good for me is a prince nymph, maybe a copper john, red copper john, a Canadian fly, which is called a chromie. There's a chapter in my first book on patterns from Canada. I tried a bunch of different patterns from Canada and found a half a dozen that really worked here in Colorado. And that chromie was one of them. But the short line nymphing works really good when there is a chop on the water. And you know, you can cast into the wind, and then let that thing bob along into the waves. And those two nymphs underneath will usually attract fish. And you just vary the length between the point fly and the thingamabob there until you start to get some takes. And a lot of people overlook that technique. But it is really effective on still water.
Katie
A couple questions on that, actually, because I was going to ask whether you ever do any indicator nymphing on lakes, because I've heard that technique. I haven't done it much, though. Do you, if the chop isn't moving the bobber around for you, do you pull it in at all? or are you just letting it sit there? Do you give it a little bit of movement if the wind isn't chopping it to give it movement?
Ron
I'll throw it out there and let it sit until my patience runs out, which is about 60 seconds.
Katie
Okay. I'll probably put that there too.
Ron
Yeah. Then I'll twitch it, you know? Okay. And then I might move it in, strip it in a little bit, let it sit, maybe twitch it. That technique does work even when the lake is still. But it really is effective when there's a chop on the lake. And the fish are not as discerning when there is a chop on the lake. Obviously, you know, a chop diffracts light. And so the fish drop their caution, they'll move in closer to shore. Also, they don't inspect the flies as closely. You know, if you're a fish sitting there in a current in the stream and something's running by you, if there's not a lot of things running by you, you don't have a lot of time to make a decision. If you don't grab that thing right away, you know, that thing just moved on and you got to the next one. When you're cruising along in a lake, particularly if it's flat water, you know, you can inspect things for a long time. Is that, does it look like something that I've eaten before? Is it a piece of flotsam? I've actually seen cutthroat come up and, and reject naturals, you know, a ladybug or, or a beetle on the surface and they'll come up and look at it and go, no, it doesn't look like that.
Katie
That ladybug's lucky day.
Ron
Yeah, exactly.
Katie
A second question is whether you ever do a dry dropper instead of an indicator with a dropper coming down.
Ron
Oh, yeah, definitely. I do a lot of that, particularly when I'm searching. And even when I'm not, if you're in the middle of the hatch and you know they're taking dries on the surface, you know, I won't put the dropper on because I want to catch them on the top, you know. But if there is a combination of some fish taking the mergers, you know, a lot of times I'll fish the dry and I may fish a big dry like a number 12 parachute atoms and put a little tiny dropper off of there and I'm using the parachute atoms as an indicator. And I'll catch, you know, maybe 80% of the fish on the little midge pupa that I have underneath. But once in a while, somebody will come up and take that atoms as well. So yeah, a lot of dry dropper fishing.
Katie
One thing I also like is double dry. I know you mentioned some of the very, very small patterns and really hard to see. And I'll just put something big that I don't really expect them to take. But just in case, you know, big, like you said, 12 Adams with maybe 8 to 10 inches of tippet to size 18. Some black knot that I have no chance of seeing. And just set the hook if you see a rise, you know, within a certain radius of your bigger dry.
Ron
Yeah, I do that quite often too. Usually use a little bit longer tippet on that going to the second fly.
Katie
Okay.
Ron
But sometimes I'll use a really big fly like a stimulator on there or an Amy's ant, you know, and use a smaller pattern. Sometimes when I'm fishing midges and they are keying on midges, I'll use the size 20 parachute, black parachute, and then a 20 or 22 midge pupa off of that. And in those cases, I usually get fish on both numbers.
Katie
Now, do you ever go really, really deep with your dropper? Like, do you ever have an indicator up top and then send it, you know, five to 10 feet down from that? I guess you maybe said five feet, but like, do you ever go way deep, like 10, 10 plus feet below that indicator?
