July 8, 2000

Not much trout fishing lately, since the halibut are in the bay and biting. Midsummer meat fishing, you might say...and they sure are tasty!

We were lucky enough to escape to the Sierras this weekend and fish Mono Creek for rainbows and browns. We camped along the creek and fished above and below a diversion dam that was taking most of the stream's flow and piping it out, for electrical generation I assume. This entire area is peppered with power company installations, from huge lakes to tiny diversion dams on the smaller creeks.

The small lake formed by the diversion dam had been stocked with rainbows, along with the roaring creek spilling into the lake. They were fun to catch and release on small spinners — even though they had been fattened at the hatchery on trout chow! We shared the lake with another fisherman: a shy eared grebe who was diving for his dinner along the far shore. Ironically, we caught more fish in the lake at midday than we did in the evening, which was odd. Go figure.

In search of wild trout, we hiked downstream below the dam to where the creek was tiny and not stocked with hatchery fish. There were small brown trout in some of the deeper holes. They were skinny and malnutritioned by the lack of food at the high altitude, yet still difficult to catch. I did land one that was about 11 inches long, with a big head and a body that was nothing but skin and bones.

They say the large reservoirs in this region hold some whopper brown trout. Indeed, I noticed a wall mount of a 27-pound brown at one of the resorts up there. Perhaps a fall lake-fishing trip for the big spawners is in order. Gotta remember to bring tire chains.

May 28, 2000

On Friday, I fished the Middle Fork from the bridge upstream about a mile or so...distance is hard to tell when you're climbing rocks, beating brush, and wading. The water is so much higher in the spring, I hardly recognised this river, which I usually fish in the fall. Normal holding pools were now roaring rapids of whitewater. My favored lure, the trusty spinner, would not go deep enough to where I suspected the fish must be. Finally, I landed and released a handful of little rainbows and a couple of wild browns on a big hammered gold spoon that I happened to have with me. The fish were holding in the slower water at the tails of the holes, and in the slower water being dammed by the log jams.

Today, I took a steep, winding dirt road down to the lower stretch of the Middle Fork and hiked in to where I could find no sign of another human. There were bright red clumps of snow plant blooming among tall stands of old-growth timber. The river ran dark and slow between huge logs that had fallen across the stream. The water looked fishy, and it was.

I landed three lovely wild browns and about a dozen rainbows, the largest of which was around 13 inches in length. I fished down to where the river began dropping through a series of cataracts into the gorge, then returned up the steep trail to the road. On the way home, we saw two bears.

May 13, 2000

Today we went up the coast to our favorite trout stream and hit the water at the crack of dawn. The sight of 3 other vehicles in the parking area was a bad sign — a bad sign made worse by the fact that two of the vehicles had flat tires. But we started fishing right above the highway anyway, working a section that we usually skip in favor of the upper reaches. Within 5 minutes I had landed a gorgeous and feisty 11-inch native rainbow, and the day had taken a turn for the better.

For the next seven hours, we caught and released hungry trout, and explored far upstream over waterfalls and boulders and through rapids and deep green plunge pools. None of the fish I caught were any bigger than that first fish, but I did land and release a total of 51 trout.

We saw no one else fishing. Nice to know that there were just as many fish in there when we left as there were when we arrived!

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