Lake Blanche hike

I had the opportunity of hiking up to Lake Blanche, high in Utah's Wasatch Mountains yesterday. I've been there several times in the past, but this time I wanted to take my fishing pole. I had always seen fish jumping in the lake and it looked like a great opportunity to catch some trout.
Sadly, last year my telescoping rod had broken, so I had to take my two-piece rod with me, but it strapped on nicely to my day pack so it was no problem.
I started hiking at around 5:30 am. I was hoping to get some good pics of the sun hitting the peaks. Along the trail I saw a slug about five inches long crossing the trail. Here's a photo of it:

I took another shot of it beside my foot to show it's relative length, but when I put my foot down near it, it scrunched up a little--in protection mode, I think.

There was still quite a bit of snow up there on the peaks, because of the cooler weather we had up until recently.

The wild flowers were dazzling.

Then there's the lake itself, with Sun Dial Peak on the left behind it:

I tried the fishing and caught this little monster on the first cast:

It was about seven inches long. I caught another one even smaller. The fishing appeared to be good and I would have loved to have stayed longer, but after 45 minutes, I needed to get going. I'll need to go back and fish longer sometime, when I have someone with whom to shoot the breeze.

All in all it was a great day, with more fun throughout. A gem of a day indeed.