Gold Fever!

Gold fever can do strange things to a man. It can cloud the mind and confuse the senses. It can cause you to do crazy things, things you would never do normally. Things like hiking miles in the scorching sun and pushing the human body to its physical limits.  Things that cause sun stroke, mosquito bites and muscle fatigue.  Mix in some rumors of secret lakes, pictures of fish with blurred backgrounds and hushed conversation of lakes with names like Nunya, Golden Lake, Lake X and Flying Monkey and you can see how why the fever can drive an angler to golden trout madness.

I remember the first time I started reading about golden trout in the early 1980s. I was mesmerized by their beauty and dreamt about hiking to some small lake in the high sierras in pursuit of their magic. I read a bunch of articles in the trout mags and in 1991 I picked up Ralph Cutter’s “Sierra Trout Guide”. This book is a must read for any serious angler looking to chase high lakes gold. It is full of good info and some fabulous pics.

I love golden trout for two reasons. First and foremost I think they are the most beautiful of all trout. Secondly I love the places that they live. They need pure water that isn’t found where people crowd and they generally live at high elevation. These two factors create some of the most beautiful of all settings to land a trout.

I took my first golden trout trip in 1993. It was to the upper reaches of the San Joaquin River. My buddy Kevin and I were heavily into fly fishing at the time so our fish were taken on a variety of nymphs and dries. We caught a few fish that looked to be small goldens or bow/golden hybrids. This only fueled the fever.

The following year we planned a more serious trip to some high lakes near Bishop. We hit the jackpot on that trip and caught hundreds of small goldens topped by a 16 inch fish that I pulled out of the outlet creek the last day of the trip. After that trip I was reserved to the fact that I would probably never catch a fish bigger than that one.

But, over the following years I continued dreaming about giant goldens and finally decided to add a 20″ golden trout to my lifetime bucket list. A legitimate 20″ golden trout is a very difficult fish to catch. I put in some research and found some lakes in Wyoming that house some big fish. That was probably going to be where I would stick my pig. Then, a few years back a buddy of mine mentioned a lake that he knew about in California with some big fish in it. He invited me to join him on a hike to the lake. The first year I couldn’t make it due to a scheduling issue but this year I made it a priority and hard-penciled it in on the calendar.

It was on! I dug out all of my hiking gear and refreshed my memory on targeting big golden trout. Scuds, chironomids, marabou jigs, spinners and spoons were some of the target lures/flies that I planned on bringing. My buddy had warned me that the hike was brutal so I tried to hit the treadmill extra hard to prepare for the madness. I am a hardy soul and figured, “how hard can it be”.

He wasn’t kidding. The hike kicked my butt. It was never ending steep uphill sections. I guess they classify hikes with numbers and a category 4 is “Climbing, often using rope”. This hike had to be a 3.9 then because I swear I was on all fours scrambling more often than I was “walking” on 2 feet! After many hours of sweat and fatigue we arrived at the lake and it was time to search for gold.

We lucked out and the fish were on the feed. We caught fish on a variety of flies and lures. I will tell you that most goldens eat chironomids and scuds so keep that in mind if you decide to chase these beautiful fish. I got lucky on the first day and stuck a quality fish that turned out to be the biggest golden of my life so far. It wasn’t that 20 incher I was after but it was an incredible fish none the less.

I struggled sleeping that first night. Between the thoughts of the goldens and a marmot digging through our gear it was a struggle. I had planned on sleeping in but there was no way that was going to happen. I was up at first light casting in hopes of a giant. We all caught a bunch of fish on the trip and when it was time to go there was a great feeling of satisfaction from the experience.

I figured the hike up would have been the most difficult part but I was wrong… big time. The trip down was half the time and twice the brutality. The steep downhill sections were kicking my butt and when I finally got into the truck at the bottom of the hill I was done. The 6.5 hour drive home was a nightmare and when I finally crawled out of my car that night I had to basically peel my body from the seat. The next day I took stock of my blisters and bruises and vowed never to do that hike again.

But something weird has happened since I got home. Every day that goes by the pain gets a little less and the memories of the big goldens gets a little more vivid. Now, here I sit two weeks later and I am already thinking about the next trip up to Lake X. Gold fever can do strange things to a man.

Mark Knoch