Colorado

[dsfj40]

With snow pack still keeping high country tough spent some time in Flat Top Wilderness outside of Steamboat Co. Hit a lake expecting to get into some small brookies but pleasantly surprised to find feisty cutties. Inlets were full of these. If this spot was in California it would be a blue ribbon highly publicized crowded lake. In Colorado not another soul around and local fly shop didn't even mention it.Just some fish pics to look at
Have fun out there
Dave

[Fly Guy Dave]

Those are some nice cutties, indeed. It's always nice to have you expectations exceeded by Mother Nature. Congrats!

[giantbrookie]

Those are indeed some sweet cutties! I'm glad you were able to successfully fish a thawed high country lake be it in the Rockies or the Sierra. We're all really picking at limited targets in this early part of the season.

As far as nice cutty lakes in the Sierra, unlike the Rockies, where cutties are found in many places, there really aren't that many backcountry cutty lakes in the Sierra, but some of these are very high quality (ie have big fish) indeed. And whereas a few of these are pretty popular, others (maybe most) kinda fly under the radar. Two of my old personal favorites in this regard were trailless, but reached by pretty short hikes, so that my wife and I were always the only ones there during our visits. Those two lakes no longer have fish as a result of no longer being air dropped (not self sustaining lakes), but there remain other fine backcountry cutthroat lakes in the Sierra to be had (others have posted reports on them in this forum over the years).

[windknot]

Nice job and thanks for sharing! I've found that for me the element of pleasant surprise often provides more joy than the actual fish themselves.