High Sierra 6/25
July 4 weekend 1995 The Breakwall crew visited my secret Eastern Sierra golden trout lake to find the tarn still covered with ice except for a small area of open water near the inlet. There, many large goldens were spawning in the flow. They were fairly ravenous too, as witnessed by my buddy’s six-year-old kid, who armed with a purple Barney Dinosaur pushbutton rod and reel combo and Power Bait, landed three of the biggest oncorhynchus mykiss aguabonita I ever saw. Everyone in the party caught limits of 12- to 14-inchers.
In subsequent years I made attempts of returning to the lake at ice-out. It is difficult to time, as there are no snow melt reports coming in from isolated high-country wilderness areas. You have to pick a popular drive-to spot in the immediate vicinity to watch, in this case
This year the Eastern Sierra snowpack is somewhere between 100% and 110% of normal, the best since 2005. Watching the conditions the past month I picked the fourth week in June to make the run.
To ready my truck, I had a problem with first gear taken care of and also I performed a timing belt replacement operation with a new radiator and other cooling system components. Now the 4x4 vehicle runs cool but 10 hours of being hunched over working on it caused painful radiations emanating from my mid-back. This is not good, as the plan calls for me hauling to the lake via backpack 50 pounds of tackle and camp supplies.
Also, after three months of being fixed, first gear started to malfunction five days before departure. First is crucial as the 22-mile rough dirt road that climbs the mountain to base camp includes many spots where 2nd gear low-lock is too high. For this I found a work-around. If I am at a complete stop, put it into first and let out the clutch, it pops back out to neutral. If I shift into first as I roll to a stop it stays in. All I had to do is anticipate where I would need first gear and roll into it.
Tuesday I reached Bishop before noon, where I knocked out my standard errand route before disappearing into the wilderness: Culver’s Sporting Goods for last minute tackle, the butcher shop next door for a fresh porterhouse, Wilson’s Sports for backpacking supplies, Vons for groceries, ice and gasoline, Meadow Farms for mahogany smoked cowboy jerky and bacon, then finally Schat’s bakery for a loaf of Sheephearder bread.
Trout suck up small earthworms better than they do nightcrawlers. I have a lot around the house in winter and early spring but by June I can never find any. Every tackle shop in Bishop always sold Brown’s brand garden worms but for the past five or more years nobody has them that size. I asked Dave at Culver’s, is Mr. Brown making garden worms any more? He said, no but I have something new you might like. He pulls a small plastic tub out of the refrigerator, pops the lid and hallelujah we have small worms. Don’t let the name fool you; Jumbo Red Worms. They are the perfect size for a #10 baitholder. Dave says he gets a lot of worm growers stopping by peddling their wares but he usually shoos them away. When he saw these little beauties he was hooked, as we say.
Over at Vons they now have gas. With your club card you can save three cents per gallon, which made it only $3, not bad for
Now for the most horrible, atrocious, awful, shocking, horrendous, dreadful bad news that I can barely bring myself to write about. At the world famous Mahogany Smokehouse most of the jerky bins were empty. Now, I have seen this before, maybe they just ran out and are busy in the back making more. What I found odd was there is no bin labeled Cowboy Jerky. I asked the beautiful buxom blue-eyed blonde babe behind the counter if they have any. She said they don’t make it anymore. My knees went weak, I had to sit down. After a moment I brought my face out of my hands and asked, what happened? She said the FDA cracked down, saying their good old fashioned cold smoker doesn’t bring the meat to the politically correct temperature, the insides of the meat slabs might be harmful. They tried to raise the temp but the jerky was rendered ruined. The decision was made to decommission the brand. These guys have been making this killer jerky since 1940, it was their biggest seller. Now all of a sudden we’re cut off from the goods.
I figured out how to make my own Cowboy Jerky using my electric smoker. I harvested the finest aged mountain mahogany from the sierra and use lightly brined top sirloin roast. It tastes pretty good but not as perfect as theirs that comes out of a very large brick smokehouse. I suspect my best is their ruined.
I purchased a bag of their Indian Jerky and made my way over to the bakery for bread. Climbing the mountain to base camp, first gear worked okay whenever I needed it.
After three hours of bouncing over the rough trail that starts at 4,000 feet and ends at 10,500, I hopped out only to become prey for a cloud of mosquitoes. The time was approaching four o’clock and the air already began to chill. I put on some long pants and a long sleeve shirt, then pumped DEET all over me.
I set up camp and got the BBQ ready. I took a stroll down to the spring to fill a five gallon jug of water and found another vehicle at the bottom campsite. The occupants were just hanging out doing nothing. I hoped they weren’t hiking to my lake in the morning. The outhouse that was ragged 10 years ago is now door-less and for the most part unusable.
