2024 Golden Trout Wind River Backpacking Fishing Trip

Hi, this is Kaden Smith, I am the son of Brady Smith who normally does blog articles on this website. I've been a part of many of his outdoor adventures, and I enjoy writing, as such we thought this would be a great adventure for me to start learning how to blog. This article topic will be about a fishing trip this past summer. Fishing has been a big part of my life growing up, it is a passion shared with me by my dad. I hope people who read this post enjoy it as much as I do. 

I like fishing based on numerous things. Firstly, I have always relished how relaxing and calm the activity is, where it seems to wash any of your stresses away. The next thing I love about fishing is the anticipation, the anticipation of not knowing what fish you're catching next is very alluring. Every fish is unique in its color pattern, size, and even shape. Lastly, I am fond of the scenery you behold with your own eyes. I have experienced seeing some beautiful lakes and mountains.

Going back to the main topic of this article, this week-long fishing trip had been in the works for over a year. I, my brother, and dad have enjoyed fishing in the Uinta mountains these past years, having fished even while hunting on elk hunting trips. It is nifty that there are hundreds of fishable lakes in the Uinta mountains, just asking to be fished by a passing fisherman. What inspired this trip was that we'd been going after different trout species. Two new species I recently caught were: tiger trout and arctic grayling. golden trout became a new target after my dad told his story of catching a golden trout when he was young. He mentioned how pretty of a trout species they were. I thought it'd be cool to add golden trout to the list of fish species I've caught.

Dad enjoys researching and finding the best places and routes to catch certain fish using the ON X HUNT maps app. With this app, you can download maps that you can view offline. Before this trip, we fished a few different lakes in the Uinta mountains, specifically Echo Lake, but were unsuccessful in catching any golden trout. However, later on, my dad discovered some specific lakes in the Wind River Mountain Range stocked with golden trout. This discovery led to us planning our journey to the Wind River Mountain Range. This is a place that my dad and brother have fished before. They didn't go after golden trout on that trip though. Since they had taken a fishing trip to the Wind Rivers before, it was concluded it would be a special trip with just Dad and I, along with our golden doodle dog named Biscuit. The trip was planned for the last week of July of this year. It would include backpacking with all our needed supplies on a designated route. The length was determined based on several factors, one was that this would be Dad's first big hiking trip coming back from having a total knee replacement, and the other was us bringing Biscuit with us. 

Having over a year to plan was helpful in the preparation for this trip. My dad started a good habit/routine of taking Biscuit with him for a couple-mile hike at six in the morning every day. This helped his knee get used to hiking again and improved the dog's endurance. Across this period we purchased additional needed gear and had plenty of time to work out the details of our excursion. Before this trip we'd been starting to get into using fly rods, we started simple with using Tenkara rods. Later on, though, my dad decided it would be beneficial to upgrade to some Redington fly-fishing rods. I received one for my Birthday, and he got one for himself just a few months before the trip. He had done a bit of fly-fishing when he was around my age. But in recent years thanks to recommendations from friends and colleagues he got back into fly-fishing, and helped me get into it. We have always been big spinner rod users, but were aware of how much fish like realistic-looking bait. Many people have claimed that fly fishing allows you to catch more fish than with spinner rods. 

Another thing to consider upgrading for our big trip was our camping gear. The camping gear needed to be as lightweight as possible, for we were hiking many miles each day stopping by lakes to fish them as we went. The gear focused on replacing was sleeping pads, sleeping bags, light breathable pants, and water pumps. Some gear needed to be replaced anyway from major years of use.

Once all the new gear had arrived we decided to do some practice/trial fishing runs on some weekends at the beginning of the summer. My dad tied a variety of flies to help us figure out/determine what the fish were most interested in, and we compiled that with the rest of our gear into our backpacks and did some few-mile hike excursions to see how the weight felt. We didn't have our backpacks weight down to exactly what we wanted but good enough for some trial runs. When we got to the lakes, we tested our fly rods and got good practice, working on perfecting our casting, etc. Fly-fishing at least for me was a little hard to grasp. Especially considering I've only fished with spinning rods and ice fishing rods throughout my life. Essentially, I felt these mini trips proved important to ensure proper casting techniques were performed, to help improve the odds of bringing in more fish.

