R03 TR: Sabrina to Fishgut, Bottleneck and Schober Lakes - 8/23 2017

[overheadx2]

Thanks to Rlown for help with the photos!

Headed up to Bishop on Thursday and spent the night at Parchers to get acclimated and started out early Friday. The trail seemed pretty busy, and there were quite a few people at Blue lake.

I was amazed at the work put into this stair case

I wasn't sure if we were going to go to Baboon lakes or Fishgut but the amount of people on the trail made the decision easier. Since Fishgut seemed to be way off the beaten path with no proper trail to it, we decided to head there. We pretty much headed straight up the hill from the inlet of Dingleberry Lake keeping to the west of the larger talus. it didn't take to long to crest the ridge to Bottle neck lake and start looking for a place to settle in for the weekend. We ended up camped at Upper Fishgut on the rocky east shore in an effort to get away from the bothersome but not horrible mosquitoes.

Upper Fishgut
The next day we did a day hike up to Schober holes. getting around bottleneck lake was a little difficult, but once around the lake the going was pretty straight forward.

Bottleneck Lake

Tad poles on the way to Schober

Brookie at lower Schober

Lower Schober holes

Upper Schober hole

On the way back we followed the gradual ridge going east from the lowest Schober lake to the unnamed lake north of Fishgut lakes eliminating bottleneck lake altogether and had a much simpler time. We hiked to the upper Schober lake and was able to spend a lot of time fishing each lake. It was kind of interesting since one lake had lots of 8" fish, another had lots of nice strong 12 to 13" fish and one seemed devoid of fish.
As I said, we looped around avoiding bottleneck Lake and ended up at the Lower Fishgut lake that was loaded with 8 to 10" fish as opposed to upper Fishgut that was loaded with mostly 8"ers.

Lower Fishgut

The next day we fished around for a while and then headed for the trail head. Instead of heading back to Bottleneck and down we decided to go straight over the ridge from Lower Fishgut and traverse west to the outlet of dingleberry.

Sabrina from Fishgut Lakes

The basin above Dingleberry Lake from Fishgut - we traversed to the outlet of Dingleberry from here.

This proved to be much easier and much more scenic although neither way was to difficult. After having the whole basin to ourselves for several days, we were surprised to see hordes of folks camped only several miles away at Dingleberry and Blue lakes (I can only imagine Midnight and Hungry Packer Lakes). Over all it was a great time with solitude and relatively good fishing only a few miles in. Phil

[gary c.]

Phil,
I was one of the group headed out on Friday that suggested the Emerald Lakes over Blue lake because of all the people. Happy to hear that you had a great trip.

[overheadx2]

it was good to talk with you. Fishgut was great, not a soul for 3 days and pretty good fishing. On the way out on Sunday there were actually people that were camped on the trail so you literally had to walk through their camp to follow the trail .

[maverick]

Hey Phil, any closer to putting up some photos?

[rlown]

resize your photos in MS paint. drop them down to 75%. Retry the upload until it works. I usually do an 80% reduction and then again until it will upload. If you're on a mac, good luck with that.

otherwise, get a flickr account, upload your pics to flickr, make them public, and then use the share button and the bbcode option, copy/paste the URL into your HST window and all will be well.

As Tahoejeff so eloquently put it, "F you photobucket."

http://www.highsierratopix.com/communit ... 98#p125668

[overheadx2]

Thanks for the help, with a little guidance it turned out to be relatively easy.

[kpeter]

Some wonderful color in your photos. I visited Fishgut and Schober Holes on dayhikes out of DIngleberry more than twenty years ago and found them charming. I particularly liked the views back over Dingleberry such as in your final photo. Thank you for the trip down memory lane