With our kids in summer camp for a couple of weeks, my wife and I took some time on the east side of the High Sierra. I sold the trip to my wife as an adventure in the high altitude wonderland that is the Sierra Nevada south of Yosemite, but my ulterior motive, of course, was to fish. The "deception" is my deal -- she's a backpacker and smarter than me most ways, so it's not exactly a ruse.
I grew up at the southern end of the Sierra Nevada and did a bit of backpacking and fly fishing the Sierra as a kid. My father reckons that in a 25 year period, he fished about 200 different Sierra lakes. I hiked into about a dozen different trailheads at various times, and I had about a 20 year hiatus in my backpacking track record, so I figure I'll never catch up. That's ok, though -- I think I have a few years left on my legs so I'm taking time to get back into the Sierra while I still can.
This itinerary was a mix of luxury and adventure -- we crossed over the Sierra from Sacramento just south of Lake Tahoe and worked our way down to Mammoth, where we spent a couple of nights in a condo before heading into the wilderness. We took our full day in the Mammoth area to pick up a wilderness permit, get a huge breakfast at a local stop where I used to eat thirty years ago (and is still pretty good), go on a tune-up day hike, hit the hot tub, and grab dinner at Mammoth Brewing Company. Practically all of the Sierra Eastside trailheads require wilderness permits for overnights and have quotas that get maxed out on the weekends (and midweek for popular locations). Fortunately, the USFS does reserve 40% for day-before or day-of hikers. With a few exceptions (like the Mt. Whitney area), day hikers don't require permits.
For our tune up day hike, we picked the Duck Pass trailhead at the top Lake Mary (the highest of the Mammoth Lakes) reachable by car. This drainage has several lakes, and we hiked up to Skelton Lake with Barney Lake just below Duck Pass as our ultimate destination. The trailhead is at about 9,100 ft and Barney Lake tops out 3 miles up the trail at 10,300 ft, so this makes for a pretty decent out-and-back day hike. These lakes hold brook trout, so I took my 4wt Hardy Test with a Bougle reel for a little prospecting. The trail runs right past Skelton Lake, which has some nice rock outcroppings and structure that goes deep, so getting to attractive fishing water is easy.
Fly fishing Sierra lakes is a specific discipline with its own set of challenges. In some lakes, the fish are starved for food and they'll hit anything that is remotely buggy. Other lakes, with more fertile banks and food supplies, host trout that are skeptical, spooky, and selective. In a clear water lake, the fish can take all the time they want to swim up to a fly, stare at it, and decide whether to grab or leave. I frankly have a "Love-Meh" relationship with Sierra lake fishing. I like dries and dry-droppers, and dry fly fishing can be pretty boring in the lakes. If you're lucky enough to spot a fish, you can sight fish to it, which is fun. More often, however, you're looking for structure that you think will hold fish looking up. When you find a likely spot, you look for back-cast lanes between trees, and you cast your fly out, and you... wait. If you're lucky, you may see a fish materialize out of the depths, eye your fly, and then come up and grab it. Or you'll see a clear refusal and the fish will drop back into the depths. Or, if the light isn't right or it's windy, you can't really see anything at all, and you just... wait.
There is still a lot of snow in the Sierra, but it's been a warm summer, so the hoppers are out. I decided to go with a rubberlegs Stimulator as an all-purpose hopper imitation. It worked like a charm in Skelton. I was able to get casts out to where underwater structure transitions to depths, and I brought three ten-inch-class brookies to hand in about 45 minutes. Not bad. This being a tune-up hike, however, we headed up to Barney Lake. Barney is crystal clear and relatively shallow. The area near the outflow was absolutely filled with brook trout -- at one point I counted more than a dozen all cruising in the same area. Because they're so exposed, though, they're spooky. I got one delicate cast out and got an immediate grab and catch, which spooked all the other fish. After that, they all stayed deep, reduced their swimming pace to slow motion, and didn't respond at all to anything I put on the surface. Still, it was a perfect hiking day and good fishing.
The day ended with a hot tub dip at the condo, a brew and salad at Mammoth Brewing, and loading our packs for three days in the wilderness.
The next morning, we had one last big breakfast and headed to Hilton Lakes trailhead just above Rock Creek Lake. the Hilton Lakes basin is a dead-end cirque with 10 lakes numbered 1 to 10 (surprise...). The hike in from the trailhead involves about 6 miles and a couple of ups and downs right around 10,000 ft. Total elevation gain is about 1,000 ft (you lose about 600 ft with the downs for a net of about 400 ft). It's moderate by Sierra standards, but still significant work with a 25lb pack. We were both more sore than we wanted to admit from our "tune up" hike, the day before, but we made it to Hilton Lake 3 in a few hours. There were a couple of other parties at the lake, but we found a decent campsite and put up our tent just in case the puffy clouds turned into something more significant.