Ron
Yeah, sometimes I do. Um, when, I'll fish the bottom. I usually don't use an indicator then, but if I, if I know that there are, maybe midges emerging and, and you see flashes at depth, you know, you see the fish flash, you know, they're taking something that's emerging off the, off the bottom. And if the water is clear enough and you don't have a lot of vegetation, you know, you can see these fish flashing and they can be at eight feet or 10 feet if the water is clear enough. And then usually I'll rig up two emergers on that with a little itty bitty little split shot, no indicator, and toss it out and let it sink and then rise it off the bottom. You know, this works a lot better when you're in a float tube than it does from shore, but you can do it from shore. And especially if you're in waders out there, you know, you're already in three feet of water or four feet of water and you toss it out there and you lift it up and you continuously lift it up getting higher as you're stripping it into you. As far as using an indicator, I'll go to about eight feet or so with an indicator. But it seems that five feet is a really good depth to start at. And if I don't get any, I'll move it up. And if I don't get any then, then I'll maybe move it all the way down to about eight feet or so. And this happened to me last year where I was fishing dries in the lake at Timberline. And the fish were coming up. And of course, there was a chop on the water and they were indiscriminate. It was a mix of cutthroat and brook trout. And all of a sudden, the wind died down and the fish started to get really picky. And so I could see in the water, it was really clear. And I could see exactly what depth they were holding at. And especially the brook trout because their white fins really stuck out. So I just adjusted that length and I took off the dries. I put on an indicator and I put on a red copper john and chromie. And I threw it in there at that depth where I could see the fish and I started catching fish.
Katie
My last question on the fly selection is whether you use scuds at all. Because that's something I haven't used much in alpine lakes, but I've heard that some lake scuds are like the fly to use. Do you have any experience using scuds up there?
Ron
Yeah, I do. I find they're more prolific below timberline, but I've actually found some lakes on the tundra that actually had scuds in them. But more commonly, they're lower elevation lakes, 10,000 feet and below, especially in the flat tops. There are a lot of scuds. There are some lakes that I've waded out in my waders and come back and have been covered with a couple of dozen scuds on my waders.
Katie
Okay. So you're like kind of looking to see if they're in there. And then in that case, you'll put one on.
Ron
Yeah. And you can use a scud as a searching pattern. Of course, with scuds, the way they swim, they actually elongate. They're not curled up like that. So they're more flat, you know. And so a more effective pattern is to tie it instead of curling it up to tie it kind of flat because they kind of move, you know, like an octopus coming up.
Katie
Right.
Ron
Flattens out and they dart around quite a bit. Scots can be difficult to fish at times. I've fished them out of belly boats and you got to kind of get down just right up above the weeds and then kind of lift them and let them settle. and the takes sometimes are are pretty subtle on that so you you really have to be in in tune with with your fly on the end I found that that greenish gray works kind of the best in in still water greenish gray or or green you can you I've used orange ones orange ones represent dead scuds you know kind of like like pink shrimp that we like to eat right they're dead they're dead scuds and and I've had some good luck on those in still water although more luck in in running water and tail waters yeah I had previously associated scuds more with moving water but um
Katie
you know recently I've just heard more and more people talk about scuds being a really go-to pattern in certain lakes and maybe I haven't fished lakes where I felt like it was necessary I feel like most of the time I eventually stumble across a pattern that works well enough that I'm not, you know, needing to find something else to fish. But I've been curious about trying scuds up there because I've been hearing more about it.
Ron
Especially if you know there are scuds in the lake.
Katie
Yeah, yeah. Maybe start with that.
Ron
You know, Trapper's Lake is a lake that I really like to fish. It's a very large lake.
Katie
This is Trapper's Lake in Flat Tops?
Ron
Yeah, it's almost 100 acres or so. It's loaded with scuds. There was a study done, I think it was in the 1960s, where they collected like 400 fish and pumped the stomachs and categorized everything they could. They found that 39% of the fish had scuds in their stomachs. You can go out there and stay in the bottom and there's all kinds of scuds. I don't catch most of my fish there. I catch them mostly on dry flies or stripping a leech or something. But occasionally I do. But if each is working, I never get to this cut to try it.
Katie
Yeah, I feel the same way. My go-to if I go to an alpine lake is dry flies. And I find too that if I get to a river and there's no fish rising, I don't tend to throw on a dry fly. I'll wait until I see fish rising. But I've noticed in a lot of the alpine lakes, I don't need to see fish rising for a dry fly to be effective. It's almost like they'll turn on if they want to. And I've shown up to lakes before with people who haven't fished them before. And they're like, oh, I don't see any fish rising. And I'm like, just try a dry fly. And they'll cast it out and fish will immediately come up and take it. And it's almost like they're waiting for something to land on the surface, but just don't have the opportunity to rise. Have you found the same thing?
