Our day started out at the Crystal Lake Trailhead. If you aren’t familiar with the Uinta Mountains, this is a very popular hiking trail, camping location, and multiple nearby lakes if hiking isn’t in your plans for the day.
The hatches are pretty thick up in the high elevations this time of year. We spent some time early in the morning fishing one of the nearby lakes. The dry fly action was on fire. The two hot flies were the Parachute Adams (size 16 and 18) and just a regular mosquito (size 16 and 18). We caught multiple fish and multiple species of Tiger trout, Brook trout, and Artic Grayling.
After catching a few at the nearby lake, we decided to do a couple mile hike up the trail to my favorite high elevation lake in the Uintas. This lake doesn’t have diversity of fish species, but it does have some of the most beautiful Brook trout I have ever seen. When we arrived at the new lake, it was around 11:30 AM. It was a warm day, approximately 80 degrees F, with some occasional wind gusts. The dry fly fishing was fantastic the minute we got there.
We continued catching fish on the Parachute Adams and Mosquito patterns, but we also tried out some larger flies with droppers. Larger flies, like Stimulators (size 14) did not get the same attention as the others. We did catch a couple on the droppers though. A Zebra midge and Snowcone Chironomid (size 20 and 22) produced well, but the day was made with the dry fly action.
Overall, the Uintas are a great place to go for both new and experience fly anglers. The scenery is beautiful, the fish are hungry, and just getting a couple miles off the highway and you can have a lake all to yourself.
