Eastside sept 24th and 25th

[PaulC]

Went out to the eastern sierras for a weekend warrior trip last weekend.
Arrived in Mammoth at 1am with howling winds....uh oh.

Luckily the winds stayed down the rest of the trip with the temps rising into the tshirt range.
Fished big springs in the morning on Saturday with a nice BWO hatch coming off 11-1. Size 16 BWO adult patterns landed a few nice fish.
The fish wanted nothing to do with anything besides BWO patterns. Too small...nada, too big...nada. Dry fly fishing at its finest:)
Migrated to the upper owens at benton crossing for the afternoon session.
Moderate winds calmed down around 4-5 pm with a nice size 16-18 caddis hatch coming off. Landed a few more nice bows out there.
Definitely spooked a few large fish hanging out in the weedbeds.

Sunday, we fished little lakes on the way out.
That is definitely one of my zen spots with backdrops rivaling anywhere most of the sierras.
Lots of small brookies bouncing caddis flies off of rocks.
Gin clear water and the aspen were turning for the fall.
Always cool to see those fish just holding in the deep slots cut through the grass.

Lower owens was flowing hard (~600cfs) so we skipped that this trip.
The gorge was probably on fire, but with a small dog and overgrown stinging nettles, we skipped out on that also.
Definitely hard to fit every spot into one weekend.
Hope the report helps anyone on their way out there before season closure.
-Paul

[CW]

Paul -
I was in Mammoth as well to see how hard the Hot Creek Ranch fish were .... well, they were going ape**** on size 18 and 20 blackish/grey mottled caddis and small BWO emergers. Good numbers of fish, but smaller in size, biggest was 13 inches. Some of the pigs I saw .... they would look briefly and refuse early. Bill Nichols would walk the property making sure all guests were really fishing on top. What a great place. Didn't have to go to 7x, but then again, I couldn't even get some of the pigs to look at my flies - they would look up, refuse early, point at me and laugh. Ran into some old friends, got invited to tag along to fish Heenan, got into some good sized fish. I was told the East Walker and Crowley are going crazy right now, with spurts of extremely hot fishing, and small periods of mediocre fishing. I still love our Yuba river.... and many of you have heard this before elsewhere, but .... since the good Lord made the earth three fourths water, shouldn't 18 hours of every day be spent fishing on or near the water? So much water, not enough time.

[Digger]

Yup, not enought time is right.
What are they charging at the ranch this year? And was it worth it?
Did you try any beetle imitations? I heard they usually work in that stretch.

[CW]

We stayed Friday through Monday (spent the night Sunday night and then fished Monday morning) - and the total cost per person was 305 dollars. That price is unbelievably cheap. We were responsible for all of our own food and gear ......

Didn't try beetles because the caddis were coming off in large clouds and the fish got a bit stupid at times, but some of the slower bends would have the larger fish slurping something that I couldn't figure out .....

We would have reserved for next year, but it was already booked. I think the waiting period is like 2 years right now, but you can request to have your name put in on the list, and the cancellations are frequent, but then there are so many folks on the waiting list, the proprietors have no problem filling the empty spots.

Best wishes, and hope you can get there soon.