I grew up in NoCal, and my buddy Tom and I drove from the SF Bay Area to Kennedy meadows to camp for a few days. I don’t remember a whole lot about that trip, except the fishing. We flogged the water with out Big5 Specials and whatever flies we had, not knowing anything about them, or really even how to do it. After a couple of days with nothing to show, a kid walks through the campground with a stringer full of fish.
“Where did you catch those?” we demanded.
“Up by the store. A man in a truck came by and put a whole bunch of fish in the river.” We grabbed our rods and bolted upriver to the store, and then down to the water, joining 10 or 15 others doing the same. I headed upriver a few feet, and found a log and crossed the river. I was now “alone” on the other side. A few casts and that magic of a strike. I managed to land a couple, and so did tom. We went back to camp, we cooked them up, stuffed with instant rice, wrapped in foil and into the fire.
That experience has stayed with me, and I had wanted to go back ever since. But you know how it goes, stuff happens, different priorities, etc. That, and we had discovered the Mammoth area for fishing. And then the Kern. And there was the trips to British Columbia, Utah, Oregon, New Zealand to go fishing, and trips to Baja, and NorCal to windsurf, and trips to Colorado, Utah, Idaho and France to ski, and backpacking adventures all over the Sierra in search of trout all vying for precious vacation time.
4 years ago, I decided I was going back. But the (what seems “normal”) fire season shut that down. And the next year. And the next. This year, the plan was in the books, with no actual fire nearby, and only waiting for the ban on camping to be lifted. It was going to be the last week of September. Perfect. Shorter cooler days, but still not into bad weather. There were numerous places to go- Miles of the Stan, Relief Reservoir and Beardsley Reservoir for float tubing, the Clark Fork for small stream fishing, the East and West Walker rivers just about an hour away, Twin Lakes Bridgeport, I was going to be in hog heaven.
I left home at 3:30 am, and arrived around 12. It was (not surprisingly) anything like I remembered. A nearly empty campground, I secured a site that was bigger than the lot my house is on (1/4 acre). Setting up camp and getting all of my gear ready to go took a couple of hours. The rest of today would be a leisurely exploration of the Stan in and around camp.
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Less than a hundred yards from my trailer’s front steps and down the use pathway to the water, which was pretty skinny. About 30-40 ft across, mostly pocket water. I had rigged up a 5wt and put on an Ant Acid (a kind of ant/stimulator/grasshopper), and began catching fish immediately. Working my way upriver, I got hit and caught fish everywhere I expected to. About an hour later, I had worked up to a long, slow, sand bottomed section. I could see people up on a grassy bank about 5 yards in front of me. My attention turned to the several dozen dark shapes hovering over the sand. As I cast to them, I was a little disappointed that none of them would take my offering. I moved up, and chatted with a lady in a chair with her spin rod.
“There’s a pretty good pod of fish just a little way downstream” I offered.
“Yeah, the stocking truck was just here and they put in a bunch of fish here.”
Déjà vu all over again.
I worked up river a little more, but the early start and the long trip was starting to get to me, so I headed back to camp. After a little more than an hour and probably ½ mile of river, I had landed 15 trout, all in the 10-14” range. Not bad.
Day Two and I had a specific plan. Remember that Big5 Special? Well, I still have it. And I had it with me.
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Berkley Spartan and a South Bend reel. This are my original rod and reel, the ones that brought me here. I have no idea how I could have possible kept this thing for over 40 years. The last time I remember using the reel was in British Columbia on the Campbell River. I had it spooled with a full sink line, and we happened to hit the Pink salmon run perfectly. Yes, we caught 5-6lb salmon, bright from the ocean, on that reel.
The last time I remember seeing the rod? I don’t know. I believed that it was on my garage rack, split into it’s two pieces and rubber banded together. But I couldn’t find it. I looked all over, but you know what a garage looks like when you’ve lived in one place for 25 years…
Part of the reason I wanted to find it was as a decoration at the cabin, but I sure did want to have it for this trip. Up in the rafters (with my sleeping bags, bear cans, old skis, and Halloween decorations was a GLoomis rod tube. It was from my GL4 that I bought at Sport Chalet many years ago. I had since broken that rod and had it replaced with my current GLX. Hmm, I thought, could it be? There was no reason to have that case, as I use something else for that rod. I picked it up and brought it down. Sure enough, there it is in all of its battered, faded, wrap-shredded glory. I would fish this again.
I drove downriver a bit, and found an empty parking lot with a bridge across the river. It’s mid morning on a fantastic blue bird day. Down to the water, and out goes the cast. And another. And more. The fish just didn’t want to cooperate. The rod? Well, hmm. It’s a lot heavier than my GLX or my Cabella’s Three Forks 3wt. It’s a lot slower that either as well. Nor as accurate. But I can put the line where I want and…bam. Fish on.
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Déjà vu all over again, again. I fished about ¾ mile of the river here, picking up 4 or 5 fish, again in the 10-14” range, all brightly colored and feisty. I retired this old rod for the trip, having done it’s job, destined now to hang on the wall with stories to tell.
