Although most of my time on the water is spent on Eastern Sierra rivers and creeks, the region also offers a multitude of opportunities to fish for trout in its lakes. These lakes are likely to be more important this year, given the potential for high or extended runoff from the winter’s incredible snowpack. It could be deep into the summer or even autumn before we know the effects of this past winter on Sierra streams, so the fallback position for the summer of 2017 is likely to be found in the hundreds of lakes that abound on the east side. They range in altitude from a bit over 4,000 feet to nearly 12,000 feet and are distributed throughout the region, from Lone Pine in the south to Bridgeport in the north. The lakes can be grouped into three broad categories, depending on elevation and their proximity to Highway 395, which runs north and south along the east slope of the Sierra, traversing broad valleys and basins that are separated by ridgelines and crossing three passes between Bridgeport and Bishop.
The first category includes lakes that are located in these major basins and that can be accessed by a short drive off the main highway. This group includes Bridgeport Reservoir and Twin Lakes near Bridgeport, in the north, Convict Lake, Crowley Lake, and the Mammoth Basin lakes near the town of Mammoth Lakes, and Pleasant Valley Reservoir, located just north of Bishop. Not surprisingly, these lakes are heavily fished and heavily stocked. They are the largest lakes in the region and are iconic destinations, in large part because historically, they have given up large trout. Bridgeport Reservoir, Twin Lakes, Crowley, and Pleasant Valley are part of water-delivery systems for power, municipal, and agricultural uses and are subject to fluctuations according to the downstream demands for their water. Due to their size, they are frequently fished from a boat or flotation device, and all of the lakes have launch facilities or rentals. A word of caution: the eastern Sierra is a land of strong winds that rush downslope and across the valleys in which these lakes are located. I have talked with many people who have had the experience of being blown across one of these lakes and who have been faced with a long trudge back to their vehicle.
The lakes in the second grouping are found a greater distance from Highway 395, although generally not more than half an hour’s drive. They are situated at a higher altitude, from 9,000 feet to a bit over 10,000. They are not as large as the lower-elevation lakes, but still experience significant fishing pressure and are reputed to give up sizeable fish. This group includes the Virginia Lakes, west of Highway 395 at the Conway Pass summit, Lundy Lake, just north of Lee Vining, Ellery, Tioga, and Saddlebag Lakes off Tioga Pass Road, and Rock Creek Lake, west of Toms Place. In the Bishop area, check out North, South, and Sabrina Lakes, west of Bishop, and the smaller impoundments on Bishop Creek along Highway 168. Because of their higher altitudes, these lakes can be inviting options as the crowds and temperatures begin to increase at the lower elevations.
I have to confess that I rarely fish the lakes in these two categories. This is both because I dislike crowds and because I try to avoid being out on the lakes in watercraft, since I have little or no ability to swim. These lakes also often require specific patterns and techniques and are subject to changing conditions and circumstances due to the weather, seasonal conditions such as water temperature, and the effects of water management. For example, Crowley Lake has a number of localized strategies and a cycle for the use of specific techniques and flies for maximum success. My best advice to someone heading out for these lakes is to contact a local fly shop or guide service. There are several Web sites that contain information about techniques and current conditions. If you have only a short time to fish one of these locations and are seriously looking for either a lot of fish or a special photo opportunity, get in touch with one of the many guides, who can help you zero in on your objective.
The third category includes the lakes that draw my attention. These are high-altitude lakes that are accessed by foot from trailheads found at the ends of lateral roads that run west of Highway 395. There are more than 300 of these lakes in Inyo and Mono Counties and just a short distance on the other side of the Sierra Crest. The lakes are found in clusters that begin at the top of a watershed and are strung along a stream down to an elevation of 10,000 feet or so. For example, Little Lakes Valley, above Rock Creek Lake, contains 13 lakes. There are a dozen or so lakes to be found in the basins above South Lake and eight more that can be reached from trails that begin at the Glacier Lodge parking area west of the town of Big Pine. Any of these and the other 40 or so lake basins would be a perfect location either for a day trip or for sampling several destinations during an extended stay.
