Post By: Cichlidfish Posted: 3/12/2015 9:07:53 PMPoints: 4629
I went to rmnp yesterday with a goal to catch my first greenbacks and boy it was fun! I was going to fish lily lake only to find out that the flooding had severely damaged the trout population so I went up and found some higher up alpine lakes with greenbacks. The hike was not bad with most trails being hard packed snow from heavy use. Right off the bat I got 2 cutties, and throughout the rest of the day a ended up with around 10, all around ten inches. Such a beautiful fish! They were more interested in reaction baits, but occasionally one would come through and hit a scud or small copper john. Looked like I was the only one that had ice fished up there all season, but had lots of passing hikers throughout the day. The ice was over 2.5 feet and I couldn't fish the higher up bigger lake I wanted because the ice was too thick for my hand auger. Overall it was a great experience though! Sorry for sideways pic.
Always wanted to ice fish some cutties in Rocky Mountain! Glad to hear the ice is really good up there. Was curious if all lakes are ice fishable in RMNP? Any resources you checked out before you went up there?
All the lakes in the park that allow fishing and have fish can be ice fished as well. It might help you to go onto the lake maps page and look at the lakes fishexplorer has in RMNP, and from there you can judge how far you want to hike and do further research on individual lakes.
I commend you for thinking outside the box, breaking away from the crowd and just going out and doing something that no one is doing...rather than lurking around trying to capitalize on someone else's spot like way too many others do...very cool!
