Post by glitchmo on Sept 16, 2020 9:52:43 GMT -6
So, last year, in the before-time my fiancee and I had planned to have our wedding this year in the Eastern Sierra. I've spent a lot of summer weeks up there, and it's beautiful, and its still probably my favorite place to go trout fishing.
But, then COVID came along and we thought it would be irresponsible to ask everyone to travel all that way for a gathering that would either be dangerous or if we implemented enough safety stuff to make it safe, then it would be not-fun. So, that got cancelled.
But we still had a bunch of deposits in at that point, and we managed to convert the trip into an elopement/adventure for the two of us. We planned to spend half the trip in the west side Sierras in and near Yosemite, then the second half visiting with my parents on the East side in Mammoth.
Unfortunately, 2020 still wasn't done with us. Satellite view of the area on the fourth.
Satellite view on the sixth.
We flew in on that day.
I'm almost done complaining, because I really think we made the best of a bad situation. We had a lot of fun, and I caught a lot of fish, including some good ones.
In Yosemite I spent a good amount of time fishing the Merced river just below the valley where it gets steeper and drops into a gorge with lots of pocket water. The fishing down there was just lights out, I got probably 50 fish in just a couple hours. All but one were rainbows, mostly between 10-12", all wild (there's no stocking in the park anymore). Plus one good brown. Flows were low (~20cfs), and the temps were flirting with 68 in the afternoon, but because of the boulder field/pocket water structure the fish were not overly spooky and were very aggressive. I don't have any pictures from that part of the trip, but this photo of a nearby river is pretty close.
Yosemite is definitely not known as a fishing destination, and the popular parts of the park really aren't great, but there definitely are some nice areas. I'll show another one later. The smoke situation was variable, ranging from annoying to really bad.
Anyways, we moved over to the Eastside after that to meet up with my folks, do wedding photos, and hit some other spots. Unfortunately, things got even more complicated when the USFS straight closed all of the National Forests in Central and Southern California, and if you're familiar with Western States in general, that means they closed almost all of the land, severely restricting our possible fishing spots.
The good news (kind of, in this situation) is that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is the other major landowner up there (by virtue of stealing/using most of the water in the Owens watershed) and they did not close their property. So with some careful map reading we were able to find some open areas and get some fishing in.
This is lower Convict Creek, which is a lovely, if small, little stream running through a meadow/pasture on the way down to Crowley Lake. There were hordes of tiny trout (in the 2-3" range) plus some tankers hiding in cut banks. As with most small streams, the trick is finding a way to put the fly where you need it and get a serviceable drift more than fly choice.
I didn't get any of the really big fish, though I spooked a couple, but I did land a couple of solid 12-14" fish out of a creek not more than 3 feet wide in most places.
The afternoon of that day we hit another couple of LADWP properties -- this is the outlet of Grant Lake, which is kind of a synthetic part of Rush Creek, but it still holds fish and is a lot more open than the lower part of that creek.
After that we hit a nearby retaining pond, where my wife got into a couple of fish on spinning gear.
The next day the prevailing winds shifted and smoke down low got substantially worse. The other major property in the area that was still open was Yosemite, and we still had access rights (the park is operating on a reservation only system for now, due to COVID).
So we hit my other favorite fishing area in the park, which is the upper Tuolumne. In this case, the Lyell Fork. This is one of my favorite areas of the park. It's a beautiful little meadow stream which alternates between long slow, shallow meadow pools, equally large but much deeper plunge pools, and classic pocket water/riffles. The water was, again, very low and clear, but temps were good. We managed a few fish in the meadow sections by dropping flies over the edge of the grass, but the fish were so spooky in the skinny water that it was extremely tough. Much better fishing was available in the riffles, where most of the areas you'd expect were holding hungry browns from 8-10".
Anyways, it was a tough trip with lots of setbacks and challenges, but we made it work, had some good times, and scratched out some good fish in tough conditions.
Also this:
But, then COVID came along and we thought it would be irresponsible to ask everyone to travel all that way for a gathering that would either be dangerous or if we implemented enough safety stuff to make it safe, then it would be not-fun. So, that got cancelled.
But we still had a bunch of deposits in at that point, and we managed to convert the trip into an elopement/adventure for the two of us. We planned to spend half the trip in the west side Sierras in and near Yosemite, then the second half visiting with my parents on the East side in Mammoth.
Unfortunately, 2020 still wasn't done with us. Satellite view of the area on the fourth.
Satellite view on the sixth.
We flew in on that day.
I'm almost done complaining, because I really think we made the best of a bad situation. We had a lot of fun, and I caught a lot of fish, including some good ones.
In Yosemite I spent a good amount of time fishing the Merced river just below the valley where it gets steeper and drops into a gorge with lots of pocket water. The fishing down there was just lights out, I got probably 50 fish in just a couple hours. All but one were rainbows, mostly between 10-12", all wild (there's no stocking in the park anymore). Plus one good brown. Flows were low (~20cfs), and the temps were flirting with 68 in the afternoon, but because of the boulder field/pocket water structure the fish were not overly spooky and were very aggressive. I don't have any pictures from that part of the trip, but this photo of a nearby river is pretty close.
Yosemite is definitely not known as a fishing destination, and the popular parts of the park really aren't great, but there definitely are some nice areas. I'll show another one later. The smoke situation was variable, ranging from annoying to really bad.
Anyways, we moved over to the Eastside after that to meet up with my folks, do wedding photos, and hit some other spots. Unfortunately, things got even more complicated when the USFS straight closed all of the National Forests in Central and Southern California, and if you're familiar with Western States in general, that means they closed almost all of the land, severely restricting our possible fishing spots.
The good news (kind of, in this situation) is that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is the other major landowner up there (by virtue of stealing/using most of the water in the Owens watershed) and they did not close their property. So with some careful map reading we were able to find some open areas and get some fishing in.
This is lower Convict Creek, which is a lovely, if small, little stream running through a meadow/pasture on the way down to Crowley Lake. There were hordes of tiny trout (in the 2-3" range) plus some tankers hiding in cut banks. As with most small streams, the trick is finding a way to put the fly where you need it and get a serviceable drift more than fly choice.
I didn't get any of the really big fish, though I spooked a couple, but I did land a couple of solid 12-14" fish out of a creek not more than 3 feet wide in most places.
The afternoon of that day we hit another couple of LADWP properties -- this is the outlet of Grant Lake, which is kind of a synthetic part of Rush Creek, but it still holds fish and is a lot more open than the lower part of that creek.
After that we hit a nearby retaining pond, where my wife got into a couple of fish on spinning gear.
The next day the prevailing winds shifted and smoke down low got substantially worse. The other major property in the area that was still open was Yosemite, and we still had access rights (the park is operating on a reservation only system for now, due to COVID).
So we hit my other favorite fishing area in the park, which is the upper Tuolumne. In this case, the Lyell Fork. This is one of my favorite areas of the park. It's a beautiful little meadow stream which alternates between long slow, shallow meadow pools, equally large but much deeper plunge pools, and classic pocket water/riffles. The water was, again, very low and clear, but temps were good. We managed a few fish in the meadow sections by dropping flies over the edge of the grass, but the fish were so spooky in the skinny water that it was extremely tough. Much better fishing was available in the riffles, where most of the areas you'd expect were holding hungry browns from 8-10".
Anyways, it was a tough trip with lots of setbacks and challenges, but we made it work, had some good times, and scratched out some good fish in tough conditions.
Also this:
