Uintas Echo Lake report

[catchinon]

My brother and I made it up to Echo Lake in Murdock Basin today. Due to a missing sign and a later start we got there around 10:00 after bumping a couple of extra miles up to Marshall Lake. We fished along the east side and didn't have a lot of luck at first. Fly-and-bubble wasn't working well as a breeze kept the surface moving. Finally my brother caught a golden on a bit of worm. For quite a while we fished small pieces of nightcrawler on #10 or #12 hooks under bobbers. Not much happening no matter how I varied depth, bait size, etc. So I took the bobber off and fished on the bottom. Bam, I started catching fish. We each caught about 10 trout, mostly goldens with the occasional brook. These were not large fish, as you might expect, but the goldens were brilliant, accented with pink and red on their sides and bellies. The parr bars along their sides proved that they were goldens and not anything else.

We had been concerned that a lot of people would be fishing there. There were a few but not crowds. As someone said, the long, rough road probably discouraged many.

The bite slowed down around 3:00 but we were ready to go anyway.

So I filled a slot in my bucket list and raised my count to 11 species and hybrids caught this year. It's been fun.
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[brookieguy1]

For better brook trout, Marshall is a good lake. Glad you caught your Golden’s though!
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[JohnHolley]

Sounds like a fun trip. Glad you got out and got into some.

With a few threads lately asking about fish identification, I thought your statement about parr markings may confuse some with trying to identify their catch.
I'm sure what you caught were goldens, but for future fish reference don't rely on the parr markings as identifying them as all juvenile trout have them.
Happy fishing
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[catchinon]

Good clarification. Everything else matched for golden identification. Though they were on the small side, they were not juveniles. If you read the thread about the new state record you probably noticed that some posters questioned whether the fish might be a brightly colored cutthroat or something else. We only used the parr bars as confirmation; they were obviously not cutbows or something. I believe the only other fish in the lake are brookies and you can't mistake those spots. Thanks
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[doggonefishin]

Assuming you were at the right lake, you can be assured they were genuine Golden’s. There are no cutts in Echo to have to differentiate from.

Congrats on scratching a new fish off the bucket list.
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[JohnHolley]

I hope you don't feel as though I was calling you out on your post.
That wasn't my intention at all.
Actually I stated that there were other threads that dealt with misidentification and I also replied in the thread you mentioned.

My intention and response was to help with a new person that may catch a "juvenile" fish in another body of water that has parr markings and may recall your statement thinking it meant that it would have to be a golden as no other fish has them.
I understood your point of breaking down the fish you caught for identification and agreed with you that they were probably Golden's.

Any way, I congratulate you again and hope you didn't take my post as a slam.

Happy Fishing
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[SkunkedAgain]

Congrats, that's one fish still on my bucket list. Nice job!!! Later J
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[catchinon]

No problem at all; as I said, good clarification. I knew they had to be goldens and they very obviously were. I studied them thoroughly (just because I like to do that) and found ~10 markers to identify them. They had all of the them to the best that I could see. Wish I hadn't left my camera in the vehicle as they were very beautiful. When my brother sends me the pictures he took I'll post them.
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