Boulder Mountain Fishing Trip with Pack Llamas

The first time I had ever fished the Boulder Mountains in eastern Utah was in 2016. Ever since then I have been wanting to return. The Boulder Mountains are unlike any other place I’ve been. There are over 50 fishable lakes spread across a high country plateau, most of which require some amount of hiking. This year I was going with my cousin Taylor. He had picked out a couple lakes to hike into, so we picked up the pack llamas and made the drive.

After picking up the llamas in Torrey, UT (where they had spent the summer) we headed to the top of the Boulder Mountains. The road was too rocky to go to the trailhead we were planning on hiking in from, so we had to stop and unload the llamas about 1 mile from the lake we wanted to start at. After getting the llamas saddled up, we began the hike to Raft Lake. We arrived at Raft Lake right as the sun was setting so we decided to camp there for the night and continue on to some other lakes the next morning.

The next morning we woke up and fished for a few hours and only caught one decent brookie. We decided to saddle the llamas up and head towards Blind Lake, Fish Creek Reservoir, and some of the surround lakes. We knew there was a trail that led from Raft Lake to Blind Lake, but we thought we could take a shortcut off the trail. But we were wrong… After hiking for a couple hours, we finally came to a 2000 ft cliff. We knew that we wouldn’t be able to get off the cliff, so we decided to head back to Raft Lake and spend the next few days fishing there. Fishing started slow, but we finally started to figure out the fish. After a couple hours we were able to catch some good ones. We’re looking forward to heading back this spring!