High Sierra Trout

[John H]

I hiked and fished the Sierras the last week of July. I went in at the Crabtree trailhead and spent eight days in Emigrant Wilderness and a small corner of Yosemite. Great time to be in the mountains as long as you don't mind paying the mosquito tax. Water everywhere, plenty of snow still around and plants and animals trying to make the most of the short summer. I found some pods of feeding fish, spotted some nice cruisers, caught a couple of pretty nice ones and took a zero at one lake. Quite a trip.


Beautiful place to walk and fish.


Someday I would like to walk along the top of that ridge and look across Northern Yosemite.


Morning sun on the end of the granite and the beginning of the Eastern Sierra.


Running down the dream. My bug protection suit and some high quality trail.


Some trout trying to make it happen while the flows are good.


A couple of spawners in a meadow stream. Had to go into stealth mode for this shot.


Nice cruising rainbow. Blends in perfectly with the bottom.


I love the big afternoon sky. Makes you want to be out there living large.


This fish was gulping mayflies. It took four flies to fool him. I thought I might not get him but a size 14 parachute adams was close enough. Miracle that I did not spook him.


That is a great backpacking trout. No big deal on the Lower Sac but a trophy at 8500 feet in the Sierras. Bead head wooly bugger.


Brook trout release.


The endangered Sierra yellow legged frog. Found him at a small fishless lake. This guy is a big part of the move away from planting. Probably a good thing but it is still nice to find lakes with spawning habitat and a population of grabby fish.


He was a pretty cooperative subject.


Some guy set this down next to the stream and walked off without it in about 1975.


Stumbled onto this place while on an off trail route. Yellowhammer Camp established in 1922. Several abandoned buildings and equipment. Kind of a ghost town although I think the Crabtree pack station is going in there now.