Climbing To Lost Lk In The EN Wild 26Aug19

Kala and I took out from Wheeler Jct parking near the SR91 bridge over I70 on a stout climb into the EN Wild of the Gore Range - yet another entrance trail to our awesome home wilderness. We started late but headed out at 11:15am or so out 5.2 mi from parking, and up 2300 ft to Lost Lk. We passed the Wheeler Lks folks (and junction), oversaw Copper and the 10 Mile Range and even peaked over past Leadville. We slowed as we reached our objective below Uneva Pk, but made it a bit after 2pm. I laced the rod while Kala explored the Gore Trail. I turned over some nice cutthroats with ants, Adams and smaller but I either didn't close or they didn't... rejections were clear. I stalked along the  lakeshore watching the drop-off for cruisers and Kala and I both saw this orangish and largish cutty every 15 min or so on this decently deep but small lake. I saw ~6 cruisers on my observations. There was a guy across the lake who could cast and had a cool dog who'd been there since 8am and was totally frustrated but pleased as he finally caught a fish as I observed. I made my way to the inlet streams and saw the bigger cruiser again. I tied on red - a royal coachman dry and dropped a red-headed nymph (as the guy just caught his on a reddish Amy's Ant), as I didn't want to go too big for the brute. It worked! I landed the biggest fish I saw cruising - he gobbled the coachman; it's ~20" and I handed it without a net. This made the extra effort on the trail worth it for me and I was stoked Kala made the full trek as I would not have left her if we needed to bail. We had lunch after my flies flew in a tree from another strike. And then we got back down, but it's not easy. Celebration at ORB with a nice new Stray IPA and the venerable Steezy DDH. Fabulous hike, spectacular weather, wondrous hiking buddy, gr8 20" CO cutthroat (perhaps the biggest of these I've caught but I did larger at 11 Mile - I'm just unsure of the exact cutty sub-species).