Wilderness Trout
by David Stalling

Twenty years ago, I worked a summer job for the U.S. Forest Service, working four 10-hour days. Which meant I had three 24-hour days per week to carry out my quest for less civilization, more solitude and the gargantuan Holy Grail of wild trout. I tackled my task in a military manner, spending long nights pouring over maps, examining tiny brown contour lines to best determine routes, highlighting little blue lines, ovals and amoeba-shaped blotches that denote rivers, creeks and lakes. The further from trails, and closer the contours getting there, the better. Remoteness, solitude, and big fish were my objectives.

One such lake was smack dab in the middle of the Anaconda Pintler Wilderness. I left straight from work one Thursday evening and hiked through the night, bushwhacking up steep mountains choked in alder, skirting around ledges, scrambling across talus slopes, a full moon and my chocolate lab Scout my only bright companions. I reached the lake close to sunup, fished it for two days, and caught nothing. I never even saw a fish. But on the second night an intense thunderstorm moved in. Scout and I sat up in the tent, feeling the ground reverberate from thunder, when suddenly, through the thin screen window, I watched lightening hit a steep granite wall above the lake and ricochet across to another wall, with us camped between. Scout’s hair stood up, so did mine. I’ve rarely felt so alive.

On another, similar excursion into the Mission Mountain Wilderness, I hiked most of a day to arrive along ledges high above a small lake. Before beginning my final descent, I heard laughter from below and saw a small yellow tent pitched in a meadow near shore. So obsessed was I with solitude that I changed plans and hiked well into dark to reach another lake several miles (as the raven flies) away. That “lake” could more aptly be described as a shallow bog, a moose wallow, barely deep enough for pollywogs never mind trout. The mosquitoes drove Scout and me away by midmorning.

A few years ago, I hiked into a lake I hadn’t visited for eight years, back in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness. There were once lots of small, skinny fish. But this time I saw and caught nothing, until the end of the day when, standing on a large rock, I looked down to see a huge, torpedo-shaped cutthroat cruising the shoreline. I stalked him, and twice got him to look at a black leach, and once to show the slightest interest in a weighted Hare’s Ear. As far as I could tell, he was the only fish left in the lake, and was still there when I left.

And so it is with high mountain lakes. Some have fish, some don’t; some have few but large fish, some are overstocked. Of course, the ones that nourish winter dreams, the ones that keep me scheming and hiking, are the few isolated gems with lots of fat fish. But just when I think I’ve figured a place out, it changes.

Like many folks, I’ve always imagined remote wilderness lakes to be pristine vestiges of primitive America. In some cases, it’s true. But trout did not naturally live in most. To satisfy anglers, state fish and game departments stocked, and in some cases continue to stock, wilderness lakes via horseback and helicopter. Where conditions are just right—deep lakes that don’t freeze solid, plenty of food, inlets and outlets suitable for spawning—trout are now self-perpetuating. In other places, like the lake I returned to and chased a hefty loner, fish grow old and die off if not restocked. Such meddling has grown controversial. Is fish stocking compatible with wilderness ideals?

The Wilderness Act worked its way from true grassroots conception through the halls of Congress, on to the President’s desk and was signed into law in 1964. It is truly remarkable in that, for an historical moment, we Americans humbly cast aside the utilitarian notion that all things exist for us. In a relatively few, small places, we actually decided that some land ought to retain its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, to be protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions. As Gary Snyder puts it in The Practice of the Wild: “These are the shrines saved from all the land that was once known and lived on by the original people, the little bits left as they were, the last little places where intrinsic nature totally wails, blooms, nests, glints away.”

One early fall, as alpine larches were just turning gold, I hiked to a lake far from the beaten path, in a remote section of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness. As I approached the shore, I saw what, at first, appeared to be a large, dark mass wavering through the water. It was tadpoles, thousands of them, everywhere! In the lake, in the outlet, even swimming through small pools formed by moose and elk tracks in the muddy meadow aside the lake. Frogs, grasshoppers and dragonflies were abundant. Never had I seen a high-mountain wilderness lake teeming with so much life. Albeit, no trout. In contrast, nearly 100 miles north, researchers studying stocked wilderness lakes have documented a dramatic decline in native insects and amphibians, and an increase in illegally-built trails and fire rings and other associated impacts of people, like me, venturing to lakes in hopes of catching colossal trout. And yet, I would not have developed a strong devotion to wilderness if fish hadn’t first lured me in.

