Every summer when I was a kid, my parents would pack me and my three brothers, all our food, camping, and fishing gear into the family station wagon, and head up to the Eastern Sierra. After we climbed the Sherwin Grade out of the hot, dry, and dusty Owens Valley, my dad, behind the wheel, breathed a sigh of relief that the car didn’t overheat. Once we were cruising in the cool mountain air, through the Jeffrey Pine forest, my mom would turn to us and say “Kids, this is God’s country.”
THE HIGH COUNTRY
Heading north on Highway 395, about a dozen miles north of the Mammoth Lakes turnoff, Highway 158 (essentially the June Lake Loop Highway) heads west, rejoining Highway 395 16 miles later, about six miles south of the town of Lee Vining.
Four roadside lakes (June Lake, Gull Lake, Silver Lake, and Grant Lake) and over 10 miles of stream fishing along Rush Creek, which flows into Silver Lake and reemerges for several miles between Silver and Grant Lake, are accessible from the June Lake Loop Highway. Below Grant Lake, Rush Creek surfaces again as a tailwater for seven miles to Mono Lake. Numerous trailheads throughout the loop allow access to pristine back-country hike-in lakes.
The quality and diversity of the fishing options, combined with a wide variety of accommodations that suit any style, make the June Lake Loop a prime vacation destination for fly fishers. Five US Forest Service campgrounds are situated throughout the loop, including lakeside campgrounds at June Lake, Gull Lake, and Silver Lake. The Silver Lake Resort offers rustic cabin rentals, and for those preferring luxury, the Double Eagle Resort and Spa offers world-class lodging and fine dining.
THE ROADSIDE LAKES
Driving in from the south end of the loop, June Lake is the first lake you’ll encounter. This 320-acre spring-fed lake is crystal-clear and deep, reaching a maximum depth of 140 feet, home to rainbows, cutthroats, and some rarely caught big browns, like the 20-pounder caught by 10-year-old Will Saluveer in 2016 on a gold Kastmaster in a feeble cast from shore on a rented rod and reel. While that fish ultimately joined the family for dinner, Will’s mom commented that compared to the other trout they’d eaten on the trip, the big old brown “didn’t taste that good.”
Of the four major roadside lakes, June is probably the toughest to fly fish. During bright summer days, the fish suspend in deep water, moving shallow only early or late in the day. In the springtime and fall seasons, the fish spend more time in the shallow water. Shore access is limited, so to effectively fish June you’ll want a boat or personal watercraft to work the prime areas, which are the submerged boulders and rock outcrops along the steep southern shoreline, and the edges of the tules on the northwest corner of the lake near the marina.
“Shore access is limited, so to effectively fish June you’ll want a boat or personal watercraft to work the prime areas, which are the submerged boulders and rock outcrops…”
Just west of June Lake is Gull Lake. This spring-fed lake is the smallest lake in the loop, at 65 acres, and perhaps the most popular. The fishery is mainly for stocked rainbows, but the lake also hosts a small population of wild brook and brown trout. Trophy-sized rainbows are stocked here each season, as they are in all four of the loop’s lakes, and can grow quite large here- the Gull Lake record rainbow weighed 13 pounds.
I prefer to fish the lake by launching my float tube at its west side. This is accessed via a short dirt road that leads north just after you drive past the lake on the loop highway (heading west on Highway 158 toward Silver Lake) to a small parking lot and launch area.
From here, it’s just a short kick to the most productive area of the lake for fly fishing- the tule-lined cove in the northwest corner of the lake, where I like to work the edges of the weed beds and drop-offs with a streamer on an intermediate sinking line.
If the trout fishing is slow, as it sometimes is when the trout head to deeper water mid-day during bright sunny days, a nice diversion is to target the Sacramento perch that inhabit the shallows, easily fooled by just about any nymph stripped on a slow-sinking intermediate line over the top of the weed beds.
As the loop road curves to the north, Silver Lake comes into view. Deep and clear, 110-acre Silver Lake offers a gorgeous mountain backdrop and is perhaps the most scenic lake in the entire loop. It is also excellent for fly fishing.
