Breakwall Angler High Sierra Report 6/17/2011

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Two weeks ago I attached the shell to my truck and packed it full of standard camping gear to ready myself for a summer full of mountain trips. Last year I hit up my secret golden trout lake the week before Fourth of July, trying to time ice-out conditions, when the spawning fish will stack up at an inlet still packed with snow. Ended up I found the lake had been ice free for over a month, but still the action was good.

So this year I picked the first and third weeks of June in an attempt to be there as the thaw commences. Wouldn’t you know this past winter delivered over 200 per cent above normal snow pack to the High Sierra? Pretty much any lakes 10,000 feet and above are still frozen.

Weighing my options, I read Edison lowered South Lake substantially so they can work on sealing the dam. The road is closed at Parcher’s; everyone has to walk a mile to reach the first available shoreline. Also, this will make it easy to access the back of the lake, where several feeder streams flow in. I am fantasizing a low lake level will condense all the big giant trout that are in that lake and also many spring-spawning rainbows will be stacked up at the creek mouths ready to get it on. And what will be right behind them? Huge brown trout, which will have only feeding on their minds, as they are fall spawners.

Sunday night May, 29 after work I stopped at the gas station near home, filled’er up, took off, then as I turned into my neighborhood I hear a bunch of rattling around under the hood as I coasted to the curb. Crap, it won’t start.

I grabbed my lunch box and hoofed it up the hill the 1.5 miles to the house. Dam I was lucky it broke here and not two days later somewhere out on 395 on the way to Johannesburg.

Guess I have to call for a tow in the morning and get a rental car. Then it dawned on me, tomorrow is Memorial Day. Nobody will be open.

I did find two Avis in the area but neither could pick me up, as both were manned by a single staff member. I rode my motorcycle to one, there was no way I would leave my bike overnight in their out-of-the-way parking lot. It’s not really possible to ride the two-wheeler into Irvine from home because it isn’t big enough for freeway speeds. I would have to take surface streets for 50 miles one-way and it would be in the dark coming home with all the coyotes and other assorted fauna running across the road in front of me.

In the end this broken truck thing cost me three ways: No 4-day vacation travel to the mountains, no triple time working the holiday and the worse was I had to call the boss, crying I screwed up and can’t make it to work today. He had to come in on his day off and fill in for me. Here is a lovely picture from summer vacation sortie #1.

Turns out the bearing on the fan bracket that mounts onto the front of the engine broke and damaged the timing belt, but thankfully it did not slip. If I were way back on a 4x4 road somewhere I could have disassembled enough belts and pulleys to get the truck moving but there would be no fan nor alternator; the EFI fuel delivery would work until the month-old battery died. I just had the whole thing apart last year when I replaced the timing belt. I inspected the bracket, it looked good at the time. Guess it wasn’t. It had 365,000 miles logged.

Eleven days and four car payments in new parts later, Lil’ Miracle is good to go. Apparently it’s a freakin’ miracle the thing still runs.

Tuesday June, 14 I’m off for four-day sortie #2, the truck’s running great, life is good, then as soon as I entered the 15 near my house I hear a big CRACK!!! No, unbelievable. I look, there it is, a small BB fracture in my new windshield. I just can’t win. Irvine police gave me a ticket back in April for having a cracked windshield, which was ¾ the way across. I was hoping to replace it after all my summer 4x4 trips but Officer Reece would have none of that.

Undeterred I made it to Bishop by one. Rumor has it Mahogany Smoked Meats is making my favorite Cowboy Jerky again. I inquire, they’re sold out. Crap. I BSed with the man behind the counter, he said the USDA put a halt to production two years ago because, they said, the middle of the chunk wasn’t reaching the politically correct temperature. Smoked Meats tried to inject steam to increase the temp but it turned out like concrete. Now, to get around the situation, they cut the meat thinner so that the middle will heat up a little more. Brilliant. Too bad I was unable to sample it. In the meantime I picked up a package of their double smoked bacon.

Ah, good ol’ South Lake. Mom and Dad used to take all us kids there in our camper back in the ’70s. I haven’t been there since, as I have been concentrating mostly on out-of-the-way high country lakes the past 30 years. Why I am back now is to take advantage of a perceived once in my lifetime opportunity to walk to the back of the lake to experience hundreds of three-pound hungry, horny trout stacked up in the roaring snowmelt. When the lake is totally full, you basically need a boat to get to the inlets, as there is no big trail around the lake through dense forest and steep boulders.

