Miles Driven: 500
Zip Car: $304
Food: $75
5lb Brook Trout: Price less
So apparently Labrador Canada isn't the only place to find trophy brook trout. California fly fishing is a tough puzzle to solve, but these days she's starting to show me a little bit of skin. Whoever says California fly fishing sucks, just doesn't know her secrets and that is fine by me. Like my buddy Walt says; "leave if you're not willing to pay your dues." This is coming from a man that already has over 200K miles on a 2007 Toyota FJ Cruiser that only drinks premium. Yeah San Francisco is "hella" out of the way from the beaten path for fly fishers, but heck - I live in a beautiful city that is conveniently positioned close enough to a variety of different types weekend fishing trips. With that said I'm going to start my story...
We got a late start on Friday last week because we were held up at a bar entertaining one of our international customers from New Zealand. Of course we crushed a few on his tab and talked fishing so I'm not complaining. This just meant a long trip ahead.
After climbing over a 9K ft summit pass through the Eastern Sierras in the Honda Civic we rented for the weekend, we pulled up to our trail head at around 1am. Under the cover of darkness we filled our packs and embarked on our hike toward the hidden lake in the mountains. After starring down at our 15 foot illuminated radius for the past three miles, we finally arrived to our final destination at around 3 am.
The game plan was to set up camp and get our fishing gear ready for first light, but by the time we finished pumping up our float tubes, it was almost sunrise. Casey and I decided not to risk missing first light so we stayed up the extra 45 minutes we estimated while Alex slept in the tent.
Before we could see the other side of the lake, we could already hear the deep splashing sound of rising fish in the distance. This was music to our ears and was stronger than the most powerful of caffeine to wake us up. Excited by the activity, we paddled out in our donuts and forgot to wake Alex.
We fished hard until 11am before my body told me to take a nap. Got these two bad boys on a shrimp/scud pattern.
Sleeping was pretty much impossible with the sun overhead in such a barren landscape. I managed to doze off before Casey woke me up to go fishing again.
We paddled out to go meet up with Alex at around three. The wind had picked up that afternoon so we hugged the tullies for relief. Alex got his first bite of the day and the fish damn near wrapped itself around my fins! I kicked a few time to scare it away from the shore line so Alex would tangle up. Trying to wrangle the fish, Alex moved away from the cover of the tullies to fight the giant in deeper water. Just as it seemed like Alex had some control over the fish it darted back to the shore and broke off. I guess you gotta expect that to happen when you're fishing to 5lb obese brook trout with 6X! I don't know if he even thought to change to something a little stronger, but I shouldn't be making fun because immediately after I got farmed just as bad on 4X.
With two lost fish in that area, I paddled away from the tullies and tried my chance at fishing some deeper water. I gave my type 4 sinking line a count of 10 sec and stripped my seal bugger fast. Out of nothing, I get hit hard and the fish takes off. After a surprisingly long battle I finally land the toad Lahontan Cuttroat and it just maxed out the net.
After landing one more brookie I called it quits and went back to base camp to fry up some fish tacos and dink some whiskey. The next day we slept in and pack out to fish the East Walker...
Sorry no pics of the Walker but it was fishing really well despite the high flow. Every fish I pulled out of there was on average 17"-18" and I lost one of the biggest brownies of my life that day.
The Eastern Sierra is my new favorite place to be in California for 48 hrs. Too bad gas isn't free, but I guess it kind of is when you rent a zip car...
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