My personal best golden trout I caught using my 5 Weight Redington Classic Trout rod with an Ultralight Redington Zero Fly Fishing Reel and a black with red wire snow cone fly.
You read correctly, I hate golden trout! The past few years, I have been studying online everything I can find on golden trout, especially catching them in the Wind River Mountains. I even read Fly-Fishing the Rocky Mountain Backcountry, which is full of great information on backcountry fishing and golden trout.
I gave up trying to catch a golden trout in Utah at Echo Lake a couple of years ago. I tried for a few years and could never catch one at Echo Lake, although I see online and hear of them getting caught there on occasion, even though it was last stocked in 2013 there still are a few reproducing in the lake. The last two years I have turned my attention to the Wind Rivers and have taken six-day backpacking trips after these fish each year.
Stopping for a selfie at the highest pass on our Wind River trip.
So here I am sitting at my computer a few weeks out from coming back from the Winds. Me and my two sons had a blast. We all caught goldens, brookies and lake trout on this trip. Lake trout was a new species for all of us and golden trout was a new species for Dallen. We had a blast but I can't help but be somewhat upset with the butt whooping I feel I took from the goldens. In one particular lake I fished on 3 different days, I fished it for around 10 hours, constantly watching fish all around me feeding and I threw every fly I could find at them, only to catch two fish in this lake. The goldens in this lake were mostly 8-10 inches long. Fish that rarely ever see fishermen and one might think they would be eager to strike a fly, but I got rejection after rejection from these little goldens. Am I really that terrible of a fisherman? Do they have better vision? What makes them so dang hard to catch? They are clearly in a different class of difficulty to catch than any other trout species.
Last year, Kaden and I made our first trip to the Winds, specifically after the goldens. While it was challenging, we each caught somewhere between 30 and 40 a piece. All 8 to 12 inches in size and almost all of them were caught with a size 16 beaded Hare's Ear Nymph. This year we went earlier in the year and saw more fish but caught far fewer and only caught a couple with the Hare's Ear Nymph that was so effective the year before.
Here are the flies that we were catching golden's with in 2025. I know everyone says large orange/pink scuds are the ticket for goldens. As for me, that doesn't ring true. I have tried and tried various scud patterns and they don't touch them. I don't know what the issue is. I guess they work well for a lot of other, more experienced fly fishermen.
Even though I'm grumbling some I did catch my best golden trout on this trip. We didn't measure the fish, but I'm guessing he was around 16 inches long. If his body fit the size of his head, he would have been 20+ inches long. He clearly wasn't getting enough to eat. I caught him using a black snow cone with red wire.
In truth, I have more of a love/hate relationship with golden trout. Do I love to catch them? Are they beautiful? Yes & Yes! But they are just a pain in the rear to catch. In future trips to the Wind Rivers, I will be going after fish to catch and not specifically after goldens. If I come across a lake with goldens, I will gladly try my hand at seeing if I can get one to take my fly.
For the most part, I like catching fish and when I'm miles and miles into the backcountry, I am hoping for fish that are eager to help me out. Even the smallest of golden's are just several levels harder to catch than brookies, cutthroats, tigers, rainbows and lakers... like many, many levels harder!
Dallen with his first lake trout.
I love these Brooks Divide 5 Trail Running Shoes... and this golden sure is a pretty one.
These shoes have been my all-time most comfortable backpacking shoes. The shoe is very light, has an extremely soft yet supportive feel. I was a little concerned that the sole might get torn up and the rubber tread detach from the foam, but they held up great for me and my 240 pounds plus a 60-pound pack.
The glued-on tread held up great on my Brooks Divide 5 trail running shoes after 6 days in the backcountry... mostly off-trail hiking.
Kaden's personal best brook trout from our 2025 Wind River trip.
I love this usb rechargeable water pump combined with the collapsible Platypus 2-liter water bottle (see image above). This year, I found a great tip to cut a piece off the side of a plastic pop bottle and place it on the bottom of the water source (see the green plastic below the prefilter in the image below). This super-light plastic keeps the pump from sucking up debris off the bottom and plugging up the filters. It works amazingly and is so simple and lightweight to carry.
We enjoyed the Alps Mountainerring Acropolis 4-Person Backpacking tent. It had plenty of space for three large guys and two large dogs.
At the trailhead, ready to head into the Wind River backcountry after golden trout.
I got a smaller and lighter solar panel this year that puts out 25W, is only 1.38"x4.65"x6.42" collapsed and weighs in at 0.84 lbs. Shown here is Biscuit overseeing the charging of one of our Meshtastic LoRa radio nodes with a GPS module (We like the Heltec T114 v2 boards and print 3d cases for them). Biscuit also has a small Meshtastic LoRa node (SenceCAP T1000-E) that is sealed with an internal antenna set to tracking mode, that I have set to give out his GPS location every 2 minutes to our group of radios. Biscuit's radio is in the canvas pouch I made to put on his collar. Meshtastic is an inexpensive way to communicate securely with a mesh network that is completely off-grid. We can all see each other's locations and the dog's locations and send text messages to each other. Meshtastic is awesome for backpacking or hunting in the backcountry.
Other Backpacking Adventures