I haven't been backpacking to my favorite lake in the John Muir Wilderness of California's Eastern Sierra Nevada for three years. Since this is the Internet and all, I can't reveal the name of this body of water. Enough people go there as it is. Everyone who has read my stupid fish reports the past seven years already know its name. I even gave the 15-pound brown trout I saw attack a rainbow trout I was reeling in back in '91 a moniker similar to that of Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster. Mine is %!$sie, the Lake D@%!$ Monster.

Last year I thought my hiking and backpacking career might have ground to a halt. At 40, I climbed 11,500-foot Mount San Gorgonio in the San Bernardino Mountains. I didn't have too much trouble going up the six hours it took to reach the summit via Vivian Creek. It was the coming down part. The last mile of the seven wiped out my right knee like knives were being shoved into it.

The knee seemed okay for the month after that. I was able to jog my customary two miles every other day, and pedal my bicycle to work whenever the weather was dry. It wasn't until a month-and-a-half later when my pal Mustang Steve and I went to Coyote Valley near Bishop to climb The Hunchback that those imaginary implements of pain began to once again pierce the skin near my kneecap and tear into whatever cartilage remained. Upon the first twinge I thought, "Crap, now I'll have to take a mule train if I want to go slay my monster."

With that, I gave my knee the fall and winter off. Then, this past spring, pal Hiker Dean and I went on an eight-hour tour of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park's Carrizo Canyon to visit railroad buff Mecca, Carrizo Gorge. We had to climb boulders up the side of a steep desert mountain to reach the rails, then come down the same way. My knee was being bashed pretty well, but it survived without even the slightest hint of discomfort. I was happy.

The next somewhat strenuous hike Mustang Steve, Hiker Lee, Hiker Dean and I did this past spring was an eight-hour trek up and down both sides of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Not a knee problem to report.

So on August 1, to ready myself for the big five-mile hike at 10,000 feet up and over a small summit with a 50-plus-pound backpack, Mustang Steve and I climbed to the top of 10,500-foot Mount San Antonio of the San Gabriel Mountains. We went up the easy way, via the ski lift and the razorback. We came down the hard way, via the landslide and Sierra Club cabin. My legs were wearing out pretty fast coming down the steep, two-hour trail, but still there were no knee difficulties to tell anyone about.

Okay, already. I'm good to go. Thursday morning August 6, I was at the trailhead parking lot after a big carbo-rich breakfast, readying my pack and lacing up my Irish Setter boots. God damn if this 41-year-old ball head guy didn't make the five miles without incident in three hours, thirty-five minutes, which included a twenty-minute water break. I was happy.

When I finally arrived at the campsite and unstrapped my pack, I wanted to see how much the whole thing weighed. The 50-pound Normark fish scale read something like TILT when I tried to lift the mass all at once. What I did was itemize. I started taking things off the pack frame to be weighed individually. Here's what I recorded: The backpack with frame containing clothes, fishing tackle, stove, mess kit, fuel, etc. went 33-6 (33 pounds, six ounces), sleeping bag 4-7, Thermarest pad 2-7, tent 3-4, parka 2-4, flashlight 2-6, rainsuit 2-11, four-quart canteen 9-9, food bag 11-10, rod tube 3-13. All together it totaled 76 pounds.

I unraveled everything and set up my sleeping quarters, then started boiling some swamp water so I could rehydrate lunch. I found the perfect crusty twig next to the fire pit to stir it up with. The half-burnt stick gave my stroganoff that special mountain smoked flavor.

After something was wolfed into my gut, I strolled out to the lakeshore to see how things looked. The rock I normally fish from is out away from shore. This year, it was impossible to get to unless I were to bridge the gap with a log or something. The lake's water level wasn't any higher than the first time I came here during the drought. I figured it was all that Long Valley seismic activity which occurred throughout the past seven years that settled the rocks. Even during the dry period of 1987 through 1994, the lake had a large volume of water coming into it. And since it is a tarn and not a reservoir, the level of the lake couldn't have changed that drastically even though this was a wet year. It was still flowing through the log jammed outlet at about the same level as I have always seen it.

Anyway, the prime time for the big browns is from six in the evening until eleven at night. While I was standing there checking out the situation, I noticed the breeze was head-on right into my rock. Not to worry, every day up here at 9800 feet has breezes from about eleven in the morning until six thirty in the evening. From the latter time until the next late morning, it's usually calm.

Not today. At five thirty, the friendly breeze I knew and loved developed into a full-on wicked gale. And it grew worse with every hour. There was no way I was going to cast my six-inch broken back rainbow trout pattern Bomber Long-A on twelve pound test into this blow and expect it to fly very far. I was pretty burnt from the day's initial hike anyway, and I didn't really feel like walking all the way over to the other side of the ninety-five-acre lake to put the wind at my back, which would have sailed the Long-A far out there. Instead I crawled into my tent and went to sleep. Nighty-night.