As the big trip drew near, Dad continued to work on tying loads of flies. It was funny, I swore whenever Dad came home from work, and I'd go into the kitchen, I saw him seated at the end of the table, working on tying flies. Dad had access to GoPro cameras due to his job, which we were able to bring along. They would be a nice addition to filming releases and us fishing. We got some extra spinners, including Panther Martins, as we would do some spinner fishing. But we were mainly focusing on this being a fly-fishing trip.

Time flew by so fast that there was only one week to prepare for the trip before we knew it. With the final week arriving, the primary focus was on the backpacks. We concluded that the backpacks should be around thirty-five pounds, which is recommended online at least. Thirty-five pounds was for everything, food, water, GoPros, fishing gear, clothing, and even safety precautions. For food, we focused on our homemade elk jerky from a cow elk I took last fall, oatmeal for breakfasts, trail mix, and mountain house for dinners. We got a bunch of Powerade mixes to flavor our water and replenish our electrolytes.

Taking safety gear felt required for Grizzly Bears are prominent in the Wind Rivers. The safety gear includes bear spray and pistols, you really can never be too careful when it comes to Grizzly Bears. If you're eighteen years or older, you can open carry in Wyoming. Fortunately for me, I am exactly eighteen. A satellite communicator was a last-minute thing that was also bought for our safety. The ability to reach family if an emergency came up was good and would keep our minds at peace, for there is no internet access up in the Uinta mountains or Wind Rivers.

Dad found some repellent spray you can spray on your clothes to ward off mosquitoes etc. There are certain areas in the Uintas we have gone to where the bugs have been pretty bad. So we sprayed all the clothes we planned to wear for the trip with some Sawyer Permethrin Insect Repellent and sprayed Biscuit's dog collar. It was smart to use the repellent spray on our clothes for it worked awesome during our trip.

At last, the day arrived when we embarked on this fishing trip journey. We woke up at six on Monday morning of the last week of July and immediately started loading up the Jeep. Although it wasn't much loading since it was just the backpacks, us, and biscuit, and we took off at seven. It is around a four-hour drive to reach the Wind Rivers from our house. Biscuit, our dog, has been to the Uinta mountains occasionally, so he has gotten used to long drives. However, on occasion during the extensive drives, Biscuit will attempt to jump up into the front of the vehicle and sit in our laps. I believe it has to do with him getting lonely sitting by himself in the back of the jeep. It is not optimal for the driver to be distracted by the chaos of the dog lunging at him from the back. So once we got an opportunity to stop, I switched from the front passenger seat to one of the back seats to comfort him for the rest of the ride.

We had one other stop after stopping for Biscuit, it was when we were barely stopped on the road for twenty minutes due to some construction. It was frustrating that only three more cars were being stopped in front of us. We look back on that moment and think that if we hadn't taken the break for me to jump in the back with Biscuit, we would have made it through with no delay. Continuing about the drive, we did happen to see a variety of wildlife, including prairie dogs and a couple of antelope. What amazed us was as we neared our destination, there was a drastic change in the landscape. For most of the ride, it felt like there were no mountains in sight. The silhouette of the mountains was barely visible behind a vast amount of fog.

So when Dad was driving, the mountain range kind of just appeared out of nowhere. The Mountain Range is tall and seems to span for endless miles. It felt like there was no end to them. When beginning to ascend the mountains, I saw two of the largest lakes I've ever seen. Dad commented that these were naturally made, which I thought was pretty neat. We continued climbing on the road higher and higher till unfortunately we got slowed down by a big truck in front of us. I remember the roads being pretty dusty, and that the truck left a thick, hazy dust storm behind him. Dust we had to endure for the remaining minutes getting to the main parking lot, which we arrived at a little after eleven o'clock. This parking lot is connected to the Elkhart Long Lake Trail, a popular trail that people go on, so it was no surprise the parking lot was filled with parked vehicles.

When getting out, biscuit immediately chased after the squirrel that was chirping on a tree a little ways up on the hill from the parking lot. If you know Biscuit, one of his favorite things to do when camping is chase after squirrels. While Dad finished unloading the packs and gathering things I ended up climbing the hill to retrieve Biscuit carrying him back in my arms. If you are unaware golden Doodle dogs are a solid 60+ pounds. So it was no easy feat to bring him back down. After that minor setback, we threw on our backpacks and started hiking. Well, we were hiking until Dad remembered he forgot his walking sticks, so I waited on the trail with Biscuit while he went back to the Jeep to retrieve them then we continued on our hike.