The most productive spots are where the water is moving, namely the inlet and outlet for Rush Creek, and where there is structure. Where Rush Creek enters the lake at its southern end, look for a hue change (darker blue) where the water suddenly gets deeper. This precipitous drop-off parallels the south shoreline. Working this drop-off with a sinking line and a streamer produces all season long. There’s a similar drop-off at the north side of the lake, at the outlet to Rush Creek, that has the advantage of being more sheltered if the wind is out of the north.
“My choice for the best time to fish the June Lake Loop lakes would be mid-October when you can see your breath in the chill morning air…”
The northernmost lake in the loop, Grant Lake, was a 140-acre natural lake before a dam was built at the Rush Creek outlet in 1939. The dam transformed it into a much larger reservoir, the water of which was destined for Los Angeles. Now, unlike the other lakes in the loop, the water level fluctuates wildly. When at full pool, the reservoir covers over 1100 acres, making it by far the largest lake of the June Lake Loop.
After the browns were stocked, they flourished into a healthy, self-sustaining population, thanks to Rush Creek’s clean gravel spawning habitat between Grant and Silver Lakes. Largely escaping angling pressure and mortality by staying deep in Grant Lake most of the year, the browns grow big and fat by feasting on the hapless planted rainbows and the wild Sacramento perch that inhabit the lake. In 1991, Grant Lake produced a leviathan that weighed over 20 pounds.
Grant sees fewer anglers than the other lakes, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s my favorite lake in the loop. For personal watercraft and float tubes, there’s good access via a short dirt road to a good launch area that allows you to fish at the productive southern end of the lake, near the inlet for Rush Creek.
If I were to pick one line to fish all the lakes, it would be a slow-sinking intermediate line. I overweight my 6-weight rod with a 7-weight line, which allows me to cast further and punch into the wind. My personal favorite is Cortland’s Clear Camo Intermediate, which sinks at a rate of about 1.25 inches per second. It allows you to strip an unweighted fly just below the surface, work a lightly weighted fly deeper by letting it sink and counting it down, and even slow troll a heavily weighted fly as deep as 30 feet.
For the roadside lakes, my favorite fly for fishing deep in the water column (10 to 30 feet) would be a black Wooly Bugger, tied on a size 10 streamer hook, weighted with 15 wraps of .015 wire, with a black marabou tail, (with a couple of strands of crystal flash) a blue/green dubbed body, palmered with two size 12 black hackle feathers, with a purple glass bead head.
For fishing shallower in the water column (up to 10 feet deep) a great choice is Denny Rickard’s Callibaetis nymph in size 12 or 14.
My choice for the best time to fish the June Lake Loop lakes would be mid-October when you can see your breath in the chill morning air, the aspen leaves have turned from yellow to gold, and the first snowstorm of the season dusts the high-country, leaving the alpine peaks wreathed in white and glazed with ice. I’d fish the south end of Grant Lake from my float tube, plying the depths with my special black Wooly Bugger, slow trolling it deep, twitching the line as I go, hoping for a tug from one of the big browns.
BACKCOUNTRY LAKES
Fern Lake is tucked high on the mountainside south of the loop. To experience the gorgeous scenery and excellent fishing here, you’ll have to work for it. The trail climbs 1,600 feet in just over three miles. It initially climbs steeply through thick pine and aspen forest. Higher up, the trees thin, revealing stunning views below. About halfway up is the junction for Yost Lake. A short detour leads to a bridge over Fern Creek (which drains from Fern Lake) and a great photo op of a beautiful waterfall. More switchbacks bring you up to Fern Lake, which holds a thriving population of diminutive brook trout, which eagerly rise to dry flies most of the time if it’s not too windy. Good dry fly patterns to use here include some of the Sierra standards: Black Gnats, Griffith’s Gnats, Blue Winged Olives, and Parachute Adams, in sizes 14 to 18.
If you’re not up for a mountain climb, a far less strenuous excursion is the hike to Parker Lake, west of Grant Lake, and just inside the pristine Ansel Adams Wilderness at an elevation of 8,350 feet.