Twelve hours later, it was Friday morning and the wind was still around. I crawled back out of the tent to fix a typical daily breakfast ration of dehy scrambled eggs with real bacon bits, a cup of Tang, 2 Kudo bars and 2 Nutigrain bars while contemplating the main project for the day, the erecting of a bridge from the shoreline to the rock from where I normally land big ones.

It wasn't too big a deal. It only took about thirty rocks between the size of ten and twenty pounds to fill in the gap between the half-submerged boulders before I had a stable stepping stone to use to reach my launch pad. Like anywhere in the Sierra, suitable riprap for the project could be found within a mere twenty to thirty feet from the construction zone. It was complete in about an hour-and-a-half. I was ready to commence casting, but ten thirty in the morning was a bit early.

So, what to do in the meantime. I hoofed it over to the other side of the lake to the creek below the falls. This is where I have been filling my canteen the past seven years without coming down with giardia. Remember, don't do like I do. Boil your stream water before you drink it.

For lunch, the usual ration is fish soup and an entrée of dehy food. Today, I rigged up my four pound test Power Bait rig and tossed a wad of the chartreuse variety out to a deep spot. It didn't take more than twenty minutes before I had a fat twelve-inch brook trout and an eleven-inch rainbow trout to boil.

This fish soup business is real easy. All you do is slice the rich pink meat from the backbone, cut the skin off, then dunk all four fillets in boiling lake water. Next you add a package of Campbell's chicken noodle soup mix and stir until all is tender. An added treat is to harvest some of the wild onions that proliferate around the shady areas near the stream and spoon some slices of those in the pot. Oh baby.

Somewhere around four thirty, naptime was over and I found myself boiling more water to pour into my bag of dehy dinner. By the way, I always use Mountain House brand of freeze-dried food. I've tried them all, but Mountain House has always tasted the best. This endorsement comes from a very educated palate. You can get it at the Torrance Sportmart.

By five thirty in the afternoon, it looked like the wind was going to calm down as scheduled. Not. By the time I walked over to the water's edge, it picked up. I tried to launch my lure from the pad, but it kept getting blown back towards me. My plan was not working. You have to make the long cast so that the lure can cover as much water as possible on the retrieve for the thing to be able to attract the attention of a monster.

With that, I focused my binoculars to a spot across the lake where the gusts would be at my back. If I were to venture over there, I could simply aim my lure up into the air in front of me as I cast and let the wind sail it out as far as possible.

Just as in real life, there are two ways to get over there. I could take the long way, which would be to walk a little over a mile on an easy established trail around the lake's eastern shoreline, or take the short way, which is about a trailess quarter-mile through thickets of aspen, white and lodgepole pine, and over hurdles of granite boulders. At one point along the underbrush trail, I had to get down on my hands and knees to pass under an arched tamarack.

Nonetheless, in twenty minutes I was nearing my goal. I found a nice log to stand on, which jutted into the water about seven feet from shore. My first attempt to catapult the Long-A up into the next gust soared that dual treble hook endowed chunk of hard plastic way the hell out there. In fact, in the evening's waning light, I could hardly tell where it splashed down.

There was only one problem. The water that the lure was covering was too shallow and quite far from the deepwater breakline where textbooks will tell you the big ones hang out. As the moon rose, I could see that the splashdowns were nowhere near the launch pad rock where I saw the monster back in 1991. That's the same locale I landed two six-pound brown trout three years ago, one 5-13 pounder five years ago and one two and and one three pounder six years past. Even so, I kept casting the lure with the hope of at least having one big guy boil on it, just so I could feel something transmit the shock waves of a massive hit up the line, down the pole, and onto my hand. By the way, the aforementioned are the symptoms of salmo trutta piscatosis, one of the many mental disorders I suffer from. It makes you pack all this crap into the wilderness just to feel a stupid fish hit your lure. Anyhow, a strike by a big guy didn't happen by eleven o'clock, so back through the copse I went, onwards toward my comfy sleeping bag and Thermarest.

Saturday morning I awoke to the same semi-nasty weather conditions as Friday. The only thing different was that I didn't drag my ass out of the tent until ten thirty. That was almost 12 hours of lying on a one-inch inflatable cushion, inside a blazing hot body sock. It felt great. I was trying to get off third shift and coffee anyway. What a way to do it.

Just like the night before, the wind through the trees was relatively loud. All this noise brought forth lots of classic nightmares. Twelve hours worth.