It’s only a 30-minute drive from town to the overnight Bishop Pass trailhead parking lot at the lake, and the aforementioned construction closure has ended. I stepped out to a vantage point to see, holy mackerel, the lake over 100 feet low with unseen distant creeks roaring in like jetliners. I scouted out a path, access to anywhere around the lake looked easy now that the trees are a half mile from the waterline.

Back down the pavement I found a very beautiful campsite at The Forks campground near the intersection of Sabrina and South Lake roads. There are plenty of dirt roads around where you can drive in a little way to make camp without paying but I doled out the $21 for a developed site so that I could have a nice big picnic table to use to sort out all my crap and organize my backpack.

At night the local radio station reported it was 101 in Bishop and I never needed to wear a coat after dark. Of course, the campground is only 7,860 feet, the lake is 9,800; conditions will be way different up there. I slept on a pad under the stars and at 9:30 I saw the shuttle/space station combo fly by. It looks like a bright light about the size of Venus that goes from horizon to horizon in about three minutes. At 3:45 I opened my eyes and saw it again. I have seen both individually before, this blob was twice the size of each.

Wednesday morning I fired up the stove to cook up a high carb and protein breakfast of mahogany smoked bacon and French toast made with four eggs and slices from a fresh loaf of Sheepherder Bread from Schat’s Bakery right there in Bishop.

By eleven both my pack and I were stuffed and on the road back to the overnight trailhead lot. I strapped on the guesstimated 70 pounds and eased on down to the lakebed. Immediately there was a creek crossing, which was barely over my boot tops. A little later the next obstacle was more like The Colorado. There would be no wading through that. But dang it the shoreline past this, the main inlet, was my goal. I remember back to a family trip when Dad rented a boat and he and I motored to the very back of the lake. There were many different creeks coming in, which were not very large at all. This means if I follow this one big rager back in another half mile it will split into several fordable smaller flows, none of them, it turns out, deeper than half way up my calf.

Before the dam was built, this part of the lake bed used to be a meadow with the several clear-water creeks converging, and now they’re populated with many smallish brown trout darting here and there. These guys were left back to fend for themselves as the reservoir drained; it’s doubtful they could have swum up from the lake via the steep rager.

In some isolated ponds there were live trout swimming around, wondering what the hell’s going on back here but in another I found evidence of winter kill.

After circling around the back of the lake five feet below the high water line, I crossed the seventh creek and aimed for the gap between a peninsula and what was the island. Popping out the other end I made it to the far side of the rager where according to footprints, only three other whack-job anglers like me have visited this year.

You never know what you’ll find laying around while traversing a lake bottom. Of course there were the usual beer cans and bottles, bait jars and anchors manufactured from concrete filled coffee cans. I was surprised samples of each were few and far between. What I saw a lot of was lead core trolling line snagged on boulders and strung everywhere. One strand in particular I followed for 100 yards. Another phenomenon was glitter. Say what? Yeah, you know, the little shiny flakes they put in trout dough baits these days. As the dough melts away all this glitter is left and as you trudge along you see all these different color sparkles in the dirt.

I set up camp on some flat dried mud between rock ledges so that I wouldn’t be too conspicuous. I’d prefer camping under the shade of tall tamaracks but at this time the trees are too far away from the fish. I then tied up my four-pound outfit with a worm four feet under a bubble and the twelve pound outfit with a J-13 RT Rapala (jointed five-inch rainbow trout pattern).

I timed the rehydration process of a package of Mountain House freeze dried lasagna so that right when I consume the final spoonful the bottom of the sun will be sitting upon the mountaintop. At that moment it was time to test the evening bite and also time to sport a jacket. It started to get cold up here.

What I would do is cast the bubble/worm out into the current of the rager and keep an eye on it while flinging the big Rapala. The goal was to catch something big on the lure. The bait rig is a kind of sideshow.

Hmm, it’s been an hour and no bites. I changed out the hook on the bait rig to salmon egg, thinking there are brown trout sucking up all these eggs being spewed by spawning rainbows. The eggs are natural color Pautzke’s Balls Of Fire to match the hatch. Another hour and nothing, and it’s getting dark.

