High Sierra Topix

Intended: Fishing trip.

Actuality: Hiking trip


You know the old saying about the best laid plans of mice and men…

Well, I consulted a lot of maps and snow depth surveys, reports, etc. on the possibility of snow and ice at a favorite lake. Other lakes that were higher in elevation were apparently ice-free, so I thought everything would work out OK.

Here is a well know view for some of you who know the area. The amount of snow at the head of the valley should have given me a clue, right?



A hard slog uphill, the trail being VERY difficult to find most of the time, huge fields of sun cups to cross, and I was eventually greeted by this sight:


No fishing for you, pal! I was not a happy camper, but I did so anyhow.

I hiked back out the next day and fished some lakes in the Tioga Pass vicinity for a couple of days, getting a few of these:


After that I planned to fish for some rare trout in another mountain range close to the Sierra with two new fishing buddies from Nevada. My campsite for that night before the meet up, was at a place I suspect was the salt lick for these wild Nevada locals.


The next day was beautiful and the scenery and company superb, but in hindsight, more GPS and map checking probably would have prevented us from taking the wrong trail. We didn’t get lost, but we expended a lot of energy and time and had to turn back without even making one cast. Again, a lot of hiking and no fishing. (mice…men…yadda, yadda, yadda…)

(photo credit A.G.)

The day I started to head home, I was greeted with this sight just north of Lee Vining
(yeah, I know, I posted this photo before…)


Here’s a shot from Conway Summit, giving you an idea exactly where this is.


I love fly fishing and unfortunately I didn’t do as much of it as I would’ve liked, but it was still nice to hike in some beautiful country, meet some cool new people, see some wildlife and forget about the hassles of modern life for a while.

Nice Brown to salvage the fishing!

Awesome day trip for us! It was finally good meeting you! Looking forward to more hikes!

lasvegasmilo wrote:Awesome day trip for us! It was finally good meeting you! Looking forward to more hikes!

As much as I enjoyed the hike, I look forward to doing some FISHING next time!

Sorry for the late post. Just getting around to posting a a few TRs and I saw this thread. I guess I vsited within days of the original TR. I thought I'd share because I had sort of novel experience. Ice fishing. When my friend and I first saw the lake we were pretty excited at first thinking we had arrived to find it partially thawed. That excitement was followed by disappiontment when we realized the lake was still in fact covered by at least a thin layer of ice.

Not to be detered we found a hole through the ice that I new from past visits was over some deeper water. We took turns vertically jigging lures and flies and managed find a couple takers pulled them through the ice.






I never thought I'd ever go ice fishing let alone in the Sierra. Definitely made for a unique and fun trip.

Nice! I'm really glad that you got into some fish, congrats! Yeah, it looked a lot like that when I was there. I didn't even bother to rig up my tackle, but I didn't see any holes in the ice either. I was trying to catch it just after ice-out but I was far too early. Oh well. I hope someone does some trail maintenance on that route sometime soon. There were far too many wash-outs and overgrown vegetation which made finding the trail difficult at times. Hello? California Conservation Corps? I have a job for you...