Exploring Michigan Lake: A Colorado High Country Fishing Adventure

After a couple weekends of chasing smallies and fishing the Project Healing Waters Tournament I was able to get back up into the Colorado high country, to knock another lake in a long line of lakes off the bucket list.  This lake is off Georgia pass a little lake called Michigan Lake.  Having only the knowledge that it held cutthroats at one time I headed out to see what I could find.
The road was freshly graded and no need for 4 wheel drive even passed the grader on the way up.

I made fast time and soon overshot the lake and was up on Georgia Pass.

Taking one of the many off shoots from this intersection at Georgia Pass I find myself on a dead end mine looking down at the lake I overshot, thinking I bet that?s the lake right there.

I head back downhill see if I could find a trail that would get me close to the lake.  I found a trail that put me about a half mile away bushwacking through the forest.  I set up basecamp and headed to bed hoping to get an early start.  The night temps dipped into the 30?s its getting colder and colder up there bring the extra snivel gear.  
The next morning I got up early ate some hot oatmeal to warm me up, field stripped the pack and headed through the trees to see if I could find the lake.  Luckily I was right on target and popped up just above the lake.

The lake itself was extremely shallow and I was wondering if I was even at the right lake? I noticed on Google Earth that there was another lake close by and from the pictures it was extremely shallow as well.  I dropped the pack and rigged up looking for fish as I started to walk the lake.  No cruisers and nothing hitting the surface, there was a downed tree in the water that looked like a perfect holding spot but nothing as I worked both sides of the log.  Then I heard a fish jump or at least what I hoped was a fish jumping? spinning to try and see where was fruitless as the wind was blowing too hard to see rings.  One of those did I hear a fish jump or was it wishful thinking.  The inlet and outlet of the lake did not have fish and both were very silty and pretty low as well.  As I came back around the lake by the downed tree I was starting to wonder if this was my 2nd barren lake of the season.  That?s when I saw a small fish jump out towards the middle of the lake in front of the downed tree.  I put the waders on and walked out? this whole lake is shin deep with the deepest part by the downed tree being maybe 4-5ft deep.  I noticed there was a slightly deeper channel going from the downed tree through the middle of the lake with good looking rocks.  I put my first cast there and WAM!  A fish about the same size as my stimulator hit the stimi, of course I set the hook but nothing there.  This happened a lot throughout the day and no matter how hard I tried not to set the hook I did every single time.  Shortly after that I had a hook up and it was constant action with me pulling in roughly 20 cutthroats and missing 30 hook sets on the tiny guys.

I even caught one brook trout in the lake? if there are more it?s probably the beginning of the end for what little bit of cutthroats do live in this lake.

Misc. Photos

More photos can be found in my gallery for this lake...