What do you do when you’ve spent 40 years hiking the trails and fishing alpine lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park? If you’re Les and Kimball Beery, you share. The long-time residents and authors of Angler’s Guide to Rocky Mountain National Park will be sharing details on where, when, and how to fish the RMNP high lakes at the Alpine Anglers meeting on Wednesday, September 19th from 6:30 to 8:00 at Elkins Distilling, 1825 N. Lake Ave in Estes Park.

Sharing is second nature to Les and Kimball. They met in 1968 and have hiked and fished streams and lakes in RMNP together every summer since then. As RMNP volunteers, they often found themselves coaching visitors on where to find the fish and how to catch them. So when life slowed enough to allow the time, they combined their accumulated fishing knowledge with backgrounds in environmental science (Les) and art (Kimball) to create the popular angling guide designed to help visitors turn one day of their Estes Park vacations into an unforgettable mountain experience. And not surprisingly, many full-time Estes Valley residents have also come to rely on the guide for its concise, cut-to-the-chase information and precise maps.

Alpine Anglers is the Estes Park chapter of Trout Unlimited—a national conservation organization dedicated to preserving and restoring the cold water fisheries that harbor trout and salmon. Like Les and Kimball, local members volunteer time helping biologists in RMNP protect and restore populations of native cutthroat trout. And like Les and Kimball, most of them try to wet a line in park waters as often as they can. The Beerys’ presentation will offer many of the details they seek: popular destinations, how to rig for fishing high lakes, effective flies and lures, and special tips they’ve uncovered in their 40 years’ experience.

Les and Kimball Beery now split their time between Colorado and Florida and have also written the Angler’s Guide to Shore Fishing Southwest Florida. The meeting is Wednesday, September 19 from 6:30 until 8:00 at Elkins Distilling. The public is invited.