Ron
Oh, yes. Dry flies are really good searching patterns. You don't see fish rising, especially if there's a chop on the water. I would suggest dry fly or dry in a dropper, definitely.
Katie
Well, Ron, I don't want to take up too much more of your time. So to wrap up, do you just want to plug your books again? It sounds like I know your books are specific to Colorado, but I think most of what we talked about today is pretty relevant through most of the West, at least for the anywhere that has these high alpine lakes. But, but please go ahead and plug your books and your website anywhere else that people might want to come find you.
Ron
Yeah. My first book I published in December of 2018 and the title is Fly Fishing Colorado's Backcountry. And as I said before, this is really on strategies for fishing the backcountry. And 50% of what's covered in the book is applicable to fishing for trout anywhere, anywhere in the world, really. I mean, I've used some of these techniques in Argentina when I've been fishing and a few up in Alaska, you know, for grayling and stuff as well. But as you said, Katie, it really is for fishing in the Western U.S., particularly the Rocky Mountains. And so it really covers all these strategies and techniques. It goes through ice out hatches and patterns and stuff. And then the second book, which just came out in April, is the Fishing Guide to 800 High Lakes in Colorado. And this is really meant to locate where fish are. So you can pick up a copy of this book, you know, and go through and look after you've decided where you want to fish, what corner of the state, what mountain range. You can pick up there and then look at the lakes. My website is www.ronbelak.com. And you can purchase the book, not directly through the website, but my printer is BookBaby, which is a print-on-demand service. And so you could go to my website and it'll give you a link to Book Baby. And they will print even one copy of the book and then ship it to you. I also sell my books, you know, when I give presentations in person, which we haven't had any of those things in about a month or about a year and a month now was my last in-person presentation. But when I give presentations, the trout unlimited groups and the women's fly fishing group and stuff like that, I usually have copies of the book available as well. You can also contact me directly through my website. You know, there is an area for contact. And after you read a chapter in my book, if you have further questions on a lake or so, you know, you can you can send me a shoot me an email and I'll respond to that. and any other information that I have, I can pass on to you as well.
Katie
Well, that's awesome. Like I said, there's really no substitute for either getting up to a lake yourself or talking to someone who's actually been there. So I think anyone fishing the West, but particularly Colorado, I can't imagine why they wouldn't want a guide to 800 of the lakes here. I mean, there's only so many lakes. Most people won't even hit 800 in their life.
Ron
I don't know if I have the strength to get 200 more to up my 600 legs. I also publish in Colorado Outdoors magazine. And I do about three or four articles a year in Colorado Outdoors, which is the official publication for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. And they put out also a fishing guide in the spring. It usually comes out at the end of May, early June. And then they put out a hunting guide also. But I write for the bimonthly publication as well as a fishing guide. So I do have an article coming out on photographing fish in the fishing guide, which should be out in the next couple of weeks. And also another one on fishing for lake trout in the backcountry. You know, we all...
Katie
Oh, that's interesting.
Ron
fishing the grand, you know, the large reservoirs, Blue Mesa and Granby and stuff. But this is, this is finding lake trout out into, in the back country. And I list lakes where you can find them, where they are still present. It reminds me about the net that you asked, because I caught a seven pound lake trout once in the back country. And you want a net for something like that? Well, I pulled out my folding net and it was twice the length of the net. And this thing took me into deep water twice, almost to the backing. And so I wound up scooping it up into the shallows and then being able to hold it up and get a couple pictures and did the length and took a girth on the fish before I released it. That's why it calculated out to be about seven pounds or so. But the net there was kind of worthless. Eating one of those aluminum nets. Yeah, that's what you need, a boat net for something like that. Once in a while, you do catch a really big fish like that in the backcountry.
Katie
For sure. All right, Ron. Well, I can let you get going, but this has been a super fun conversation. And I can't thank you enough for coming on to share all that knowledge with us.
Ron
Well, thank you, Katie, for inviting me.
Katie
all right guys thanks for listening don't forget to head over to the website fishuntamed.com for all episodes and show notes and also please subscribe on your favorite podcasting app that'll get my episodes delivered straight to your phone and also if you have not yet please consider going over to apple podcasts and leaving a rating or review that's very helpful for me and I'd greatly appreciate it other than that thank you guys again for listening and I will be in two weeks. Bye, everybody.
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