A two-mile hike, with minimal elevation gain, gets you to 23acre Parker Lake, and its stunning alpine backdrop. The brookies and browns that inhabit the lake average 10 inches, but can grow much larger, and can usually be found at the inlet and outlet of Parker Creek. The lake fishes best from May to early June and from September through October. It’s well worth packing in a float tube, which allows you to target the bigger browns in the deeper water not accessible from shore.
The second half of the trail closely parallels tree-lined Parker Creek, which could be a destination itself if you enjoy fishing small creeks for tiny, voracious wild brown and brook trout. They’ll rise to just about any small dry fly when they’re feeding aggressively, which is usually all day long in the summer. The best creek fishing is the mile-long section directly below Parker Lake.
Rush Creek is the largest stream in the Mono Basin, draining a 140-square-mile high-country watershed. It consists of three sections: upper, middle, and lower.
Cascading down from Agnew Lake toward Silver Lake, Upper Rush Creek merges with minuscule Reverse Creek just above Silver Lake. Downstream from this confluence is a short section of Upper Rush Creek of interest to fly fishers, where it meanders through a beautiful meadow just before it flows into Silver Lake.
The middle section of Rush Creek flows for three miles between Silver and Grant Lakes. It is, by far, the most popular section of Rush Creek, heavily stocked with rainbows that coexist with a robust self-sustaining population of wild browns and a smaller population of wild rainbows and cutthroat trout.
During the summer, dry fly fishing with generic patterns like the Bivisible, Parachute Adams, or Elk Hair Caddis in size 16 or 18 can produce phenomenal results. This section is also tailor-made for nymphing. Dead drifting a size 18 bead head Pheasant Tail nymph through the deepest pools and along the edges of the undercut banks, either high sticking or under an indicator is a good tactic here. Lower Rush Creek flows as a tailwater from Grant Lake Dam, terminating seven miles later where it pours into Mono Lake. About two miles below Grant Lake,
Lower Rush Creek flows under Highway 395, and then a mile later it enters a rock-walled canyon known as The Narrows. From The Narrows downstream to Mono Lake is known as the Bottomlands. Lower Rush Creek trout feed mainly on caddis and mayflies, with catch ratios of 80% browns to 20% rainbows.
During the 1930s, Lower Rush Creek flowed through a lush riparian corridor, replete with deep pools harboring brown trout up to six pounds. Eldon Vestal, the District Fisheries Biologist for the DFG from 1939 to 1950, described the fishery of the 1930s as a “fisherman’s paradise,” ranked in the top four Eastern Sierra streams, along with Hot Creek, Owens River, and East Walker River.
Before 1940, the trout habitat was excellent, and the flow was augmented by springs that flowed at 24 CFS. The pools were lined with watercress beds that waved in the current. Wild brown trout averaged 14 inches. “There were excellent gravels, excellent spawning areas, and food-producing areas,” said Eldon.
So dense was the foliage in the Bottomlands section that local anglers referred to it as “the jungle,” and it showered the creek with terrestrials. The trout feasted on a dozen types of “bottom food” that Eldon identified in a stomach pump survey. At the Mono Lake delta were a series of pools (four to five feet deep) full of 18 to 20-inch browns that took advantage of the downstream drift of organisms from the jungle. They also made fleeting forays into salty Mono Lake for tiny brine shrimp and flies.
Everything changed in 1941, when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), as part of the LA Aqueduct project, began diversions via the 12-mile-long underground Mono Craters Tunnel, which diverted Rush Creek to the Upper Owens River (and eventually the LA Aqueduct), leaving the riverbed fundamentally dry. Mono Lake’s water level began a precipitous drop. By 1970, Mono Lake was down 28 feet. The fabled fishing of Lower Rush Creek faded into history.
A decade later, a miracle occurred. The early 1980s saw two consecutive El Nino winters, leaving the high peaks buried under deep snowpack. The snowmelt filled Grant Lake to the brim, spilling over its dam for two years, re-watering the dry creek bed.
Local fly fisher Dick Dahlgren, a founding member of the Mammoth Fly Rodders, fished Lower Rush Creek on October 13, 1984, after rumors of trout in the creek. On his first cast, he caught an 8-inch rainbow, then proceeded to catch and release over a hundred seven to 10-inch rainbow and brown trout that day. A DFG crew would later conduct a census, estimating 30,000 trout lived in the newly re-watered seven-mile stretch of Rush Creek from Grant Lake to Mono Lake.