Although the eastern Sierra has some large lakes, such as Thousand Island, most are on the small side. Be aware, however, that not all of these lakes contain fish. Some are naturally barren, and others have had trout removed as a part of the effort to enhance populations of Sierra Nevada amphibians. I can tell you from experience that there are few sources of frustration greater than spending a day hiking to and fishing a lake that contains no fish. Information on fish populations can be found at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Web site, in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Eastern Sierra Back Country Fishing Guide, available at https:/da.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/ stelprdb5410679.pdf, at local fishing shops, and on a nice set of maps published by Fly Fishing the Sierra.
General Strategies
I employ some general strategies in fishing the high-country lakes. Although there are differences in terms of fish species and the size of the lakes, there are many more similarities, including seasonal conditions, food sources, fly patterns, gear, and techniques. This lets me maintain a single grab-and-go bag that contains what I need anytime I decide to head up and fish these lakes.
A typical high-alpine lake has a rocky bottom with shallow shelves that drop off into deep waters. The deep water is more or less in the middle, with the shelves along the shore, particularly at the inlets and outlet. The shallow areas are called the littoral zone and contain most of the vegetation and insect life of interest to the trout. These areas can often be either gravel or mud. The lakes are fed by one or more inlet streams and springs. The lake will have at least one outlet that carries lake water down to the next lake in the basins below.
Most of these high lakes are on the small side, 30 acres or less, and the water in them is extremely clear, so it is easy for an angler to cause a commotion that can put the fish down. This means that you can easily spook fish immediately upon reaching the lake. Rigging up and casting too soon upon arrival can be a mistake. A better approach is to stop well back from the shore, put down your gear, and then spend some time scanning the lake, looking for fish and surveying the water for indications of water depth. Fish will come within a few feet of the shore to feed, so fishing the lake starts in the shallows. Begin with casts made from as far back from the water as you can. As you begin to move closer to and then into the water, make casts that parallel the shore before shifting your targets straight into the lake. You also probably should be using longer and finer leaders than you are used to when fishing moving water.
A major challenge in this fishing is that unlike trout in a stream, which will repeatedly rise in the same location, the lake fish are moving as they feed. They will also often cruise in pods. The trick of casting to a rising fish is to anticipate where it is headed. One approach is to
look for a while to see if there is any sort of pattern in this movement. It could be to the right to left or possibility toward or away from shore. Otherwise, make a guess three or so feet to one side of the previous location and then alternate back and forth while still looking for a pattern of movement. Once you have an idea of where a trout may be going, try to lead it as much as possible to minimize chances that the impact of the cast on the water will spook the fish.
Give attention to the inlet and outlets of the lakes. Outlets are often shallow areas that are free of ice before the remainder of the lake clears. Outlet currents also collect and funnel food to feeding fish. These shallow areas are more attractive to smaller trout and usually contain a concentration of fish. Also, give some attention to the outlet streams immediately below the lake. Fish often move in and out of the outlet or are washed into the stream by high early season flows.
Inlets bring a fresh current to the lake throughout the season and act as a source of both oxygenated water and food. Inlets also congregate trout during spawning seasons, and special care should be taken to avoid disturbing and taking fish during these times. Where inlet streams enter the lake, they can deposit a shallow gravel layer of sediment brought in from their upstream sources, but these shallows often drop off quickly into deeper areas.
There are also drop-offs throughout the lake. Fishing the edges of these dropoffs can be productive, particularly after the initial morning surface activity. Fish these edges with subsurface patterns and streamers. Most anglers cast out into the deeper area and then retrieve back to the shallows, but a better approach is to try to keep the fly as parallel to the drop-off edge as possible. This presents the fly in the most productive water for a longer period of time.
There are more strategic options available to the fly fisher who uses subsurface imitations. These imitations can be fished using variable depths and retrieve speeds. Nymphs and wet flies are much more effective out in the deeper sections of the lake which are home to the larger fish for most of the day. As the day moves along, surface action picks up, often with the late afternoon blow-in of insects from lower elevations that is known as anabatic updrift, which occurs when strong winds flow up mountain slopes, carrying a load of insects, which then fall out at a higher altitude over lakes located in bowls surrounded by high mountains. And, of course, there is also the evening hatch.
Seasonal Considerations
It is easy to see that there is a general seasonal pattern in these high lakes. Get there early enough in the season, and they are covered with ice. The same is true when they lock up for winter. At altitudes above 10,000 feet, the time during which the lake is covered with ice can equal or even exceed the period when it has open water. Because of this limited window, high-altitude trout need to be aggressive and opportunistic feeders.