The route of our trip was based on some lakes that a colleague of Dad's recommended. He had been fishing a few weeks before us, testing some new backpacks he had been working on. For the first day, we planned on hiking the most, a total of four and a half miles. We were going to fish a lake that only had brook trout in it on the way to our first campsite only a couple miles further at a different lake. While hiking on the trail, we passed many people, mainly day hikers, and a few fishermen. A mid-pace was kept and we took several breaks.

During one of our breaks, a funny family came up to us. They said they came from Arizona to hike this popular Wyoming trail. As they approached us, they asked, “Are there Grizzly Bears up here?” With our responses being “Oh Yeah!”, they then proceeded to reflect on the fact they hadn't brought any bear spray. Hesitantly, the family continued walking their way up the trail. When only a few minutes passed, they traveled past us coming back down the trail, stating, “We better get some bear spray!” we laughed as they rushed past us with haste. We continued to pass person after person as we hiked on the main trail. It was this way for a couple of miles till breaking off the trail to head to the first lake we fished at.

We arrived at the lake around three o'clock in the afternoon, at this lake there were a few fishermen we saw on the far side of the lake. There were a bunch of fish jumping on the right side corner of the lake, so that's where we started fishing. Trying out our fly rods on the lake, we got some bites early on. Dad was able to land two fish on his fly rod early into the fishing session, however it slowed down quickly. After a while of no bites and trying various lures, I switched to my spinner rod and tried a variety of colored Panther Martins. The regular one amongst others had been unsuccessful, so I decided to put on one of the newest Panther Martins I got. It was a green Panther Martin with red dots. I knew that one had a good chance of landing some Brook trout since it is a similar color to them. When switching to the green Panther Martin and casting, as soon as I began to reel a fish struck the lure and I pulled in my first Brook trout on that lake.

I continued catching brook trout with this lure, bringing in two more brook trout. It was nearing six at night and we had been fishing for a few hours. We realized, we better start hiking again to get to camp for the night. It would take a while to set up the tent and get dinner ready, one hour of hiking later we got to our camping spot. At this lake, there is just golden trout stocked in it. We dropped off our backpacks and walked down to fish the lake a little that night before it got dark, but neither of us even got one bite. Even though quite a few fish were jumping all across the lake. While we were fishing a giant yellow dragonfly landed next to me on the bank. I never usually see yellow dragonflies, they generally are blue.

We returned to our backpacks and quickly set up our two-man tent. After the tent was up, we ate our mountain house dinner on some rocks nearby. They provided a good station to heat our Mountain House food. Later when the sun came down we pumped our water in an outlet close to the lake, and put our food in the bear bag, hoisting it high up on a tree branch, before sleeping for the night. That was the nightly routine we followed for the whole trip. We woke up at six to have our breakfast of oatmeal in that same rocky area. For the second day of the trip, we planned on hitting a lake a half mile from camp and then hiking two and a half miles to another lake, where we would camp there for the night. These lakes would all have just golden trout in them. We fished for just an hour after breakfast at the lake we were currently at.

Then quickly we set out for today's lakes, it took us about thirty to forty-five minutes to reach the closest lake. It was a pretty steep incline, so it took longer than it normally would be. Our immediate response when seeing this lake was that there were hardly any fish jumping. As usual, we dropped off our backpacks nearby in a shaded area. Then Dad took Biscuit with him to the left side of the lake and I fished more of the right side of the lake. After thirty minutes of fishing and seeing Dad miss a fish on the left side. I decided to work the left side of the lake as well, dad continued to move up and to the left corner of the lake. I was still not getting any bites, however, Dad missed two pretty big golden trout. Both fish were hooked for a few seconds, but one broke off, and the other spat the lure out.

After two hours of fishing this lake, we returned to our backpacks and took a lunch break. Then we got up and continued hiking on a steep incline till we reached a turnoff to the right. On this turnoff we headed back onto a main trail for a bit, passing some people, when we hadn't for a while. We took a good nap a couple of miles into our hike when we reached the lake right when it began to rain pretty hard. There was a rocky ledge on the mountain that we hugged when pulling out our ponchos, taking cover under them. It rained off and on for about thirty minutes before we started fishing. 