Years ago, I would obsessively fish from sunup to sundown. As time passed, I began looking up, wondering what was on and past the ridges and ledges above. More and more, I would take a break from fishing and venture off on side trips. One time, I leaned my fly rod against a rock and left for a few hours. When I returned, a marmot had chewed all the cork off my rod handle. But I saw several mountain goats and a massive mule buck that day. Over the years, I’ve also seen elk, moose, bighorn sheep, pine martens, wolverines, badgers and grizzlies. Backpacking with a fly rod seems a good excuse to seek all manner of wildlife. Such adventures distinguish wilderness fishing from trips to roadside streams. In his book, Flyfishing the High Country, John Gierach writes:

I sympathize with concerns about introducing fish into wilderness. But I hope many will seek to discover where those trout live and fall in love with wilderness on the way. Better yet, I hope they discover some of those rare vestiges of wild America where wild, indigenous trout do, indeed, still cruise the same waters their ancestors did eons ago.

There’s a river back in the Scapegoat Wilderness where, one fine September day while drifting a Muddler Minnow, I hooked into an enormous bull trout that resembled a log. One overcast August day, on a small creek in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, I caught football-sized cutthroats every time I managed a good drift with an Elk Hair Caddis. Bull trout and cutthroats are gone from, or in serious trouble throughout their historic range. It is no accident that they persist in our wildest places. Eighty-five percent of the healthiest populations of all western cutthroat trout species, and 76 percent of strong populations of bull trout, are found within roadless and wilderness areas, where snowmelt still flows from high alpine basins, tumbling over granite walls and seeping through rich soil, feeding a lacework of lakes, creeks, streams and rivers that branch throughout wild country, like blood coursing through veins, sustaining and nourishing life. Such cold, clear, clean healthy watersheds are, of course, essential for trout, but also for mountain goats, elk, grizzlies, people, and everything else that lives. Trout need wilderness. So do I. We all do.

There is a lake I return to time and time again, high in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness, surrounded on three sides by steep, granite walls. Getting there requires an arduous, six-hour climb through dense alder followed by a treacherous scramble over talus slopes and up a few steep ledges. It’s worth the exertion. Snowmelt cascades into a beautiful waterfall on the north side of this lake, entering deep, emerald-color water where a hybridized cross between cutthroats and rainbows, known as cutbows, grow as fat and bright as melons. One early spring, I climbed to the lake when it was still mostly frozen. But where the ice was broken out on the south side, in the outlet, I saw several dozen cutbows spawning. For hours I cast to a large female, as long as my arm and as thick as my thighs, but she was pre-occupied, and would have nothing to do with any of my offerings. So I just sat and watched her, and will never forget the day.

It’s here where I asked my wife, Chris, to marry me, towards the end of a multi-day backpack trip in June, which we had decided to cut short after the weather turned to cold, rain and snow. We were picking our way along the rocky shore, with loaded packs, headed for the east side where we could pick our way through a flatted saddle of stunted, alpine fir before descending on the most sane route, when I decided to put my rod together and fish our way around. First cast and retrieve I hooked into a fish that doubled my rod and stripped most of my line. Even Chris, despite the cold, drizzling rain dripping from her hair, was exited. After a long struggle, I beached the fish in the shallows. It just may have been the female I had seen spawning, so I like to think. Six pounds at least. I let her go, and cast again. Soon, I hooked into another husky trout. Every few casts, I hooked into another, then another, all between 14 and 21 inches. I slipped into a different realm, losing track of time, wading now up to my waste, casting away, hooking into fish, oblivious to the rain and cold. Then I glanced back at Chris. She was standing near shore, pack still on, shoulders hunched and hands withdrawn up into her sleeves, hood tightened around her face, frowning, wet, shivering, making it quite clear that she thought it was time to head out. “One more cast,” I said. She cussed, and left, disappearing into a thicket of alpine fir, yelling back that she’d make out on her own. By the time I took my rod apart, packed it away, and caught up to her, she had just slipped and slid downhill several yards through mud. She was livid. “Cheer up,” I said. “We just got engaged.” She stabbed me with a glare and shot back slow and deliberately, “I might just change my freaking mind!” Fortunately, she didn’t. We’ve been happily married more than 13 years. We laugh about that day, but for different reasons; I will never forget those trout.

The great conservationist Aldo Leopold once wrote,

I often show maps to my 3-year old son, Cory. I point out rivers and lakes far back in the wilderness, and show him photos of trout. He smiles, and excitedly shouts “fishy!” A friend recently invited me to bring Cory to his stocked pond near town where he is guaranteed to catch big trout. I thanked him for his kind offer, but I doubt I will take him up on it. I think I want Cory’s first trout to be a wilderness trout.