I could tell there would be no afternoon thunderstorm nor rain overnight, so I didn’t bother setting up my base camp tent. I just went with a ground tarp, two pads and a sleeping bag.
For dinner I grilled the steak and a potato and by the time the sun touched one of the peaks of the
Wednesday morning I cooked Sheepherder bread French toast style and fried several strips of mahogany smoked bacon. There is no greater taste pleasure than fresh-perked coffee over a camp stove in the cold of the morning.
While all that was heating up I stuffed my pack with two nights worth the freeze-dried food, three fishing outfits, tackle and camping gear. The lake is only 1 ¼ mile from base camp, the world’s closest golden trout from where you can park. There is no trail, you just have to aim yourself up the steep climb over boulders and fallen logs, through lodgepole and limber pines until you see the side of a mountain with a certain snow field leading down to the water. I have never been up or down the same way twice.
Once I was fed and packed with carbohydrates, I loaded base camp into the back of the truck so that on Friday when I walk out all I have to do is place my pack on top of the load and drive off.
Half way up the trail the lungs, legs, back and heart were working perfectly. The stomach was feeling a bit funny but nothing major. It was one of those high altitude deals where you are really hungry but don’t feel like eating. In the usual hour and a half the lake appeared.
With all the snow that is still around I was kind of surprised to see the lake still over ten feet low. As I walked the north shore towards the inlet I could see it at least has filled more that two feet since its lowest point. You can tell because there are terrestrial plants submerged about that deep.
I set down my pack at the usual campsite and made the pilgrimage over to the inlet. YES! There they are! A month past ice-out over 20 happy golden trout were spawning in the lake under the flow and several others were doing it up into the creek, of which fifty feet is exposed due to the low water level. And look at that, along the lakeshore fifty feet from the inlet were a hundred other goldens playing grab-ass with each other. Good news, eh? Kind of... So far I haven’t seen anything over ten inches with the average being eight.
I set up camp, forced down lunch then took my fly rod to the water. What I couldn’t help noticing were massive clouds of large black midge flies in the tree tops, over the lake and everywhere else you looked. They don’t get in your face or anything; you just hear this loud screaming all day. When wind gusts blew through, some of the flies were knocked down to the surface. This caused mini-frenzies all over the lake with the trout leaping out of the water to get at them.
I tied on a #16 thin black fly to match the hatch but instead of casting it out, all I had to do was pull the ten-foot leader until the fly line was coming out of the rod tip then dangle the fly about six inches above the water over a wad of fish. They were jumping out and grabbing it! I never saw that before. Too bad nothing was over eight inches. Some were plump, some were scrawny, but for the most part they are all in great shape.
I moseyed along the shore over to where the outlet used to be, whipping or dangling the fly along the way. There were several groups of twenty-or-so goldens that were both feeding and spawning no more than five feet from my toes. There is no way they couldn’t see me; it seemed they were in such a good mood they just didn’t care. After ten I lost count of how many I caught and released.
After dinner I walked around casting a sixteenth-ounce gold Kastmaster with an orange stripe. This is the lure I used to catch my all-time largest golden out of this lake in July 1997, a 1 ½ pound monster. I usually don’t detect too many hits with the Kastmaster, however what does bite it is generally larger than your average golden. Except for today. I felt lots of hits from little guys and landed five under eight inches.
Thursday morning I was up at four o’clock to buddy up with first light at the deep hole. What I do is set up my pack the night before with all my fishing tackle, stove, mess kit, food and freeze-dried coffee and head over to my favorite grotto on the other side of the lake. Unfortunately this week the grotto is under about five feet of snow, which is really no problem as there are many other large flat staging rocks nearby upon which to set up camp.
Into first light I flung the Power Bait rod as far as I could with a wad of Troutkrilla on a #16 treble hook coated with Pautzke’s Liquid Krill. While that soaked I heated water to rehydrate coffee and scrambled eggs with bacon and peppers.
It takes a while for water to boil up here at 10,700 feet so while that was steaming I started with the Kastmaster coated with Liquid Krill, counting down to 25 so that it would swim back just above the bottom. That’s the technique I used to slay the monster; first light, small Kastmaster jerked in along the sediments.
In the six hours I gave it, I tried the Troutkrilla, Zeke’s Sierra Gold, Power Bait, Berkely Trout Gulp, jumbo red worms inflated off the bottom and five feet below a bobber. The only thing that worked was the worm under the bobber but again none of the five were over eight inches.
Another thing I noticed was if I cast the wad of bait way out there and deep I had no bites. When I reeled in so that the bait was five feet from shore and visible a bunch of trout raced themselves over to inhale it. I would jerk it away from them so that I wouldn’t harm anymore seven inchers.