At this lake, we had a good feeling about catching some golden trout because of how many were visible schooling near the bank. There were dozens of small golden trout, and when we started casting with our fly rods, I immediately got a bite and pulled in my very first golden trout! It felt good to catch one after so long of going after them. This trip started slow and we had missed catching any golden trout thus far and we were a little worried if we'd catch any. Dad filmed and took photos of my first golden trout as I released it into the water. It was cool to see how beautifully colored they are in real life. After that first fish I caught, we continued catching them one after the other for hours on end. I started traveling to the right side of the lake, and Dad to the left again. We both fished our sides for a bit until it was getting later so we met up again, and talked about changing our plans. It consisted of us not camping at this lake for the night and heading up to a lake above us to camp there.

So we quickly started hiking up to it as it was getting late. When climbing Dad mentioned it was the steepest hike of our whole trip. Shortly into the hike, there were clear signs seen above that it was going to storm again, with thick dark clouds heading in our direction. Our pace increased, but it still took us over an hour after going in the wrong direction. Once getting to the lake, it began to rain again and the wind picked up. We had to set up the tent faster than ever, to throw our backpacks under to prevent gear from getting soaked. Fortunately, it didn't rain much, and we could continue our nightly routine. The next morning, when I had sat down and was preparing my breakfast and Dad was tying a fly on his fly rod, a chipmunk was eying us on the cliff boulders above us. It was clear it wanted to have a taste of my oatmeal. It began crawling down slowly till it was near the bottom of the cliff. Eventually, Biscuit saw the chipmunk and bolted after it, spilling some leftover water we had.  As Biscuit bolted after the chipmunk the chipmunk simply responded by quickly retreating further up on the cliff just out of reach, it felt like it was taunting Biscuit from up there.

With the chaos of Biscuit chasing after the squirrel Dad accidentally broke the tip of his fly rod as he had started to go after Biscuit. Luckily, the fly rod was still usable after some quick testing on the lake. We had to re-boil some water cause I hadn't added it to my oatmeal yet. After breakfast, when I was gathering things to start fishing my heart sank with the realization I had lost my fish net on the way up to this lake. When mentioning it to Dad, we concluded that we would look for it on the way out of the Wind Rivers. You could say it was a rough morning.

As we began to focus on fishing at this lake, many fish were jumping, but after fishing for a bit, it was clear there were primarily tiny-sized fish held in this lake. In the other lake previously fished at, there were lots of small fish, but these golden trout were more comparable to minnows in size. We started fishing just a little away from camp but were unsuccessful in catching any fish throughout a couple of hours of fishing. I walked around the lake to the left, sight fishing as I walked some areas, while Dad stayed back near camp with Biscuit. I saw a couple fish around ten inches in length, that I cast a fly in front of. However, only one of them committed to the fly and the fish happened to get off pretty quickly. At this lake, the colleague mentioned before of Dad's had said they had tons of bites but didn't land any. But we only had an impressive total of one single bite on this lake! 

We were tired of getting nothing again, so we gathered our things and set out for the last lake to camp at. Around this time in the day, it got warm and when beginning to hike there was little to no shade, and it was a lot of uphill. After about an hour of hiking, we all took a water and rest break. We found a nice area to hunker down in the shade of some pines. After about forty-five minutes of rest, we were ready to go, it was a little after noon and some clouds had poured in. So the hike felt a lot easier after that point in time. We crossed through a cool ravine and weaved between cliffs when completing the hike. After climbing one last steep hill, we finally got a good view of the lake, which was the most interesting looking, at least for me. The lake was split into multiple sections, but the main section was parallel to us on the other side. We could either head left or right, and we decided to cross on the left side because it looked like an easier path.

We headed to the left after taking a forty-five-minute water and rest break. When we got up and approached the left side of the lake, there were some boulders we had to cross. Boulders are one of Biscuit's all-time fears, at least they used to be. Like with car rides, by going on various excursions and getting used to it, he had the fear mostly conquered. There was one spot where we had to go precisely around a boulder and avoid getting wet, so I had to help him across. When reaching the other end of the lake, we set up the tent as usual and selected a spot to start fishing at. 

It was around five o'clock so we still had a few hours of light left to fish, and we noticed in the left corner there was a bunch of fish jumping in a outlet small area. So that is where we began fishing, I got a few bites with the leech I had on but kept missing. Dad went past me with Biscuit fishing further up on the main lake. He came back later and caught some golden trout with some nymphs. The fish were small and I was having a hard time hooking them. It was starting to get late so we all headed back to camp, I fished a little more near our tent before going to sleep.