I really didn't have many plans for the day. I just sort of let the soreness in my calves heal while I had my usual breakfast ration, the normal lunch allotment, and the traditional afternoon nap. Exactly like the day before.

When I decided my forty winks were cashed in, I fired up the stove and boiled some lake water for dinner. The Oriental shrimp and vegetables hit the spot.

It was already night three out of six and the wind was still howling. Before this week, my 25-year Sierra experience dictated that the wind only blew for a maximum of thirty-six hours before it calmed down to normalcy for the rest of the week. This madness had been going on for over seventy-two.

For this night there was nothing else to do but to drag my equipment over to another deeper spot on the lake where the blast would be at my back. Over the pines, aspens and boulders I hopped, near where the falls creek enters the lake. At this spot, the surface was somewhat sheltered from churning into whitecaps like everywhere else, so I could see lots of little guys doing their evening rise thing. There were scores of rings atop the water. I figured the big browns would know this and hang around for an easy meal.

Again I was able to rocket my Long-A way the hell out there. Each slow and jerky retrieve lasted about four minutes. Lots of water was covered using this injured minnow technique. I didn't really understand why under such superb conditions that by eleven o'clock my lure had not been swiped at by the fanning caudal fin of one single brown trout.

Sunday morning I awoke at eight and decided that since my legs were somewhat healed, this would be the day I would venture forth to explore the backcountry for golden trout. In this particular drainage, there are so many lakes, they are designated by numbers. That is, all but the lake where I make camp. It's number one in the string, but it has a real name. The rest are named Second through Sixth. The only confusion is that if you look on the area's U.S. Geological survey map, you will see that there are more like eleven viable bodies of water back in there. I knew sixth lake at one time housed goldens, but three years ago when I was there I didn't see any. I figured a winterkill occurred. However, there was one last lake just below the Sierra Crest that I hadn't explored yet. It looked kind of dinky on the map, but what I have found in fishing the Sierra, the small package/big gift principal sometimes applies.

The last time I was way back there, I knew that to get to this lake it would take at least two hours to climb from my 9800 foot base camp the mile and a half to the back of Fifth Lake, where I would make a right and head up into a boulder field that topped off at 11,200. Then, to hop over boulders for another half mile would take about an hour-and-a-half. For this journey, the only things in my pack were fishing gear, stove and one lunch, and some warm clothes just in case.

After I was done goofing around with everything at base camp, I finally shoved off at ten. That was a bit late for my liking, but hell, this is vacation. I calculated I wouldn't make it there until after one. Then, I would have only three hours to fish before I had to get going to be back at the launch pad by six.

When I finally arrived at the dreaded boulder field, there really was no easy line to choose for hopping. It was kind of like negotiating the breakwall, only twice as long, at high altitude, and definitely not level. Thanks to El Nino, the last about two-hundred feet had hard snow pack covering the giant rocks, which made them easier to traverse. That is, unless I were to slip and slide downhill, or worse, fall through a thin spot. It is August, and you never know what condition the snowfields will be in during midday. Thank whomever, nothing bad happened.

Alas, three hours and something later, I was standing above this lake, which looked about one third the size of our precious Funnel Lake. As small as it was, it was made even tinier with all the ice on the water. It looked like the lake just opened up ten days ago.

About a week after a Sierra lake ices out, the fish start going into their spring spawning mode, no matter what month it is. I thought this might happen here. At first glance, I could not detect any movement in the crystalline waters. As I walked back to where I dropped my equipment, I heard, then saw, a fish jump. It more than likely was a golden, but it was only about four inches long. That at least gave me hope that there might be something bigger hanging out near the bottom.

As one Mammoth local suggested to me a few years back, the goldens of the highest lakes will hit little chrome spoon jigs half painted with hot pink. About the best one I could find for this purpose was the 1/32-ounce Kastmaster in rainbow trout pattern. That's what I started with. Ten casts out to the middle, letting is sink to the bottom, with varying retrieve speeds produced nothing.

Next I cast a wad of power bait molded on a number eighteen treble hook tied to a two-pound-test leader. I let that soak out there while I reemployed the Kastmaster. I would see that peewee trout surface now and then, and after about an hour of casting and soaking, I concluded that he was the only one in there.

Since the trail was all downhill to base camp, it only took me two hours. I was fed and ready to initiate the casting of the Long-A by six-thirty. Tonight was the first night that the wind died down to a breeze. By eight o'clock, the air was at last still. I was on my favorite rock, casting the lure a good distance out there.

Due to backcountry exploration, I didn't have my nap today. My back was feeling slightly more discomforted with each cast. To resolve this, I laid down on the rock on my dorsum and flung the enticement from that position. The lure seemed to fly just as far as if I were standing up.

