The eastern Sierra Nevada along Highway 395 is replete with lakes, reservoirs, creeks, and rivers, including the blue-ribbon waters of the Walker River, the upper Owens River, and Hot Creek. This region has long been considered a Mecca for trout anglers. Many of us assume that the fish we pursue there are native and wild. While the latter might often be the case, the former is less common than we might think. For example, the trout species of the Mono Lake Basin and the Owens River Basin, even if they are now self-reproducing in the waters they inhabit, have all been introduced.
What now exists in the eastern Sierra is a vast recreational fishing enterprise supported by hatcheries and only in part reliant upon wild fish. This is an enterprise that local communities depend upon. The absence of recreational angling would severely weaken the economies of towns such as Mammoth Lakes and June Lake and jeopardize resorts where fishing draws visitors and expenditures. And one has to wonder, too, what would happen to our populations of wild trout if hatcheries were not providing an option for those many anglers who are intent on catching fish for the frying pan or the smoker. Although we know that the planting of hatchery-raised fish can have harmful effects on wild fish and ecosystems, given their presence, stocked trout may provide opportunities for us fly fishers, as well.
Matching the Hatcheries
Hatchery production is an enormous undertaking. Each year, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) plants in statewide waters approximately 40 million rainbow trout that have been reared in 21 state hatcheries. The large majority are immediate “catchables,” or “put-and-take” fish, joined by subcategories of planters detailed below. Most of these fish are triploid, that is, fish unable to reproduce, as required by law — Fish and Game Code 1729e — so as to protect native fish populations, assuming such populations exist in a watershed where the hatchery rainbows will be planted. In the absence of native trout, the CDFW may plant diploid trout — fish capable of spawning — unless the spread of disease or invasive species looms as a countervailing factor.
In the eastern Sierra, the annual hatchery plants total close to 600,000 thousand pounds of put-and-take” catchables (two fish per pound) in 83 different waters. The CDFW tries to plant catchables on a weekly basis between Memorial Day and Labor Day, with biweekly stocking in the latter weeks of the season. Beyond these fish, the agency also plants another 52,000 pounds of subcatchable fish at 10 per pound and fingerlings at 100 per pound, mostly in high-country lakes not accessible by vehicle. These are called “put-and-grow” fisheries, because the fish are usually planted late in the season or after it ends to allow time for growth before angling resumes.
But these data do not reflect the numbers of planted trophy rainbow trout, both from the CDFW and from private hatcheries or “fish farms.” The CDFW, for instance, plants around 1,000 to 1,500 big brood-stock trout (fish used for spawning), as well as a few hundred large nonbrood-stock specimens, in selected waters in this area each year, all tagged so the angler knows where they came from. They are typically four-year-old fish generally ranging between 3 and 8 pounds and are called “supercatchables.” I’ve caught a couple of these brood-stock fish, and each had distorted bodies and worn tails — a customary feature of these artificially raised creatures. (In contrast, the tails of wild trout are often spectacularly beautiful.)
The most ambitious effort to stock the waters and attract anglers, though, is the planting of trophy rainbows purchased from a private hatchery. Mono County’s Alpers Fish Farm used to provide these trophy trout, but it stopped raising fish four years ago. The trout are now purchased from the Desert Springs Trout Farm near the small high-desert town of Summer Lake in central Oregon. In 2016, the Mono County Economic Development Office purchased 24,000 fish from this source, most in the three-to-five-pound range, with others ranging from six to nine pounds. The cost was $6.25 per pound for fish over two pounds and $5.25 per pound for smaller fish. These expenditures show that Mono County is very serious about motivating anglers to come to the eastern Sierra.
On its end, Desert Springs raises between 500,000 to 600,000 fish each year. In 2016, it delivered trophy rainbow trout to 74 individual lakes and rivers in California, ranging from Mount Shasta south to Los Angeles and from San Francisco east to Mammoth Lakes. In Mono County, these large, healthy-looking specimens are planted in the following 21 waters: Lower Twin Lake, Upper Twin Lake, Bridgeport Reservoir, Robinson Creek, the West Walker River, June Lake, Silver Lake, Gull Lake, Grant Lake, Lundy Lake, Little Virginia Lake, Big Virginia Lake, Saddlebag Lake, Twin Lakes, Lake Mamie, Lake George, Mary Lake, Rock Creek, Rock Creek Lake, Convict Lake, and Lake Crowley.