My wife cooled her feet at the lake's edge and I rigged up my Scott F 4wt rod with the rubberlegs Stimulator and went prospecting. Hilton Lake 3 proved to be challenging fishing. According to official Fish and Wildlife information, it holds "golden and rainbow-golden hybrids". It was breezy and cloudy, so seeing into the lake to find structure was tough. I was able to bring two fish to hand in two different spots that afternoon -- both 12" class and thick -- one an obvious golden, and one pretty much straight-up rainbow. At each spot, I got just the one fish and didn't see another fish at that spot for the rest of our trip. I did notice that both fish gave up pretty quickly - quite different from river rainbows I've been catching the last few years. I got blanked that evening despite trying different locations and flies down to about a size 18 parachute Adams. Fish were rising, but sporadically, and most in the middle of the lake -- not really near shore.
The next day we headed up a set of faint trails to Lakes 5, 6, 7, and 8. Lake 5 has a nice trail that follows right on the water's edge for about 2/3 of its length. Turns out the water's edge is an undercut bank that shelters a bunch of brook trout! I was busy looking for structure to fish 30-40 feet out where the water goes deep, and it took a fish rising three feet from my boots to clue me into where the fish actually were. Less oxygen at 10,500 ft, I guess. I ended up landing four nice brookies, all on a Stimulator. The best catch was one that my wife spotted. She was about fifty feet down the trail and pointed it out hovering between us. I landed the Stimulator just in front of its nose (lucky cast), and it paused... then moved up and grabbed the fly. I got a good hookset and brought it to hand. I did try a small coachman and had two clear refusals -- the fish swam up from the depths, looked at the fly for a good long time, and went back down to their holding spots. So it went back into the box.
We also explored Lakes 6, 7, and 8, but I had no luck there. They're all different. Lake 6 was gorgeous, with delicate meadows at its edge and wildflowers, but it was shallow all the way across. It holds fish (brookies according the official record), but they're very spooky and we only saw them when they ran for cover well ahead of our footsteps to the water's edge. Lake 8 had a lot of structure, but was very shallow within my casting range. I saw one spooked fish and that was it. Lake 7 is amazing. The official guide says that it holds brook trout, but the lake I approached had absolutely no vegetation visible at its edge -- just a huge jumble of car-to-house-sized boulders and snowbank. It was the clearest lake I have ever seen -- the water was crystal all the way to a turquoise bottom. I tried a few casts, but didn't see anything.
That afternoon, back at Lake 3, I went out to the eastern shore and managed to get a few more takes on my Stimulator and landed another 12"-class rainbow. That evening, I went back to the same spot to try my luck. There were a few sporadic rises, mostly out in the middle, and exactly two within my casting range. One was about ten feet from my 18 parachute Adams, so I reckon they weren't spooked -- they just didn't want what I was selling.
That pretty much wraps the trip from the fishing point of view. We had an uneventful hike out, delicious cold sodas purchased from the Rock Creek Lakes Resort, late lunch at a taqueria in Bishop, beautiful drive down 395, then through Kernville and over Highway 155 and back up 99 to Sacramento the next day. I probably drove 395 at least 40 times my senior year in high school, but I've only driven it once in the last twenty five years -- so I had a great "memory lane" drive with fresh eyes.
One stop I would highly recommend -- the Manzanar National Historic Site run by the National Park Service. This was one of the internment camps where Americans of Japanese origin were held for three years during WW II. When I was growing up, we knew it was there, but all that could be seen was the two guard shacks and a simple state historic marker. The NPS now runs a large and comprehensive visitor center with a lot of detail on the times, the events, and the history. Besides growing up near Manzanar, I have friends whose parents were interned, so the place and time have a bit of extra significance for me. Besides--there actually is a fishing angle:
At Manzanar, fishing was the great escape.
Ok, on to some pictures. I am at peace with the fact that my pictures of actual fish are crap, so please don't hold it against me.
Skelton Lake on the way to Duck Pass above Mammoth Lakes. I caught three brookies here. My basic rig--Hardy Test rod, Bougle reel, and a rubberlegs Stimulator backed by my little backpacker fly fishing kit bag.
Entrance to the John Muir Wilderness on the Hilton Lakes trail.
Hope for the weary hiker -- this sign sits on a long, sandy stretch of trail with the lakes still more than two miles ahead.
Finally! The outlet stream from Hilton Lake 3. It only runs a short distance before it tumbles down a steep cascade to Hilton Lake 2. The gravel provides the spawning beds that sustain the Rainbows and Goldens in the lake.
Our campsite with tent and "kitchen" above the lake.
One of the three rainbows that I managed to coax from Hilton Lake 3.
Looking back down at Hilton Lake 3 from the faint trail up to Lakes 5, 6, 7, 8.
Hilton Lake 5. Brookies are hiding under the undercut shoreline all down the right side.
My rig for the backpack trip -- 4wt Scott F with an Orvis/Hardy CFO.
If you look carefully, there is a fish on the line at the lower right.
Brookie resting after release. He took off for deeper water about ten seconds after I took this pic.
Another brook trout about to be released.
Hilton Lake 7 -- crystal clear. Here be fish? Dunno...
The wildflowers were amazing...
Posted: 13 Aug 2017, 21:32 • 