Beula Lake Laugher; July 10th

Going off the beaten path almost always has its rewards. Today was one of them.

Ted Weglarz and I did a day-hike into Beula Lake to fish for cutthroat trout. We work together at Old Faithful Inn, and Ted did this trip last year. It isn’t for everyone. It’s a 2.5 mile hike in and a 400-foot elevation gain. Located in the Park’s little-visited southwest corner, it also takes a slow, bumpy eight mile ride on a gravel road just getting to the trailhead.

This was my first time down to the Park’s South Entrance, a little over an hour from Old Faithful. It’s popular because this is the way to get to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and the Grand Tetons. Less well-known is that the road through this part of Yellowstone National Park follows the shoreline of Lewis Lake, then along the Lewis River Canyon. It is beautiful country. The canyon is dramatic; we wondered why it isn’t talked up more in the Yellowstone travel books.

Back country entry into Yellowstone National Park

A steep trail is never easy, but far better to tackle it at the start of a hike. It assures it will be downhill on the way home at the end of the day.  Since the Beula Lake trailhead lies outside the Park off the gravel road, it is a special treat of this hike that you enter Yellowstone country on foot. The way Jim Bridger and Harry Yount did it. Of the 3-plus million visitors to the Park each year, only a fraction gets to claim that. We arrived at the lake about noon.

Beula Lake sits at 7500 feet elevation in the Park's little-visited southwest corner

Beula Lake is not big. The book says 107 acres; it looked to be about a quarter mile across. But, is it beautiful, pure wilderness! Forested slopes flank every approach, an unbroken shoreline, gin-clear water; puffy, white clouds in the big Rocky Mountain sky above.

We walked a couple hundred yards up the shoreline from the main trail, and chose a spot to start to fish. The firm lake bottom made it easy to wade in thigh-deep, giving enough room for a fly line backcast. Dark-hued water of the lake’s dropoff was within easy casting distance.

Cutthroat trout, Yellowstone's native

We started catching trout right away. Beautiful cutthroat trout, Yellowstone’s native fish.  Their flanks and tails are dappled with a distinctive pattern of spots; the orange slash beneath the gills that give them their name; a gold-into-copper color to the belly on mature fish.



What they lacked in size, they made up for in eagerness

Trout fishing is not known to be easy. This was a day when it was. The fish hit eagerly. Cast after cast resulted in a fish on the line, or at least a dashing follow out of the deeper water back to the rod tip. It was non-stop action for several hours. The fish were not big…the biggest went about twelve inches…but they made up for it with the fast action. It was a blast! It was like fishing in a big aquarium…bluegills in a farm pond…except that these were wild trout in a wilderness lake!

When we called it quits late afternoon, we had counted 33 trout for Ted, 21 trout for Dan. 54 native cutthroat trout in one afternoon! Unheard of!

Ted says we can’t go back there again this season. Nothing could match this.

Ted, winner of Beula Lake trout derby

He’s right.