In 1984, my phone jingled. It was my old friend, Dick Dahlgren, exuberantly telling me I had to come and visit him in Mammoth Lakes and fish the upper Owens River. He went on and on about how the big rainbows were stacked up in the river pools and deep runs below where Hot Creek entered the Owens. He talked about dry fish action on fish to 16 and 18 inches. This would not have been unusual except that it was February. Trout season had closed months earlier the end of October. I was editor of the now-defunct California Angler magazine at the time, so Rob Breeding, the associate editor at the time, and I went. It was everything Dahlgren said it would be. In a word: incredible.
While the first codified “legal” catch-and-release trout fishing on select waters in the Eastern Sierra wasn’t until 2007, a group of local anglers and business owners in the Bridgeport to Mammoth Lakes region started taking advantage of what became known as the “perch loophole” in the fishing regulations.
The late Rick Rockel, the former owner of Ken’s Sporting Goods in Bridgeport, was bored in his shop one late November day. He was carefully reading of the fishing regulations and discovered the loophole. While trout season closed Oct. 31 back then, perch season was open all year everywhere in the state. Hummm. The Walker and Owens River drainages have populations of Sacramento perch, especially in Lake Crowley and Bridgeport Reservoir. But the Owens and Walker both had perch throughout the river systems. Rockel mentioned it to a few locals. In November and December, several Bridgeport anglers not only had some fine catch-and-release trout fishing. They caught a few perch too.
Rockel and the local businesses started touting the season as a special “catch-and-release” trout season to help their normally-slow winter business.
Legally, they were “perch fishing.” Those pesky trout kept taking their flies and had to be released. Was it stretching the law?
“Our local warden doesn’t have a sign on the side of his car saying ‘Ask me about perch fishing,’ but he’s also not citing people on the East Walker or Bridgeport Reservoir,” said Rockel back then. News travels fast in the Eastern Sierra, and soon Dick Dahlgren was fishing the upper Owens and discovered all the winter rainbows in the Upper Owens River. By early 1985, the word was getting out and it wasn’t just skiers coming to Mammoth in the winter.
Dahlgren huddled with Rockel and the pair started enlisting anglers and businesses to petition the Department of Fish and Game to open the waters legally. Instead, after a couple of seasons, the loophole was closed. But Dahlgren and Rockel continued to work with the DFW and petition the Fish and Game Commission to open some waters in the Eastern Sierra to winter to catch-and-release trout fishing.
While it took 20 years, it eventually happened. You can thank the “perch loophole” and those who fished then for it happening at all. Today, all the fly shops in the region promote this special season and guide anglers to great off-season fishing.
As radio announcer Paul Harvey used to say, “Now, you know the rest of the story.”
