Took the last week of July off and camped at Mono village at Twin Lakes. My wife gave me a hall pass, so I decided to take a trip over to the East Walker. Last year, I only caught a few small rainbows on the EW. I always knew the potential is there for a large brown, so I keep going back for more. For the entire month before I was checking the flows and it looked pretty high. I was lucky to hit it when I did. The flows were down quite a bit and the water was prime. I started at around 8 am. About 5 cast in, I picked up what I came for. Mr. Brown decided to say hello to my size 16 BH PT. I almost didn't believe what I had caught. It measured at close to 20 inches.
Another highlight of the East Walker was watching 3 other guys hook into 20+ browns. I have never heard so much whooping and yelling on a stretch of river. One fella hooked in to a large fish upstream about 500 yards, fell in the water, floated down right in front of me. The guy was laughing, fighting the fish all the way down. I asked if he wanted help to land it and he wanted it all to himself. Just so happened he is from Sacramento, so it was cool to BS with him while he was trying to warm up from his swim.
I ended up hooking into a few more fish and landed a 16 inch rainbow later that morning.
I counted 14 fly fisherman on the river by the time I left at noon. The great thing is that everyone was catching fish.
East Walker
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