Since this is the Internet, the place names in this story have been changed to protect my (our) secret. We’ve tried to keep it that way since the summer of 1986 when pal Breakwall Gary happened upon the place while four-wheeling his way up into the High Sierra backcountry.

When we visited Funny Lake back in spring ’92, we discovered the once productive tarn suffered a winterkill after the water level dropped so far that the lake appeared only ten feet deep. You could see the bottom all the way across. Since it took seven years of drought for the lake’s waters to vanish, I figured we'd have to wait out another seven years of above-normal snowpack before it would refill.

My calculations were slightly off. When Breakwall Jerry and I stopped by in the fall of ’96 we hiked to a high spot and saw the lake's level had crept up about fifty percent closer to its normal water line. That was a good sign but we were unsure if the DFG yet bothered to re-stock the lake with rainbows.

In the summer of ’97, on the way down the mountain after camping at another lake in the area, Breakwall Darryl and I drove all the way to Funny to check if there had been any change of status after an above-average amount of winter precipitation. Standing near the shore we saw that the water in only five years amazingly had risen all the way back up to its normal level and even had an outlet going. Not only that but we saw a boil... make that two, three, four boils around the lake indicating our license fees were well spent replenishing the water with fish.

Seeing all this action prompted us to expose our rods and shoot wads of Power Bait out to a couple spots to see how big the newly-planted fish might be. As suspected they were small. Right away we both landed specimens in the six-to-ten-inch range, letting us know they were likely planted via aircraft earlier that same year. What shredded that theory was Yours Truly catching a fourteen-incher. That meant the DFG must have brought a batch of oncorhynchus mykiss up there a year or two earlier for one to attain that size.

In light of all this information, Darryl and I made a pact to visit two years later, which should have been enough time for the trout population to gain in size.

So that’s what we did. And was it ever worth the wait. Two-and-a-half hours after leaving mythical town of 4,140 foot Fishop Sunday afternoon, we were crawling over the last boulder-strewn hump for our first view of 10,500 foot Funny Lake. We thought thanks to a below-normal winter the lake would be a foot or two down but we were pleasantly surprised to see it was all the way up with the outlet still flowing. The El Nino of 17 months ago had a wider impact on the area than anticipated.

We picked a nice flat area near the east shore to pitch our tents, then to test the conditions Darryl grabbed his rod and went running down to the water to soak a chunk of Power Bait in the deep spot on the other side of the talus pile. I stayed at camp drinking beer and setting up the kitchen (I was hungry), glancing over at my pal now and then to see how the bite was going. It was progressing nicely, with him reeling them in just about as fast as he could cast out. The best part was every one was over twelve inches and a good fighter. He kept and cleaned his five largest for the smoker.

Monday morning I awoke at five o’clock and laid in my toasty sleeping bag a while before becoming motivated enough to crawl out. Technically it was still summer but the gilded leaves of the quaking aspen we passed along the trail the day before signaled the onset of colder nights.

It was still dark but not a problem. I slipped into my pants and parka, jumped out of the tent, grabbed my pre-rigged four-pound-test outfit and moseyed on down to the talus pile. Ever since I caught my personal best pound-and-a-half golden trout two years ago at the other lake in the area casting an eighth-ounce chrome Kastmaster into similar structure during dawn’s burgeoning light, it is now a must for me to do the same whenever I visit one of these crystal-clear high mountain trout lakes.

There I was, casting away, letting the small lure sink to various depths before slowly and with a jerky motion reeling in. The sun had already risen before I had my first hit, a twelve-inch Coleman rainbow that expelled itself three inches above the water’s surface before expelling the lure from its mouth.

The way I was fishing was rather boring. It took a whole hour of casting before the next hit-and-miss occurred. I was feeling the need for a little more action.

I hiked the hundred feet back to the truck to pick up my chair and Power Bait rig. In the few minutes it took me to start walking back to the shore, Darryl was having a seat on the other side of the talus pile. I set up my chair and stuff on this side of the rockslide. He was over there hooking up just like the day before. So was I. We both caught at least ten rainbow trout each in the next hour-and-a-half and kept the five largest each for the smoker. I had one that went fourteen inches, which took about ten minutes to subdue. Using a two-pound-test leader tied to the four-pound main line was like fighting an eight-pound bonito on ten-pound-test.

At nine o’clock I went back to camp to make a baloney sandwich and take a nap.

When I woke up Darryl said he went over to the other end of the lake, where a spring flows in, to flog the water with his fly rod. He had several hook-ups on an imitation maggot but every time he set the hook his one-and-a-half pound tippet would break and he lost them all.

Later that afternoon we hoofed it over to the back of the lake to fish the evening rise. I remembered ten years ago when I visited, the surfacing fish were on a rampage, hitting a flylined half of a baby crawler practically as soon as the bait hit the water. For whatever reason the action was no match to what it once was. Plus, I couldn’t cast the half-a-worm out to where the few surface rings were with the twelve-month-old line that was on my reel.

So what I did was fashion myself a float out of a stick I found under a laurel bush. I cut slits in both ends of the two-inch chunk, then forced the line into each so I could cast the whole thing out there without the wood coming off.

My first cast with the rig traveled a satisfactory distance. I watched it bob out there for a while before my attention was distracted to the serene beauty of the surrounding area. I heard a relatively large splash out there and when I glanced toward where my bobber was supposed to be, it wasn’t there. Seconds later, right in the middle of the surface disturbance that was the remains of said splash, my poor-man’s bobber rose to the top once more. Funny thing was, I could see a nice sized trout playing with it, pushing it around with its nose. Dang thing chomped on it, took it down, let it go because it didn’t taste good, then nudged it to try to get it to swim away or something.

I didn’t have one with me at the time but a one-inch rainbow trout pattern floating Rapala probably would have been deadly in that situation.

So Tuesday morning before light I followed up the thought by zooming back over to the inlet to cast a lure of the description noted above. First toss resulted in a twelve-incher, which was released. Ten casts later another trout of the same size came in. I had another hit soon thereafter that came unbuttoned. I moved over about twenty feet and nailed another one. Acting unusually this morning, the fish didn’t seem to have the pep they exerted the day before. They came right in without much resistance.

Darryl spent the early morning at the deep hole on the other side of the talus pile. By the time I went back to the truck to get my Power Bait rig and set up my chair on my side of the pile, he was packing up to fish next to me. We sat there chatting about how the bite was going. Not as good as the previous two days. He hadn’t a nibble all morning, which was kind of strange considering there was no low pressure system or any other negative vibes approaching.

There we sat hour after hour soaking our power bait, listening to the radio. It wasn’t until noon when the day’s first flurry occurred. We both caught five apiece in the next hour with all of them seeming to be back into fighting form. By four o’clock we sifted through enough twelve-inchers to have a limit of ten thirteen-and-over-inchers per each to bring home.

When cleaning trout it is always interesting to slice open their stomachs to see what they've been eating. Most contained assorted riparian and aquatic insects and small snails. A few looked like I cut into an opaleye there was so much green in them. The lake had algae in it but that’s not what I found. In them for the first time I have ever seen in my whole career was bog moss. The plants had these little orange balls (spores?) on them and that’s what I figured they were after. The green component came as part of a package.

Wednesday morning, our last day, we both awoke and sprinted to our favorite spots before light. I caught a few more using a mealworm ten feet under a small Cast-A-Bubble while Darryl caught a couple on Power Bait. They weren’t any bigger than what we already had so all we caught today were returned to grow fat for the next time we come to fish, maybe in two more years.

Top