Blue Lake, snowshoe style

Hey the last time I tried this - hiking in over snowbanks - it worked great and I caught some big brook trout a few feet from shore, though that was a different lake.  But I've been paddling this tube around Upper Blue Lake for an hour or so, scanning the overhanging mounds of snow beween the willow bushes on shore, probing with a big Bird's Nest to imitate a dragonfly nymph, and I still haven't found the inlet stream.

When I started out, the camp host told me some nice cutthroats had been caught near the inflow stream, and though I had checked that a stream was shown entering on the west shore in the De Lorme atlas, I must have failed to remember exactly how far round the lake it was!  Finally I change to a black woolly bugger and count the Type 3 sinking line down really deep.  As I'm paddling through the depths at the mouth of this bay I miss a tug, then land a planted rainbow.  He goes back, and on we go. 

Red Lake, Blue Lake ...

OK, I give up, maybe we will never get to fish California's rivers this year.  I'm heading for Alpine County in late July, and the mountains across from Silver Lake, then Caples Lake, are well-covered in snow for their top thousand feet or so.  I might not expect the East Fork of the Carson River to be fishable yet in an average year.  It drains really high peaks in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness, with extensive north-facing slopes where snow stays nearly all summer, and valleys of glacial moraine soil that any surface run-off puts into suspension in the river.  The East Fork often doesn't clear until August anyway, but its West Fork and most of the smaller streams are always fishable by now - except this year.

The first lake after the scenic drive through Carson Pass is Red Lake, so named for the red peak that stands starkly high and close above it.  Highway 88 snakes down its side to a dirt road access you come upon all too quickly, particularly if you're trying to check out the lake for rising trout.  There aren't any, but it is brim-full of greenish water, showing the fertility of this medium-sized lake.  I meet a flyfisher who's brought his pontoon raft in to re-rig.  He says it's very quiet, except for one fish he just pricked.  Minnow imitations are good he says, particularly for the big brook trout.  But he also says they can be moody, and he thinks the water's a few degrees too warm at 61 degrees. He prefers 58 to 59, and expects it to drop if the wind does (it's very cool today in the shade, but the sun is hot and the strong breeze warm.)

Whiskeytown, Meth Addicts and Hexagenia Mayflies

This strange, water-rich year in California, it's hard to find anywhere to fish. There's hardly a river that isn't bank high, roaring, churning silty water 'going to waste' as the old water barons and politicians might have said.  But in the uplands near the coast, forest duff is soaking up the extra snow-melt that will sustain juvenile salmon and steelhead through a hot summer, in the pools and runs between the ferns and coltsfoot of a little tributary.  Good fishing for migratory fish in two or three years may be our reward for a trout season that's two months late already.

Many lakes I might fish are still frozen, or at least their roads are switchbacks over unmelted snowbanks, passable only to intrepid jeep drivers who enjoy proving they can winch themselves anywhere, even if it does take them five hours to get there.  I will tackle these near ski-able roads soon with a pair of hiking boots, but for this trip, it's a lower-elevation reservoir that's destination.  We're going camping at Whiskeytown Lake, a big, attractive lake close to the Central Valley heat of Redding, which is often the second hottest place in the state after Death Valley.  It's a long drive, made less dull by the chance to try and identify almost twenty peaks with snow still on them in late June, rather than waiting the usual two hours for the twin volcano shapes of Lassen and Shasta to appear, wearing their garlands of snow. Then, not long after you turn off I-5, you're there, at a Federal Recreation Area. 

We pull off at the excellent visitor center and enjoy the wildflower plantings and the cool of the indoor exhibits and map displays. The rangers are really helpful, and guide us to the best waterfalls to hike and see - three small streams feed the lake and all three have spectacular falls this year.  Outside again, I find a sign listing the many sport fish in the lake. 'Rainbows and brown trout. - Huh!'  I resist the temptation to add 'Who knew', for the wife knew, she knows that I knew, and I know that... never mind, you get the picture: It's a family camping trip, right?