High Sierra 4x4 Backpack 7/20
One of my High Sierra fun zones has had its drought-related ups and downs since 1987 but these last 10 years have been devastating to various remote lake water levels. I took photos of each and numbered them by the sequence I visited beginning at age 14:
Lake I | Lake II | Lake III | Lake IV | Lake V
From that age, I knew of another lake I had yet to visit. The Eastern Sierra Back Country Fishing Guide from the State of California Natural Resources Agency proclaims Lake VI only contains rainbow trout, which is good. When I peruse this guide and see any lake that has brook trout in any combination with other salmonid species, I avoid it because brooks are dinky in the high country and they eat your offerings before the larger, prized varieties have a chance.
Last year while backpacking to 10,740-foot Lake V, I scrambled over an 11,800-foot ridge into the next drainage for a grand view of 11,100-foot Lake VI, which was completely full of deep blue crystal-clear water. As I rejoiced in stunned silence, I calculated a plan for this year.
When I first visited this region in 1986, which requires four-wheel drive and high clearance to access all its wonders, I made the exact same scouting run to Lake VI. There I found a Ford Bronco parked at the top of the ridge, next to the trail leading down to the lake. I contemplated, wow you can park right here and walk down a short trail of less than a half-mile to a big lake at an elevation where rainbow trout should do well as opposed to trudging three very steep miles from the more popular paved-road trailhead.
36 years later the Gladiator Rubicon powerfully tamed the super-rough 20-mile 4x4 trail up to the 11,500-foot truck camp. It has this Selec-Speed Control button on the dash you push when you see a rock pile coming up. The computer operates the throttle and brakes. All you need to do is steer to creepy crawl over most obstacles. Here is a boring video of the trail. I used a GoPro suctioncupped to the hood:
The next morning, Sunday, I ate what I call the Bishop breakfast, which is Sheepherder Bread French toast and bacon from Mahogany Smoke Meats. With butter and pure maple syrup, it is exactly what the backpack body needs for carbs, protein and grease to lube those knee joints.
From truck camp it was only a few minutes to the trailhead parking. From there I peered over the cliff to glimpse the lake and saw since last year it is still full and nobody is around.
It only took 45 minutes to walk down the trail over to the deepest part of the lake where I quickly found the perfect campsite near an awesome casting platform boulder. I hustled and set up to be waterproof for the expected afternoon monsoon thunder showers.
Once the light rain let up around 15:00, I gathered up all my angling gear and sauntered a mere 100 feet to the casting boulder, which has a large flat top six feet above the waterline with great views. From there I cast my four pound outfit rigged with a quarter-ounce egg sinker, swivel and three feet of two-pound leader with a treble hook molded with Gulp Chunky Cheese dough bait and just below that an inflated baby nightcrawler pinned to a #8 Gamakatsu baitholder hook. While that was soaking out as far and deep as possible, I fan-cast a rainbow pattern Kastmaster at all different depths. It was a countdown of 28 for the sinker to hit bottom and 30 for the lure, meaning this area is very deep.
After a couple hours I switched lures to a Thomas Buoyant in brown trout pattern, same as I catch rainbows with at Secret Brown Trout Lake. Periodic checks of the bait rig proved it wasn’t working very well. The extreme pressure of depth was causing both baits to not float off the bottom, as evidenced by the strands of algae coating both weight and hook after I reeled in.
I kept hearing this buzzing sound like a rattlesnake a few bushes away. I glanced over and saw a chickadee fly out. I’ll bet that’s the sound of babies and sure enough there was a nest sitting right on the ground.
One of the first curiosities one ponders when visiting a high-country lake for the first time is, how’s that evening rise? Generally, this is an indication of the quantity of fish available. As eight o’clock approached and the wind ripple was off the water’s surface, it was non-existent here even though there were thousands of bugs floating atop. Four out of the five aforementioned lakes always had evening rises that resembled rain drops, there were so many fish. Here at Lake VI, I saw only three jumpers. One was about twenty feet to my right, another a hundred yards to my left and the third was across the lake. Each time I heard a splash I looked and in these three places the ring was only a few feet from where the previous splash occurred twenty minutes earlier. I concluded these are the same three fish. The good news was, they were all very huge splashes. I gave it until 21:00 and then went to bed.
