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Muzzleloader season is right at 2 months away and work has been kicking my butt. The lifting and running has been growing a little tiresome so my son and I decided it was time to get in a little backpacking and fishing in the high country. He finished up his first year of high school with a 4.0 and I owed him a new Badlands pack, so this was its inaugural trip. Our year old Wirehaired Griffon puppy also made his first backpacking trip.

This is a pic of the start of the trip, both pups were pretty excited.

My son is enjoying a backrest during our first day of fishing. We had to keep a leash on the pup after a run in with a pack of coyotes early in the trip. They were less than pleased with a fellow canine running loose near their den area. Kind of a pain, but I hated letting him get out of sight again.

Apparently that was a pretty lucky backrest as soon after my son caught his largest cutthroat ever. This was the only fish for our first day and I was a little concerned about our prospects. That would change.

Our first campsite was surrounded by banks of snow. Seemed to be a lot of snow left in the high country this year.

We decided to move camp to a lower lake the second day after our morning results were equally poor. This lake had so many cutthroat rising that it looked like it was raining. We unfortunately forgot our dry fly box and were relegated to spinners. Junior caught 3 more cutthroat and the pup and I went exploring. We decided to explore the lake outlet and I was very happy we did. It looked like a salmon spawn in the 8 foot wide creek. There was literally hundreds of cutthroats spawning in the outlet. We caught trout on spinners until we got bored and headed back down to camp. Pounded out early this am under beautiful skies.