Well, the inlet wasn’t as fun as fantasized. I moved over a short distance to a point of mud near a granite wall on the other side of the lake, where it looked like it’s where they quarried the stone to build the dam. I switched the bait back to worm and was getting some hits noted by the bobber going up and down. All I reeled in were three crumbled crawlers. After dark I hadn’t another nibble on the worm but kept at it until eleven with the big Rapala, all for naught.

Thursday morning I awoke to my watch alarm at 4am and finally wriggled out of my tent a half hour later. I grabbed my tackle and pack and headed back to the rager. This time on the bait rig I tied the basic yellow Power Bait held down by a 1/8 ounce egg sinker and tossed it into the breakline between the current and lake. For the lure I took off the 12 pound spool and used a 1/8 ounce rainbow pattern Thomas Buoyant on 6 pound line. I picked this jig because of all the positive reports I have read the past four years. Everywhere you look in the Sierra someone is catching a nice trout on a T. Buoyant.

And today it looked to be my turn. Working the current, I had several hits in the first thirty minutes. It didn’t matter if I let it sink or not, something was interested. I checked the treble hook, it was plenty sharp, which means little guys are messing with it, as evidenced by the eight-inch brown I just caught.

It was a start, I guess. After a while I reeled in the Power Bait for a move and found I was hooked up. The fish came right in sans resistance and no wonder the pole bell didn’t ring, it was an eight inch brook trout, and by my experience, the weakest of them all. I packed up and headed back over to the quarry wall, where on the other side of that is another small inlet.

The wind had picked up substantially and it would have been barely noticeable if I were standing in the forest. But without all the windbreaks, large clouds of dust were being kicked up and blown straight into the water, mucking things up quite a bit over here across the lake from the inlet. Nonetheless I kept soaking the Power Bait and casting the T. Buouant. Again I had many hits on the lure, finally hooking one of substance, a twelve inch fat wild rainbow that I kept.

One accomplishment of sorts to note, today I cast for the cycle. I landed one brown, one brook and one rainbow, all three varieties of trout that inhabit the lake.

Around 8:30 four other anglers showed up to fish the current on the easy access side of the rager. They stayed for about an hour with no luck then split. Two hours later another group of four tried their luck at the same spot. They gave it 30 minutes then gone. I got to thinkin’, maybe I’m late getting here and the spawn is over with now. If I showed up here two weeks ago like I was supposed to, the action might have been better.

By noon, after over six hours, I just about had it. Back to camp for lunch and a nap. As I was kicking back munching down a pouch of chili mac, a friendly marmot stopped by to check the festivities. Usually these guys are rather shy but not this one. He was climbing over everything in camp, finally settling on my gunnysack to snack on. I shot some video of it gnawing away and slurping the strands of the bag like so much spaghetti. At first it was cute but after a while it pissed me off for making holes in my sack, so I shooed it away. As I laid down in my tent, it and three others returned to chew up my wash sponge. Strange.

I awoke at three to hear more voices. I got up and looked over to see five more dudes over at the rager trying their luck. Thirty minutes and nothing, they’re gone.

I retied both my rigs back to evening style, the big Rapala on the 12-pound and a worm on the 4-pound, only this time we’re going with the inflated worm and slowly sinking bobber and also a J-13 BT brown trout pattern, since that is the specie I have been catching most of and seeing in the creeks and ponds.

Camping and fishing here was for the most part very miserable, what with the lack of forest, all the dust and mud and lack of frenzied fish. While I was on that roll, for dinner I included one more aspect of misery, the oldest package of freeze dried food I had, one labeled, ‘oriental rice and chicken with vegetables’. I was pretty sure I’ve had this one since 2005 but the use by date said 2013. I ‘cooked’ it and stuck it in my pack so that I could choke it down at the shoreline while soaking the worm.

Once at the rager inlet I stuck the end of my home made broomstick gaff into the mud right at the current water level to gauge how fast the lake is rising. I tossed out the bait line and made a few casts with the Rapala before attempting to supp on my package of Chinese food. Oh my God it was awful. The sauce was overpowering and everything tasted stale. After five spoonfuls I was done. This would be the first item from Mountain House that was bad. Everything else of theirs I’ve tried has always been the best. I suspect the stale part wasn’t part of the deal back when I bought it.

Finally some good news to report: The slowly sinking inflated baby crawler was producing the best. The breeze worked in conjunction with the rager current to keep the rig steady in one place without blowing all over the cove. The pole bell was ringing all night. The only problem was when I went to set the hook all I reeled in was a small chewed up chunk of worm flesh surrounding the baitholder hook shank. I likely would have landed more this way if I had my hands on the rod the whole time. But then it would be crazy trying to do that and cast and retrieve the big lure with my other outfit simultaneously.

