Beaver Creek, another fine stream

This weekend once again found me camping in the Bear Lodge Mountains; this time I found a very nice spot on the east end of Cook Lake, the only lake in the Bear Lodge. The reason I was there was not so much for the lake, but for the stream, Beaver Creek, which I'd been told contained populations of wild trout. Arriving late on Saturday, I hiked around the lake, then on the Cliff Swallow Trail that follows the creek before cutting across a gully and rising to follow a ridge back to the lake. In the evening I fished the lake only to catch bluegills and see some massive carp wallowing in the shallows.
Next morning I made a quick breakfast and a thermos of Starbuck's Sumatran then, fly rod in hand and Barley leading the way, we hiked to the stream. For the next four hours, I caught more rainbow trout than I needed to, mostly 12-14 inches, a couple in the 16 inch range and oodles of 6 inchers, the further I got from the road, the bigger the fish were. I eventually settled in to fish the pools beneath the cliffs, and after catching a few brook trout, the fish stopped biting, just like a switch went off. I tried a number of flies, but nothing worked. It was past noon, I was hungry, so it was time to quit and head back to camp.
After lunch and a nap I read a couple chapters of Murakami, then headed back the long way through the little towns of Alva and Hullett and past the great stone outcropping known as Devil's Tower. I included a couple photos, one is of the tower from the Warren Peak in the Bear Lodge Mountains looking west.