As I rest against the rock to cast, I listened to my transistor radio tuned to 1070. At nine each night, something happens in the ionosphere where AM stations from all across the country start coming in loud and clear. KNX, which transmits from right here in Torrance (Hawthorne Blvd. and 190^th St.) plays an old drama radio show from the twenties or thirties every night. Tonight's was great. It was about this capitalist who wanted to build a space ship for Mars. As I lie on the rock gazing at the stars, I nonetheless was to far into the show. I almost forgot about fishing, but my alphas kept my body casting anyway. Eleven o'clock, no hits, back to bed.

It was now time, if to not worry about my situation, to at least think about what was going down. Three nights without a hit is kind of normal when trying for big browns. The first time I was here, I saw the monster, but didn't have the proper gear to land him. All I had was four pound test and a one-and-a-half-inch rainbow trout Rapala. I caught lots of nice one to two pound rainbows, but no big one. The second time I had my twelve-pound-test outfit with the six-inch rainbow trout Long-A. I caught a 1-8 brown on the second night, and a 3-2 brown on the fourth night. No other hits were recorded on any other night. The third time I was here, I caught a 5-13 on the first night, and had only one other hit on the fifth night. The fourth time I hooked a six-pounder on the second night, and landed another six-pounder on the third night. That right there was phenomenal.

On the bright side, this week I had two more nights to go. I can't even remember what I did all day Monday. All I know is that I was psyching up for Long-A flinging night number five. That evening as I lie there on my back watching the stars, It wasn't until ten thirty that I finally felt a hit. I cranked the Shimano Aero 3000 reel like a wild man to be ready when whatever it was decided to use its strength to peal off line from the spool's drag. Then I noticed that as I wound, the thing just sort of came in real easy like I snagged a piece of floating elodea weed or something. It was a brown alright, one of about 10 inches. I disgorged its puny ass from five of the lure's six prongs and set it free. I shone my flashlight in the water to see if he might endure to prowl another night. He went belly-up with a stream of blood oozing with every bellow of his gills. I thought, oh dear, maybe I should scoop him up with my net and add him to my stringer of smoked trout candidates. It was only about two minutes later that he finally righted himself and swam expediently for the depths along the breakline.

Oh man, it was already the late hours of night five and the only hit for the week was that of a brown trout a mere four inches longer than the lure. Things were not looking good for a monster. At eleven I was back in the sack.

Tuesday morning, the last full day of my stay, was reserved for obtaining a limit of rainbows for the smoker. It's pretty easy. You tie on the usual Power Bait rig and cast it out into the deepest part of the lake. You have to make sure that the leader is long enough from the weight so that the wad will float above the weed line. One unique trait about P.B. is that it will usually catch eighty-percent rainbows. The brooks and browns generally prefer natural baits like earthworms or grubs.

What I did was walk along the lake's west shoreline where the trail goes through the scrub and boulders. In this area, you can't even see the bottom of the lake right in front of you in the clear mountain water. If you cast the one-quarter-ounce rig as far as you can, it will sink to a guesstimated sixty feet. It didn't take long for the first bite to be had. Seven minutes into it I was reeling in a beefy thirteen-incher. As it went, I would catch two 'bows in one spot, then have to move over twenty feet and cast into another. Same results. I would catch one right away, then it would take about 30 minutes for the second fish to be landed before I would have to relocate. I finally caught the tenth one — a thirteen-inch brown — after six hours, to fill a limit near the falls creek inlet. While I was there, I filled my canteen and collected a pound or so of wild onions to take home. They make great salsa. I usually don't keep the small browns in hopes that they will grow huge and rule the lake. This year, I saw so many ten to fourteen inchers patrolling the shoreline, I figured one wouldn't decimate the population.

There I went, back to camp to clean the fish, eat some lunch and take a nap. To keep the fish cool, I placed their headless eviscerated bodies in a gallon zip bag with a rock inside and tossed it into the lake. The water is chilly up here.

Night six didn't go so well. I fished the five hours from six until eleven and had not one bite.

So, Wednesday morning I ate whatever food was left for breakfast, then folded and rolled everything up and bungeed it all to the pack frame. For the hike out, I wasn't carrying all the weight I hoped for. The eleven-pound food bag was empty and it was supposed to be replaced by a monster or two. The bag of fish I was carrying out weighed only about four pounds. That was seven less pounds right there, plus the five less pounds of water that was in the half-filled canteen. A whole twelve pounds less than what I carried in. It only took me two hours thirty-five minutes to trudge the five miles up and over the ridge non-stop back to the parking lot.

Broken hearted this time, I will be back as long as my body allows because I know the monster's still in there.

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