Just before dark I finally landed the second keeper of the trip, a twelve inch brown that hooked itself while eating the worm.

After two hours I checked the water level, the lake had risen four inches in that time, or an average of four feet per day. That pace will slow in the next few weeks as the area to fill will spread out some. The inlet won’t slow any time soon as the snowpack in the drainage up to Bishop Pass is quite deep, as you have seen in the photos. I predict the lake will be full by the first week of August.

After dark the worm trick wasn’t working anymore. Around nine I was really hungry and pulled out that now cold pouch of nasty Chinese food. I think maybe those first five bites hours ago conditioned my palate because all of a sudden it tasted like some kind o’ weird-ass kimchee, which I love. I managed to suck down the whole thing even though the stale factor prevailed.

I kept at it with the big Rapala until eleven like I was Linus waiting for The Great Pumpkin, or in my case, The Great Brown Trout, who, as the story goes, never appears.

Back at camp I cleaned fish and stowed them in a mini-fridge carved from a snowbank next to camp using a plastic trowel. Earlier the breeze subsided and at night I could feel the air become very cold. It wasn’t a problem for me in my zero degree bag and windproof tent.

Friday morning after sleeping in I saw all the local snowmelt ponds froze overnight. I rolled everything up, assembled my pack, ate four seven layer dream bars left over from Thanksgiving for caloric burn and bailed. Look at me, I’m an old fart jumping from rock to rock over the creeks with a backpack on. All that boulder hop training at the breakwall growing is really paying off.

An hour and ten later I was back at the truck filling my Coke cooler with snow. As I rolled out of the overnight lot this dude was stowing away into his car trunk a stringer of three beautiful rainbows over three pounds each. I saw him earlier fishing the shoreline straight down from the lot! Just goes to show an attempt at making a fishing fantasy happen doesn’t always bring realization. All this effort and misery wasn’t worth the two little guys I brought home for breakfast. I’m glad I did it though, as any good backpack practice with equipment and body is a good investment for next month’s week-long wilderness adventure to my secret big brown trout lake.

*****

Opaleye Point 5/4

I haven’t fished Palos Verdes since December. Then and the four times prior, back to last August, I pretty much caught nothing because there are no fish due to the water being unseasonably cold and the kelp is so thick it was hard to find a spot to make any kind of productive cast.

Since I am for the moment caught up with life’s baloney and have a day off to kill, I gave Opaleye Point a try during the morning’s incoming tide. Colorado Lagoon in Long Beach has plenty of quality algae, the waves were down, access to the platform rock was easy, there was adequate space between me and the kelp but the prominent problem persists; there are still no fish.

For bass I tried the five-inch WildEye sardine and PowerBait Jerk Shads and for opaleye the standard wad of algae under a bubble. From six until ten I had no bites and only saw one Garibaldi.

Worse than algae floating in Colorado Lagoon

So. Cal. kelp is resurging

Whale washes up on P.V. beach

*****

Jim L. visits Lake Sabrina 6/4/2011

James S. netted a big fat trout at Bass Lake

Jim L. sends this awfully snowy photo from Lake Sabrina, the day before opening day.

I took a picture of a horny toad

21-year-old windshield finally replaced

Truck broke down two days before High Sierra trip

How to catch fish with spider webs

*****

Tragedy from Jim L.:

Now This Is A Splinter! Read the story on this before you think much about it. *DON'T DRIVE THAT FISHING BOAT TOO FAST! *So you thought YOU had a bad day at the office ! *OK, all you medics. .... .... Top this one ! This is an actual emergency room photo of a fisherman who lost control of his High Speed Bass Boat in West Virginia. The warden's believe that he was traveling at a speed of approximately 75 mph at the time of the accident. He was unable to negotiate a curve in the narrow waterway and unfortunately for him, upon striking the shoreline, he was ejected from the boat and landed on an old fence post. You can probably picture what happened next, but this photograph really says it all. The good news is after about 6 months, this man made a full recovery after suffering a shattered hip, broken leg, several broken ribs, internal injuries and soft tissue damage. The doctors credited his recovery to the fact that the post lodged itself so tightly that there was little or no blood loss. Now, that's got to hurt!