Monday, I hiked down the trail to look at a couple other lakes, including Lake II that Mom, Dad and the two sisters hiked to back in 1972. The water is low but still there were a few surfacers noticed while I was there. The other unnamed lake is basically a algae-filled mosquito swamp. And speaking of, the skeeters were around but not in massive clouds. Just a few hanging around all day when the breeze stopped but they were easily managed by DEET 100.
After a nap during thunderstorms, I was back at the casting boulder again until 21:00 same techniques and same results. I saw the same three fish jump multiple times in the same three spots. Boring!
Tuesday after breakfast I was suiting up to ready myself for an investigative stroll around the lake when I saw another angler on the main trail walking towards camp. We said hey and I gave a brief rundown of the non-existent fish action. Since it was morning time before the usual winds kicked up, the lake surface was glassy with no fish rings. I mentioned this is what the evening rise looked like the past two nights. That bummed him out since he was flyfishing only. He came up the long way from the paved road and mentioned to me his motivation was sparked by someone he met down at the campground, who showed him photos of three- and five-pound trout they pulled out of here this week using a red Thomas Buoyant. I said that’s what I been using past two days and I got nuthin! Except, I admitted, that my Thomas was brown colored. I did let him know the three fish I did see jump were big. Then I offered my two-day assessment. I think since this is a big deep lake rich with bugs, the fish are feeding deep on scuds and snails. In the past I have caught rainbows and goldens from the bottom of lakes around here that had fat crunchy bellies full of small snail shells. Enough jibber jabber. He went one way around the lake and I went the other.
An hour or so later we met up again. He got nuthin using his fly rod and same for me with the brown and chrome Thomas flashing in the bright sunshine at different depths. Back down the trail to the pavement he went.
I kept casting from different spots and depths along the shoreline as I went. The first thing I noticed was, there are no fry, smolts, fingerlings or six-inchers along the shoreline visible even while using polarized glasses. I found this very unusual, as during this second year of severe drought, in the middle of July there actually is a highly viable inlet creek with 200 yards of meandering spawning gravel. One would think during ice-out at the end of May through the middle of June the creek would swell to twice the flow and all these purported big rainbows would easily make their way upstream to reproduce just like at Lakes I and V. Here at Lake VI the DFW needs to aerially drop fingerlings periodically to sustain the fishery and then it takes five years for the ones that don’t get eaten by big guys to grow to a decent size.
About thirty minutes later directly across the lake from camp I hooked up using the Thomas and it felt sizeable… for about ten seconds and then it came off. Sheesh. At least something hit it.
In the next 90 minutes, as I cast my way back to camp, I found a perfect campsite right next to a great fishing zone where there would be minimal rocks to snag on. My next visit the tent will be staked under a few shady limber pines on a brown meadow where several Belding’s ground squirrels reside. I haven’t seen many of these guys around in the last bunch of years. The other resident rodent around here is the ubiquitous golden-mantled ground squirrel, of which there are thousands.
After lunch and thunderstorm nap I hiked to where I saw one of the jumpers earlier, off a set of rocks a hundred yards to the left of camp. The water was much shallower here and the Gulp bait remained afloat the whole time. I used the same four-pound getup with the two-pound leader only this time I tied on a much smaller #16 treble hook and used a lighter 1/8-ounce egg weight. While that was soaking, I proceeded fan casting the Thomas a few rocks over. Thirty minutes later my fish pole bell dinged loudly and I saw my bait rod bend in half. I jetted over, grabbed it and started cranking but by that time the line was caught up on something out there, presumably rocks and I reeled in nuthin; no hook weight or swivel.
I retied the Gulp bait rig and cast to another spot but neither on that setup nor the lure did I have another hit the rest of the night. And that was it for fishin’. Two hits in three days. I will need to study and come up with another plan. This happens when you visit new lakes in The Sierra. My first time at Lake V, I caught only one golden in four days and then every time I came back with a revised plan I limited out except last year when it just about dried up.
Wednesday morning I packed up and hiked up the steep trail, which only took 90 minutes to arrive at my vehicle. On the way out I saw this Range Rover all beat up. It wasn’t there when I came in Sunday. Made me glad I bought the Jeep.
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