Wall lake

Two rather disparate topics tonight. I'll start with the more familiar. I went fishing in the Uintas today. I saw a moose family. Papa moose, mama moose, and baby moose. They were clearly republicans! Otherwise it would have been two lesbian mooose raising their child to only eat meat. Naturally, I left the movie camera at home. I did get them on my cell phone, but even at just fifty feet away they looked quite distant.

My rant is a simple one. While USGS terrain maps are highly accurate for the most part, they fall down hard on hiking trails. Sometimes they show trails that haven't existed for decades (White Pine canyon). Other times the trails never existed but are at least within a one or two hundred yards of each other (Silver Lake above Tibble Fork) and sometimes they are just plain wrong. I take the USGS maps whenever I go into the back country, but I get instructions from people that have been there before..........preferably old-timers like myself.

The fishing was fair. I caught four and lost a few more on the way in. The fish were not plump like the ones at Notch Lake. I caught a Brookie with the elongated jaws (for the spawn I suppose) and he was barely 12 inhces long and skinny. He was also about the brightest Brookie I've seen in a few years. I also caught a Lake trout. Yes, I know they are not indigenous to the area. I know they are not planted in that drainage. I know they prefer deep water in big lakes. I also know what I caught. I know that tiger trout are put into some Uinta lakes. Perhaps this one didn't get crossed with a brookie and somehow snuck in. He was perhaps 10 or 11 inches and pretty lethargic.