Strawberry Creek Road and Strawberry Lake, above Bedford, Wyoming

We had never been to Strawberry lake, located up Strawberry Creek Road, and so when George and Val invited us, we quickly jumped at the chance. The next morning, they picked us up in their four-wheel drive Bronco. It’s a nineteen sixty-eight and has been modified to be a rock crawler so it will go virtually anywhere on any road.

The road is narrow and rocky and so while we could drive it in our truck, I sure wouldn’t want to meet anyone as there were few places to pull over. If you have ever been four wheeling on a rocky mountain road you know enough to have your seat belts tight as you bounce around as the vehicle crawls over every rock.

Arriving at the end of the road George walked down to the edge of the stream and found a set of bear prints. They were small and he thought they might have been from a yearling cub. They kind of looked like grizzly prints and so we nervously looked around for the sow but the bears weren’t visible.

Donning our fly fishing gear George and Val headed up stream as I decided to fish the lake. Renita meanwhile opted to take photos of the lake and so as I cast and cast she wandered around doing the photographer thing. She did spot a beautiful western tanager which turned out to be the bird of the day!

I showed her some of the large fish in the lake and just as George had told me they just wouldn’t bite. The lake is a put and take lake where the game and fish stalk trout for people to catch and eat. This mean the fish have been heavily fished and the survivors are extremely hard to catch.

I did get them to look at my nymphs but they all decided that something just looked fishy. No problem as it was a delightful day to be in Wyoming’s Salt Mountains. Giving up on the fishing we looked for rocks and for more bear tracks but didn’t find any.

Val returned and said they hadn’t had any luck fishing either. I decided to head up the trail looking for George as its always a joy watching a master angler fish his nymphs. When I met him, he told me that there just weren’t any fish and that he had lost a plethora of nymphs in flooded willows.

Hiking back to the Bronco, we met the girls and had a lunch in a shaded spot. It’s such a beautiful spot and one we will return to another day. We enjoyed the return ride down the mountain road and were soon back to our base camp. Clear skies