The city of Bishop and Inyo County also purchase trophy trout from Desert Springs and plant them in the waters in their region.
With trophy trout available, towns and resorts have inaugurated trout-fishing contests, derbies, tournaments, and the like, scheduled throughout the season. Local communities and enterprises are cashing in on the popularity of trout fishing, because lunker trout are an easy product to market.
The Trout Business
Between the CDFW plants of catchables, augmented with their brood-stock and nonbrood-stock supercatchables and trophy trout from Desert Springs, this region has become a recreational angling paradise. It is manifest in the strings of trout bandied about by anglers throughout the season.
The prime example of this varied planting regimen is Lake Crowley, one of California’s most popular angling waters, which is just south of Mammoth Lakes. In most years, 10,000 anglers turn out at the opening of the season, catching approximately 50,000 trout just in the first week alone.
Typically, Crowley is planted with hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized trout in the off-season, and with excellent food sources, these trout grow to at least three-quarters of a pound by the opener. Larger holdover fish are also available from prior years, plus there are self-sustaining wild brown and rainbow trout populations that are joined by other wild fish from the tributary streams. All of these combine to make Crowley, for anglers, one of the most productive fisheries in the state, albeit sustained mostly through plantings. Additionally, it’s the big migrating rainbows and browns from Crowley that comprise the upper Owens a trophy trout fishery, mainly in the spring and fall-winter.
Despite the stocking of millions of fish, including trophy specimens, some anglers still aren’t satisfied. This includes a few fly fishers who believe the more hatchery-reared trout planted in more and more waters, the better. Some decry the reduction of stocking in backcountry lakes. One fly fisher argued to me that hatchery trout should be again stocked in national park waters, a practice that largely ended in the 1970s when the National Park Service recommitted itself to upholding natural values as opposed to artificial values, which hatchery trout represent. And that’s the main argument against planting: the ecological damage produced by introducing artificial creatures to the natural environment and its native flora and fauna.
Implications for the Fly Fisher
Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with fly fishing for hatchery rainbows. On the plus side, it is tremendously handy to take a short drive to one of these lakes, get in a float tube, and begin fishing within minutes. And a hookup with any trout is always sporting and fun, because it is still a challenge to fool even a hatchery rainbow. Plus, there’s the added incentive, if one so chooses, to catch fish for the dinner table, totally guilt free.
Add the prospect of hooking a large rainbow trout, even if also planted the prior week, and the rewards are amplified. These so-called “trophy trout” deliver a real kick, particularly those from a fish farm. Whatever these private hatcheries are doing, it is working. Their rainbows are as full-bodied as any fish — strong fighters, healthy, with richly colored flesh, and delicious. (Yes, these, too, can be keepers, if not for you, then for the next guy. A true sportsman, however, will release these brutes so that other anglers will have the thrill of hooking and playing them).
As an example of the satisfactions provided by stocked trophy trout, several years ago, I visited Silver Lake to fish the water above the outflow where trout sometime come to feed. Near the shore I saw what looked to be a large fish break the surface. I waded out past a couple of bank anglers, made a few false casts, placed a beadhead nymph up from the trout, let it drift to the fish, and hooked it. A determined fighter that put on a great aerial display of jumps, it was a beautiful three-to-four-pound brightly colored Alpers rainbow. The other anglers thought I was the greatest fisherman they had ever seen. What they didn’t know was it was the only “trophy trout” I had caught in these waters in about six years. Turning to the other side of the coin, a few examples will illustrate why I am sometimes less than enthusiastic about fly fishing for planters. To begin with, joining the recreational anglers on heavily fished lakes is not the wild experience most fly fishers seek, to put it mildly. Often, too, stocked trout — especially if they’re recently planted — just aren’t used to feeding on anything flies resemble, so any hookup seems more like the result of random chance than of any skill as an angler.
