Well, this posting is long overdue, but what can I say, I have a few things on my plate right now. On the 28th of July, Eric Sheridan, my cousin and good friend, and I took our 7th annual fly fishing trip into the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. Last year's trip had 6 participants, but this year only Eric and I could make the trip. And make a trip we did!
On the first day of the 5-day expedition, we hiked in about 5 miles to Shoshone Lake. Finding a camp site immediately, we had our tent set up by 5:00pm--which is an amazing feat when camping. Wasting no time, I rigged up my fishing rod and put a line in the water. On the first cast of the trip, I reeled in a nice Cutthroat trout. Eric, still rigging his rod at the camp site about 50 yards away, looked up to see how big the fish I had just caught was and there between Eric and I stood a 150 lb. black bear! The bear was just as surprised to see Eric as Eric was to see it, and the bear scurried off into the woods quickly, never to be seen again.
That night Eric and I did not sleep particularly well--thinking the bear may come to revisit us--but it did not. In the morning, we packed up camp and left for Trail Lake near Roberts Lake on the other side of the nearby mountain ridge. It was a 5 mile hike, but we made pretty good time, arriving at Trail Lake by noon. On our way, we found a pond full of 40 plus sunbathing Elk and took a detour to get some close up pictures.
After setting up camp at Trail Lake, we headed, fishing rod in hand, to Roberts Lake, where we proceeded to enjoy one of the best five hours of fishing of my life! Fish after fish! It was truly amazing! The only thing that stopped us was the setting sun and the need for some dinner. I don't know how many fish we caught, but Eric believes between the two of us we caught over 100 fish in those five hours.
After a beautiful sunset and some dinner back at camp, Eric and I
settled in for a much needed good night of sleep. . . . only to be woken up at 5:30am by the sounds of a 300 lbs plus black bear (a new, much bigger black bear) knocking over our pans about 10 feet from our tent. We made some noise and the bear backed off, but it hung around our camp for a couple hours, looking for food and playing in the trees. The bear did not get any of our food, as the food was hanging from the branch of a tree in a bag, away from camp. Not able to go back to sleep Eric and I made some coffee (yes, I do drink coffee when camping) and breakfast and then headed out for some fantastic fishing. This time we stayed at Trail Lake.
The fishing at Trail Lake was very good, but not quite like the afternoon we had at Roberts Lake the day before. At one point we came along a dead elk lying in a shallow part of Trail Lake. Eric waded into the water and tried to drag the antlers and head of the elk out of the water for keepsake, only to find that the head and antlers would not detach from the rest of its body. Eric's efforts only unearthed the most god-awful scent I have ever smelled in my life, causing Eric and I to immediately run out of the lake before gagging--literally.
That day while fishing, the black bear did come back to our camp looking for food again--unsuccessful again. "Sponge Bob" (we nicknamed the bear "Sponge Bob" because it took a bite out of my cleaning sponge) did go through our packs and did cause some minor damage to some person effects, but it did not get our food or damage our tent, which was a very good thing.
The next day we did some more fishing--it was great again. We then headed back to civilization the 
next morning, hiking a little more than 10 miles in 4 hours and 15 minutes! The trip was the most eventful of all the trips we have taken. It will definitely be forever eched in our memories and on my pack since there are bear claw marks on my backpack. As Del Griffith (John Candy) said in the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles, "We can laugh about it now, we are alright!" It was an epic trip, and as the sun set on the mountains to the west of our campsite the last night drawing a close to a great day of fishing, so to was a great fishing trip drawing to a close. Thanks for a great trip Eric!