The next morning, we tried in that small pocket area again but didn't have the same luck as the day prior. It seemed that the fish had smartened up on the lures we were using the day prior. So we decided to try our luck at a lake further down that held only Brook trout. It started to rain a lot when we began to walk down to it, so we retreated to the tent and had to wait twenty to thirty minutes for the rain to clear. When it cleared, it only took us thirty minutes tops to reach the next lake.

By targeting just brook trout we fished with leeches the whole time, we've learned that brook trout love leeches. We saw lots of fish jumping on the right side of the lake so we all fished that side together. Our leeches were pulling in brook trout after brook trout. While fishing this lake a big Brook trout jumped out of the water missing my leech barely, so that was pretty cool to see. Dad found a nice long stick with a branch sticking out that we could place our fish on. We knew they would stay fresh with our short hike back to camp. We caught at least a dozen Brook trout each however, we decided to only keep the biggest fish for dinner. All the fish we kept were good in size ten inches plus in length. We kept six, which we figured would be plenty for us and Biscuit if he desired some.

We returned to camp and had them for dinner with some seasonings we stored in baggies. The seasonings consisted of garlic and pepper. We wrapped the fillets in some tinfoil to cook them, it took about twenty minutes to cook them in tinfoil, so while Dad worked on that I prepared some Mountain House. The fish turned out pretty alright when we tasted them, however, when we tried to share some with Biscuit he surprisingly denied the fish. It was suspected that he didn't like the seasonings added to it.

The next day was about hiking halfway back to the Jeep, camping, and fishing at the lake where we caught the most golden trout. When we were hiking, it was funny that Biscuit led us back to the lake, with him taking the lead in front of us walking back on nearly the exact path we took coming in. When passing through the ravine and hiking over a hill my spinner rod unfortunately got caught on a tree branch and a quarter of the rod broke. So Dad and I both broke pieces off of our rods. It was good we brought plenty of rods or we wouldn't have fished nearly as much.

While we were hiking back we did happen to see where I dropped the fishing net, it was just lying flat on top of some bushes it had caught on, the area was pretty close to our best golden trout lake for the trip. We were surprised it was just in the wide open, we thought the fishing net would be higher up on the steep stuff. After picking up the net I decided to hold it just in case, as we completed our hike back to the lake.

 We made it back to the lake in just an hour or so and still had plenty of hours left in the day to focus on this lake. It was nice because we were able to fish this lake much more extensively than before not feeling rushed at all. We went around to the left side, which was the best side of this lake. It did happen to rain pretty hard two times when we had to take a break from fishing and go under the cover of pine trees.

We hadn't set up the tent, so we hung out under pine tree branches to shield us from the rain. We probably got five or six hours of fishing on that lake that day, fishing right until dark. The next morning we slept in a little, waking up around eight o clock, we had whatever else we wanted to eat and began hiking the rest of the way out. When hiking out, we bumped into a couple returning from a fishing trip just like us. They mentioned they had been up there for a week and hadn't caught any golden trout. Well, except for a sickly one that the guy grabbed out of the water! This couple had been up in the Wind Rivers on various occasions and seemed to know quite a bit about golden trout. We had a nice conversation with them before continuing on our way.

During the hike out we had our eyes set for any heart-shaped rocks. We did this because my mom loves to collect heart rocks and even puts them in the flower beds. When searching for such rocks we found three that we could carry back out. We didn't want to carry any massive ones back out.

 We made it back to the Jeep in the parking lot fairly quickly. It only took us a couple of hours thanks to On X Maps. We realized when looking in the app that we made it harder on ourselves at a certain area coming in. Where we could have continued on some trails instead of going off trail. So we found that very trail, which made it significantly faster to complete the hike. Once we made it back to the Jeep we were pretty exhausted from hiking all week, but we had a good time. From going on this trip we have learned that golden trout are pretty tricky to catch, at least the big ones are. We hope to apply what we learned from this trip next time we go up to the Wind Rivers and maybe next time we'll be able to catch bigger ones.

Below are links to other useful new gear we used during our trip

• The USB rechargeable Portable Water Filter works great at pumping fresh filtered water.
• The SteriPEN Adventurer Opti UV Water Purifier functions nicely as well.
• The Lightweight stretchable hiking pants were very breathable and comfy to wear and they come in 36" inseams for our long legs.
• BigBlue 28W solar panel worked great at keeping our charging bank full.
• We would charge our phones and other equipment at night with an Anker 20,000mAh 87W Power Bank.

Below are links to other backpacking adventures.

Backpacking The Wind Rivers — Stough Creek Basin