The rest of the trip unfolded as a lazy exploration of all the places I had planned. On one day, I drove over Sonora Pass to fish the West Walker, Upper Twin Lake, and The East Walker. I got up before the sun and drove to a spot on the West that I knew held big trout. My goal was to be there at sunrise, and toss
Big streamers on a sink tip line. Well, I did that, but if those trout were still there, they didn’t care about what I was tossing. On to Upper Twin. I had brought a float tube, and was going to explore some near shore deep water, again with big streamers and sinking line. When I got there at around 8:30 am, the lake was whitecapping fiercely. Bummer. On to the East Walker. The plan here was to fish big streamers on a sinking line, but to try out some dry fly action to. Strike 3, and back to the The Barn in Bridgeport for a California burrito. Man, those things are good, and since I can only eat half of it, it would be tomorrow’s dinner as well.
It was only around noon, so I decided on hitting the West Walker at Pickell Meadows. Walking downstream, I knew I wouldn’t fish this- the water was almost non existent. Back over the Pass and to camp.
Clouds had been building along the crest, and I began hearing thunder. Late afternoon brought a pretty good downpour, along with thunder, lightning, and hail.
On another day, I wanted to float tube Beardsley Reservoir. I had heard good things about this lake. I was up fairly early, as this place deep in the canyon has a reputation for some pretty fierce winds in the afternoon. At the bottom of the canyon, you can turn left to go to the dam, or right to go the launch ramp (1 mile). I chose the dam, and 5 minutes late was looking at the perfectly calm lake at the dam. I parked and got out of the car, looking for a place to launch the tube. There wasn’t one. All boulders all around the lake. Off to the ramp. 15 minutes later, I got out of the truck and surveyed the vast expanse of dirt between me and the water. And out on the edge of that, a sea of whitecaps.
In the 15 minutes it took to drive to the ramp, the wind had literally turned on. It was 9 AM. Disheartened, I vowed to fish anyway. It looked like there was a cove around the corner, I could kick over there and fish protected water, and walk back. So I did. This was a nice little triangle shaped cove, steep walls, and I could see all kinds of cover in the form of big to huge boulders. I fished some big streamers and caught a couple of nice (17”) brookies. After a while, I decided to get out and take the tube back to the truck, and then come back with a spinning rod to see what I could find.
I pulled out the ½ oz silver Kastmaster with the white feather tail ‘cause it was heavy, and the wind was getting bigger. Once I started launching that thing like, a hundred yards across the cove, I started hooking up consistently. I didn’t measure any more of them, but they were all about the same size- 17”, and I landed about 10 of them in less than an hour.
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On the way back, I was planning on fishing the Clark Fork. Pulling over at the first fishable spot, I made a few casts and noted how warm the water was. After jumping up river a couple times, I could feel the water cooling, and the action began to pick up. Over the course of the remaining week, I would fish here several times, from near the confluence with the Stan to up past the end of the road. Always in the afternoon, and the farther upstream the better. On one day, I got a trifecta of sorts- a brown, brookies, and rainbows all in the same day. A Stan Slam? No pic of the brown, but the brookies and rainbows were over 12”.
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On another day, I had planned to hike to Relief Reservoir, about 2.5 miles upstream from the KM store. Packing in my float tube, the rocky trail seemed to go on forever. The general consensus is to hike the trail to Grouse Creek, and cut down to the lake there. Getting frustrated now that I was almost 2 hours in, and the lake nowhere in sight, I spotted a well used trail off to the right, including horse tracks. So I followed it. Less than 200 yards later I was overlooking the lake, just above the dam. I could see people and hoses just to my left, so I asked the packer if there was a trail down to the lake. There was indeed a “trail” down to the water, a bit of a scramble, and there was one spot where you had to use your hands, but I’ve done far worse.
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Once into the tube, I paddled away from the dam, slowly cruising the shoreline trolling a tandem streamer set up. Occasionally making casts towards shore where it looked promising. I landed one fish. After a couple of hours, the wind began to kick up. I didn’t want to be blown to the far end, so I hastily finned back to my launch point. I broke down the tube and the fly rod, and again took out the spinning rod. Red and gold Thomas Bouyant launched towards the deep, and instant hook up. I spent the next couple of hours working my way around to the other side of the dam, catching fish pretty consistently.
In between these bigger adventures were many smaller ones. Driving downstream, fishing a mile or so, the going to another spot, hitting the Clark Fork again. One thing that stayed consistent was the that every night between around 6 and 7, I would walk down to the lowest point in the campground, and fish my way back up to my site.
The fishing through here was excellent, every night. I would catch between 8-12 rainbows every time in the half hour or 40 minutes it took me to fish this stretch. There was one spot that I hooked a fish that looked larger, but I never found out as he broke me off on the strike. Every Time. 5 days in a row.
At the end of the week, and it’s time to go home. It won’t be 43 years before I go back again.