Some readers might giggle at the notion of trying to entice wild born-in-the-lake golden trout with Power Bait. From 1988 until 2000 I would always bring home a limit of 12 to 14 inchers using just that from the deep spot. But that was July when they are not spawning and you don’t see many hanging around the shallows.
One of the wonders of June is all the daylight available from 5am until 8:30pm, giving you plenty of time to do a lot of things up here like, you know, take a nap. In the afternoon and feeling refreshed I wandered back into the canyon for a general photo shoot and to check out the neighboring lake.
I hadn’t visited this body of water in twenty years. Last time I was here all I saw and caught were a few scrawny brook trout. I always went to the golden zone for the fourteen-inchers. Today I found a lot of brookies putzin’ around and they’re all over a foot. As I passed a meadow where the water forms an undercut bank I saw a fairly large rainbow swim out and disappear into the deep. It was at least fifteen inches and a trout – not a char like a brook trout – but in the clear water the spot pattern looked different. Just when I was going to give this area a break so that the goldens can grow to a better size, I see all this!
This lake is an easy mile hike from where you park your 4x4. All these years I thought this is where everyone who drives back here fishes. As I sauntered around the lake there was no evidence anyone has ever been here; no fire rings, no trampled tundra meadow, no trail around the lake and the main Forest Service approved trail that passes the north shore is barely discernable as if it hadn’t been walked on in ten years. I love it!
Farther back into the canyon there are some snow melt ponds that had a few yellow legged frogs croaking. This whole area was loaded with them 20 years ago but now most have disappeared. The authorities tried to blame the trout for eating them all but that is not the case. True, the indigenous frogs are not abundant in the lakes where the non-native trout live, but also there are only a few frogs left in the ponds where fish don’t exist. Two years ago there was a study, which found there is a fungus chytridiomycosis that is killing the frogs. Fish saved.
At the higher elevations of 11,000 to 13,000 feet, there still remains a lot of snow. I can only hope the golden trout lake can fill by the end of July but at the rate I see it rising, full any time soon is doubtful. What always amazed me was the golden trout lake with its perennial inlet always has a wildly fluctuating water level while the other brook trout lake is always full even in drought conditions... and it has no evident inlet, only a couple of immediate snow melt trickles. Perhaps it is fed by water from an underground creek, possibly leaking out of golden trout lake. You get that a lot wherever you find porous moraine kettles. It’s just a guess.
As I’m boulder hopping, taking in the breathtaking scenery, I ponder reasons for such small goldens where once they grew large. The first time I was here was 1986. The lake was full of water like it had been for many years prior and therefore packed with nutrients. Not many humans visited the area so the trout put on weight. Then in 1987 California went into a seven-year drought, causing the lake to drop at least thirty feet, concentrating all of the big goldens into a small area with not as much to eat as they previously had except for Power Bait. Everything we caught into 2000 was big. The fish were able to spawn each year no matter the water level, as all they need is aerated cold water and a gravel bottom. The bigger fish died off and now we are left with the next generations trying to fatten up in a shrinking lake.
Since 1986 I saw the lake full only two times, once in 1997-98 (El Nino) and again in 2005 (record winter). If the lake could stay full for five years, all of the new vegetation that has sprouted along the exposed lakebed would decompose, causing insect larvae and scud blooms, which in turn will grow the fish back to normal size.
Back at the lake for the evening rise, the whole surface was boiling with fish even before sunlight was off the water. Anything I cast got bit; still nothing worth keeping. This is the first time I didn’t take home any fish from this lake.
Around midnight we received some light rain from the fringe of a major storm that was rolling in north between
Friday morning I didn’t even bother fishing. Despite the rain the ground had dried by the time I awoke. I packed up and started walking at 10. As I passed the old outlet I saw five fish that looked maybe eleven inches – the biggest of the trip – but I just said hey and turned my back. Catch ya next year.
I have driven home from Bishop a hundred times but I never saw such beautiful sunlight on the mountains and desert as this cloud speckled first-week-of-summer June afternoon. The whole sky was crystal clear and distant desert mountains were tinged powder blue.
Once I was home I looked up the brook trout lake on the DFG site, which tells you what specie each High Sierra lake contains. I was surprised to see the claim that it has Lahontan cutthroat trout, which might explain why that ‘rainbow’ I saw had unusual spotting. Next summer I will have to hike there for the four-day full-on backpack fish expedition for cutthroats.
*****
From Cousin Rick
I was up to the June Lake Loop for opening day this year. Much too cold. Gull was the only open lake in the Loop. Pulled in a 3 pound rainbow at about 6:15 AM, but that was the last fish I caught. Plenty of fish, but the 38 degree water made them sluggish. Attached a few pictures of my own. 
*****
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