Probably the most ignominious fly-fishing experience I ever had occurred two years ago on June Lake at the south end where 10 or so piers line the shore. In years with ordinary water levels, grasses will be profuse along this shoreline and trout will gather and cruise about there. I sometimes have had good luck casting toward the grasses and retrieving. But that summer was one of low lake levels, and favorable conditions did not exist. So I drifted about in my float tube, trying to either find fish or, barring that, hoping a fish would find my fly. All the while, a child on a nearby pier was catching a limit of trout using yellow PowerBait. When I finally returned to shore, empty handed, his father offered me the fish.
The last couple of summers, I did enjoy good luck in a handful of lakes I had never fished before. Two I had heard good things about were Ellery Lake and Tioga Lake, both impoundments sitting just outside of Yosemite National Park’s eastern entrance at Tioga Pass. I enjoyed my best success with planted rainbows ever at Lundy Lake, another impoundment that is located in Lundy Canyon, just north of the town of Lee Vining. At
the upper end of the lake, Lundy Creek enters at the far shore across from where you park. I kicked over there, saw a few fish feeding at the mouth, and proceeded to cast into the flow that extended out into the lake. In a little over an hour, I hooked about 25 fish, all hatchery rainbows. Fly pattern made little difference. I later heard that hundreds of fish had just been planted, as per the weekly schedule. Many had obviously gathered at this influx of water with a current that extended far into the lake. For anglers seeking hookups, it was a sure thing.
Fishing for Hatchery Rainbows
It’s clear these fish will congregate into a school when they can. Actually, since in many cases they were just dumped into the water a few days ago, they probably never left their pod. Find where they are gathered, and you will probably hook a bunch, as I did by the dam at Tioga Lake and at the creek inflow at Lundy Lake. The more venturesome planters that scattered and are now on their own can provide more of a sporting challenge when fishing a fly.
Among the hatchery rainbows, often there will be a bigger, well-conditioned fish, perhaps one of the CDFW’s supercatchables or from a fish farm. Or maybe it is just a bigger than usual fish among its brethren. Hooking one or more of these rainbows definitely enhances an outing.
If a lake holds rich natural food sources, like Lake Crowley, then standard fly-fishing techniques are apt to be effective. And if these trout are “put-and-grow” stockers that have lived in the lake for several months, they will more closely behave like wild fish than those just planted as “put-and-take” stockers. At Crowley, fishing midge patterns under an indicator, and flies resembling the fry of Sacramento perch, usually are successful ways to draw strikes.
Another strategy is to fish the shorelines, where trout may be cruising and feeding. One lake where I have had notable success doing so is Convict Lake, which sits in a spectacular canyon a few miles south of Mammoth Lakes and is one of the prettiest lakes to be found anywhere. In a float tube out from the shore, one can sometimes see planted rainbows swimming back and forth. I find casting to these trout far more successful than trolling a fly in deep water, which amounts to little more than a crap shoot.
If one wishes to target the wild trout that occupy a number of these lakes, I suggest working the shorelines. Grant Lake,
Silver Lake, Ellery Lake, Tioga Lake, Lundy Lake, and Saddlebag Lake are among those that hold wild fish as well as planters. Bait anglers generally don’t do as well with the former.
Planted Waters in Mono and Inyo Counties
The planted sections of each of these waters are near or alongside roads, including dirt roads. The listings do not include eastern Sierra backcountry waters. (The CDFW aerially stocks 23 high-country lakes in Mono County and 19 in Inyo County.) For a map of all locations, visit https://map.dfg.ca.gov/fishing/.
Mono County
Bridgeport Reservoir
Buckeye Creek
Convict Creek
Convict Lake
Crowley Lake
Deadman Creek
East Walker River
Ellery Lake
George Lake
Glass Creek
Grant Lake
Green Creek
Gull Lake
June Lake
Lee Vining Creek
Lee Vining Creek South Fork
Little Walker River
Lundy Lake
Mamie Lake
Mammoth Creek
Mary Lake
McGee Creek
Mill Creek
Molybdenite Creek
Owens River, Upper
Robinson Creek
Rock Creek
Rush Creek
Saddlebag Lake
Saddlebag Creek
Sherwin Creek
Silver Lake
Swauger Creek
Tioga Lake
Topaz Lake
Trumble Lake
Twin Lake Lower, Bridgeport
Twin Lake Upper, Bridgeport
Twin Lakes, Mammoth
Virginia Creek
Virginia Lake, Lower
Virginia Lake, Upper
West Walker River
Sotcher Lake, Starkweather Lake, and the Middle Fork San Joaquin River are also regularly planted with hatchery trout. Although they are in Madera County, they are located in and around Devils Postpile National Monument, which is accessed from the town of Mammoth Lakes.