Ice-out is a fabled time. The date on which this occurs obviously is subject to variation. The timing of ice-out is influenced by ice thickness, temperatures, sunlight, and wind. Open water usually begins to appear first at inlet and outlet areas. Shallow shorelines will also open up early, as will ice near springs. The water then continues to open up, and the remaining ice surface becomes mottled with patterns as a result of prevailing winds. A strong wind can break up an entire ice surface within an hour or less. A last consideration when thinking of trying to time ice-out is that the lake may clear before the access trails. Suffice it to say that hitting ice-out is something of a dice throw. If you are there when ice is present, you want to work the edge of the ice and the open water. Midge larvae are particularly active early in the season, and they will swim up toward the open water. Larvae can get trapped beneath the shelf ice, and fish are drawn to this location. Another effective approach is to cast a streamer out onto the ice shelf and then pull it into the water, letting it sink a bit before retrieving.
Trout, which are cold-blooded creatures, begin to feed more actively as the days lengthen and warm. This also means, though, that as seasonal temperatures drop going into winter, feeding activity correspondingly slows down.
Even at its height in midsummer, surface feeding falls off during the middle of the day. Dry-fly action is more productive early in the day and from late afternoon to evening. Insects move throughout the lake, and the trout follow. As the season moves toward midsummer, insect populations migrate from deeper water to shallow areas. Gary LaFontaine discusses this phenomenon in Fly Fishing the Mountain Lakes. In the summer, begin the day fishing the shallows using emergers and adult dry patterns. Midmorning can bring midge, mayfly, and damselfly hatches. The damselfly nymphs swim in toward the shallow areas and climb up vegetation such as reeds to hatch. The middle of the day usually brings a decline in activity — my wife calls it the “noon doldrums.” This is a good opportunity to enjoy lunch, walk to an adjacent lake while sampling the connecting stream, or just take a nap. Midafternoon can again bring hatches of the same insects as in the morning. Late afternoon on sunny days brings the potential bounty of anabatic uplift and is when you should switch to terrestrials. If you are able to be at the lake into the evening, the last hour before darkness is the time to go back to the shallows with the flies you would fish at first light.
It is important to pay attention to the winds at the high lakes. One reason has to do with their effect on your casting, but the other is their effect on the feeding behavior of the fish. If you look out at a choppy lake, you will often see snakelike ribbons of calm water. These are known as wind lanes, and food whipped up by wind action will be visible to trout in these lanes. Other places to seek out are shorelines and points where the wind piles up insects. Look for scum lines here. As the calendar turns toward winter, fish begin to slow in their feeding in response to changes in temperature and light, which act to reduce insect populations, as well as in response to the end the warm summer heating that causes upslope blow-in. A positive note can be the die-off of vegetation, which makes insects more readily apparent, but it is the harbinger of the end of the season as insect populations begin to move out of the shallows into deeper water. The first few days of consecutive hard freezes really puts a damper on surface feeding. The only reliable hatches that continue into the cold weather are midges. Ice will begin to form on the shallow edges of the lake and then extend over the deeper areas. It goes without saying that it is really important to not trust spring or late fall ice while fishing in a location miles from the car.
What’s For Dinner?
High lakes have a much more limited array of food for trout than do mountain creeks. In addition, some of the lakes are frozen for more than half of the year. This makes for a shorter seasonal window for fish to feed, which in turns causes them to be more aggressive and less selective than those at lower elevations. The water in these lakes is generally clear and sterile. Reservoirs can contain a larger biomass and therefore more nutrients for fish, but the high lakes have limited insect populations and few, if any, forage fish.
Of the insects that are present in these lakes, midges are the first and last to emerge over a season. Midges can be found in the early season in flat, shallow areas that are exposed to sun. Look for midge activity at inlets and outlets. High lakes can also support populations of damselflies, caddisflies, and mayflies, which are most active at the midsummer. Midges then are found among gravel beds and mud flats. The latter areas are surprisingly productive in terms of food mass. Also look for structure: sunken brush, rock jumbles, logs, and weed beds provide cover for the fish and foster food production. Anabatic uplift occurs on a daily basis in the summer as soon as the temperatures reach a point where the lower-elevation air mass heats up and begins to rise, so expect it on a warm, sunny afternoon. The insects caught up in this updraft account for a large percentage of the food supply of the trout in these high lakes, as much as 80 percent. Terrestrials — ants, flying ants, grasshoppers, crickets, and the like — make up most of what gets delivered. In stronger winds, the insects are greater in size and number. I once spent a very successful day fishing the lakes above the Onion Valley trailhead with Cutter’s Perfect Ants. Although I was not actually getting a fish on every cast, it was pretty close.
