Happy 4th of July!

I've been wanting to do the Comanche / Venable Loop for a while, and it certainly was all that I had hoped it would be.

There was very little running on the way up the Comanche Trail due to it's relentless grade (and my advancing age), but moving slowly allowed us to take in the incredible views along the way. It was windy as hell at Comanche Lake, which made fishing a challenge, but there were a ton of cutthroat cruising the northern shoreline and I was able to pick up one (~13 inches) with a size 12 stimulator.

​From Comanche Lake, we began the steep uphill climb to Comanche Pass, which sits somewhere around 13,000 feet. It has been a while since I have been at 13,000 feet, which may explain the brief period of light-headedness and tunnel vision... Following a nice a cruiser of a run from Comanche Pass over to the top of the Phantom Terrace (on the SLV side of the mountains), we descended across Phantom Terrace to the perched Venable Lakes. While a little bit sketchy (pucker factor 4/10), I never felt at any real risk of plummeting to my demise, though I can imagine that the risk level goes up in weather or during melt out...

On the descent, I had the unlikely but pleasant surprise of running into longtime Flyathlete Katie Burgert who was hiking / fishing the loop in the opposite direction with some friends. They had just left lower Venable Lake, where they reported that they had crushed a bunch of cutthroat using the same size 12 stimulator, which fortunately remained rigged up on my rod...

Lower Venable Lake was as advertised, with 4 identical 10 inch cutthroat trout landed in a dozen or so casts. Plenty of casting room, eager fish, I would highly recommend this lake to anyone who is learning to fly fish and wants to be successful. The one caveat is that it is pretty exposed up there, so if weather rolls in, I'd be prepared to descend quickly into the Venable Valley.

With clouds beginning to build, we decided to bail out and head towards home. The descent was punctuated by a whole lot of sloppy running (tired legs and jagged rocks), a side diversion to Venable Falls, and finished off with an iconic breakfast stout from Founders Brewing.

An outstanding way to start my Socially Distanced Flyathlon Challenge summer...