Inyo County
Baker Creek
Big Pine Creek
Bishop Creek Lower
Bishop Creek, South Fork
Diaz Lake
Georges Creek
Goodale Creek
Independence Creek
Lake Sabrina
Lone Pine Creek
North Lake
Owens River, Lower
Pleasant Valley Reservoir
Rock Creek Lake
Shepherd Creek
South Lake
Taboose Creek
Tinnemaha Creek
Tuttle Creek
Stocking Backcountry Waters
There are more than 4,000 named lakes in the high Sierra Nevada. These backcountry lakes, identified as those not accessible by vehicles, have long received extensive fish plantings, beginning in the nineteenth century. Today, due to historical stocking practices, some of which involved flagrant errors, such as planting trout in the wrong lake, the proportion of lakes in the Sierra Nevada that hold planted fish has risen from less than 1 percent of all lakes holding fish to approximately 63 percent of such lakes.
In the early 1990s, researchers began to look at impacts from fish plants on native amphibians in the Sierra Nevada. Their findings were startling: not only did stocking directly affect amphibians, most notably the mountain yellow-legged frog, which is threatened with extinction, but the introduced fish were significantly altering the ecosystem and the place of its native creatures, including native trout.
The impacts that the planting of hatchery fish have on native fish include direct predation, competition for food and habitat, interbreeding, and the spread of disease and invasive organisms such as whirling disease. Introducing exotic fish, such as eastern brook trout, has negatively affected every Western native trout species and is one of the causes of declines in native fish populations. Today, nearly every native trout species in California faces serious threats, and a number are listed under the Endangered Species Act — including the California golden trout, Kern River rainbow, and Paiute cutthroat. In total, over 35 native salmonid and amphibian species have been directly impacted by stocking programs.
Such impacts are not easily reversed. Once fish have been introduced into a watershed, it is difficult to eradicate them fully without causing further ecological harm. For example, the use of rotenone and other chemical pesticides can wipe out amphibians and aquatic invertebrates. The need now is to protect existing aquatic strongholds and their native creatures from further degradation.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is working diligently to achieve this objective while also supporting recreational angling. It is mandated “to manage high mountain lakes and streams in a manner which maintains or restores native biodiversity and habitat quality, supports viable populations of native species, and provides for recreational opportunities considering historical and future use patterns.”
The CDFW stocks fingerling trout in selected backcountry lakes — “put-and-grow” stocking. These fisheries are usually located where spawning habitat is limited, but suitable for fish growth and where conflicts with certain native species, such as the mountain yellow-legged frog, are minimal. Three species are usually stocked — rainbow, golden, and cutthroat trout. Only three waters are still stocked with brook trout. Nonetheless, brook trout remain the most common fish in backcountry lakes, due to their ability to reproduce in lakes.
Over the decades, many backcountry fisheries have developed self-sustaining populations of trout and no longer need regular stocking. However, in some lakes, trout may be too abundant, which stresses a lake’s resources.
Since a lake can support only so much fish biomass — either lots of small trout or fewer large trout — the CDFW is experimenting with a strategy to reduce the total numbers of fish in a lake in order to improve the remaining fishery and reduce the impact on native invertebrate, amphibian, and even terrestrial species. Sometimes, large brown or rainbow trout are placed in a lake with stunted trout to help cull the population while also giving an angler the chance of catching a trophy-sized fish.
In lakes where opportunities for recreational angling are minimal, the introduced fish are targeted for fish removal. This strategy, too, seeks to restore ecological health to the habitat.
— Bob Madgic