When Dahlgren learned that the LADWP planned to de-water Lower Rush Creek again after the close of the 1984 season, he acted, 45 teaming up with attorney Barrett McInerney, Cal Trout, the National Audubon Society, and the Mono Lake Committee to sue the LADWP. Based on an obscure Fish and Game code that requires dam operators to maintain minimum stream flows for fish living below a dam, a temporary restraining order went into effect; the water kept flowing, and the fish survived. In 1990, after years of litigation, the LADWP finally capitulated, agreeing to a minimum flow and creek restoration.
CalTrout took the lead, and restoration of the first two miles of the original streambed below Grant Lake to Highway 395 was an unmitigated success. Deep pools were created, and stream habitat enhancements produced a fertile environment for the trout, which quickly grew to larger sizes. By 2004, 20-inch browns were found in this section.
Restoration of the remaining five miles (including the old Bottomlands section), characterized mostly by long, shallow riffles stalled, with Dahlgren and CalTrout differing on the best approach. CalTrout favored “restoration on a complete ecosystem process trying to create, as near as possible, a natural system,” with a regimen of high, scouring f lows (200 CFS) to mimic spring runoff, and minimum flows (31 CFS) in drought years. This more environmentally sensitive approach, Dahlgren hyperbolized, was “a process that would take 400 years.” He instead advocated a more aggressive approach- a “pond scheme,” using bulldozers to dig 20 ponds on the lower section, like what had occurred on the first two miles. After all, the LADWP wiped out the fishery overnight, so why not restore it quickly? “The only thing that creates stream habitat is massive flows of water or glaciers. Or bulldozers,” attorney Barrett McInerney once said. “Bulldozers are quicker.”
Controversial restoration goals, though, remain today. Dahlgren noted, “The victory was mostly in the courts, and not along the stream bed.” California Trout’s Dr. Sandra Jacobson adds, “There are still long-term conservation concerns about the health of Mono Lake,” and “…conflicting uses of a limited resource appear intractable.”
In the poignant short film, The Trout That Saved Mono Lake, Dahlgren commented that “the original chorus of voices has diminished over time, leaving just a faint echo to remind the powers that be of what they were ordered by the courts to do… to make the message heard it will require a new plan, and a fresh chorus of voices.” On Vimeo, the film has a single comment: “So how do we become the new fresh voices that you speak of?” The comment hangs unanswered. Dahlgren moved to Idaho, where he lived in a log cabin on the bank of the Big Lost River.
Perhaps by divine intervention, beavers took up residence in the Bottomlands, building a series of dams that created deeper pools and woody habitat. Dick Dahlgren passed away in 2019, but when you walk the banks of Lower Rush Creek, if you really listen, you can hear a whisper among the riffles- it’s his voice, reminding us to continue the restoration and keep the water flowing.
JUNE LAKES | QUICK GUIDE
Camping
To book a US Forest Service campsite, go to recreation.gov and search June Lake Loop, where you’ll find the following campgrounds: OH Ridge, June Lake, Gull Lake, Reversed Creek, and Silver Lake.
Lodging
For cabin rentals, visit Silver Lake Resort. For cabin and condo rentals throughout the loop, visit June Lake Accommodations. For luxury accommodation: Double Eagle Resort and Spa.
Fishing Information
For maps and a wealth of detailed fishing info, check out flyfishingthesierra.com, where you can purchase a map of Eastern Sierra Region 3 for $12.95.
Fly Shop
The closest fly shop (and it’s a good one) is in the town of Mammoth Lakes, 15 miles south of the loop: Troutfitter 2987 Main St., Mammoth Lakes, CA
(760) 934-2517.
Hiking
For a list of day hikes, visit junelaketrails.org
Refreshments
Stop in June Lake Brewing for award-winning drafts that even Mammoth locals traipse over the hill for. Silver Lake Resort Cafe, built in 1916, is the perfect spot for a lunch break. The food is great, and the nostalgic old fish mounts adorn the walls, revealing some of Silver Lake’s storied past.