Gearing Up
For fishing at the lower elevations, I favor a 5-weight or even 6-weight rod. The thinking here is that longer casts are required, and there are a lot of situations in which wind is a major factor. There is also the hope that one will be encountering larger fish. )This preference for a heavier rod may reveal more about the limitations of my casting abilities than it does the actual requirements of the fishing.) For the high lakes, I generally fish a 4-weight rod — a multipiece rod for ease in carrying while hiking. I know there are those who hike using the rod case for a two-piece rod as a hiking staff, but I am not going to give up my hiking poles — two points of contact seem better than one — and I would worry about the rod no matter how stout the case. The rod I use most frequently has a stiff action to give me some casting help in the wind. This means I am sacrificing delicacy in the delivery of the fly. Fly fishing seems to be a series of compromises brought about by a combination of one’s preferences and abilities.
I fish a floating line in deference to my dry-fly obsession. I do bring along a couple of 9-foot sinking leaders, which I use with subsurface flies, particularly streamers. As noted above, leaders need to be long, for me, up to 12 feet, and fine, generally ending in a 6X tippet. Twelve feet is about all the leader length I can handle. A better caster than I could probably go even longer. Long and fine is the maxim on those glassy-surface days when the fish are more easily spooked. For choppier water and in the event of wind, the leader can be shortened and perhaps a bit heavier. The same holds true for me when fishing below the surface.
My backcountry lake fly box, like all of the boxes I carry, is focused toward surface patterns. I do not carry a large variety of patterns, but I do have a variety of sizes for each. I favor terrestrial imitations — Cutter’s Perfect Ants, foam-bodied ants, flying ant imitations, parachute flying ants, Parahoppers, and some crickets. Other dries include Parachute Adamses, Comparaduns, Parachute Pheasant Tails and Pheasant Tail Emergers, Griffith Gnats, Royal Coachmen, Sparkle Duns, Sparkle Caddises, and Parachute Caddises. My subsurface patterns include Brassies, black and green midge larvae, Hare’s Ear Nymphs, Beadhead Prince Nymphs, Zug Bugs, Copper Johns, damselfly and dragonfly nymph imitations, and Zebra Midges. I also make sure I have some streamers: Woolly Buggers, Matukas, and an odd-looking mixture of olive marabou, neck hackle, and sparkle flash that I attempted to copy from a fly I saw a guide using one day. I carry these streamer patterns in smaller sizes, 16 to 12, as well as a few in the 6-to-10 range. My experience is that these smaller flies are more consistently productive.
Taking Care
Fishing backcountry lakes requires some amount of walking at higher elevations. Before you travel to the trailhead, take the time to find out what is going to be required in terms of distance, altitude gain, and factors such as sun and temperature exposure. Know about the availability of water. High altitudes can be debilitating, so take the time to acclimatize if you are not used the elevation. The effects of altitude are exacerbated by exertion, so ease into your walk and occasionally stop and rest. Dehydration can also magnify the effects of altitude, so drink fluids regularly, whether or not you are thirsty. Check yourself for symptoms of altitude sickness or heat exhaustion. Weather is fickle and subject to drastic changes within a matter of 20 minutes. Make sure you have layers (with you — not in the car) to deal with drops in temperature, with precipitation, and with wind. I carry a basic emergency kit that includes first-aid, shelter, and signaling supplies. Let someone know where you are headed, along with a general time frame for your return. Know where you are going and carry some form of navigational aid. I am an old-school guy, and so I have a map and compass. The choice of this technology was reinforced when I watched a hiker on the Bishop Pass Trail walk into a tree while carefully reading his electronic device. Either way, be sure you can find your way to and from your destination, particularly if you travel cross-country off trail.
The principal feature of the eastern Sierra landscape is its crest of dramatic granite peaks and spires. Being out in this landscape is a true privilege. The high-country lakes provide an opportunity to visit this alpine paradise and fish for trout that are as beautiful as the setting. The next time you spend some time in the region, bring your rod, reel, and flies. You will be rewarded with a truly memorable experience.
