The group filed a complaint regarding the declining water quality - made most apparent after thousands of rainbow trout perished in low, warm water below the dam - with the State Water Resources Control Board in 1991. The complaint languished until the fly fishermen, the Kings River Conservation District (KRCD), the Kings River Water Agency (KRCA) and the Department of Fish and Game decided to work together voluntarily on a management plan to restore the river's fishery. The organizations agreed to put the complaint in abeyance while they evaluated the progress of the cooperative effort.

"Under the old agreement reached in 1964, the water agency could reduce flows down to 25 cfs below the dam," said Roger Miller, president of Fly Fishers for Conservation. "However, now minimum flows are 100 cfs and the objective of the program is to raise them up to 250 cfs through conjunctive use and water swaps."

The parties agreed that working cooperatively under a framework agreement was a good alternative to going to court to force the responsible management of the river, according to Miller.

When I went to Winton Park on December 7, the three agencies and representatives of the fly fishing group, including Miller and Hank Urbach, the organization's conservation officer, were there to implement another program of the cooperative effort - a hatch box project. The volunteers and agency staff put 70,000 rainbow trout eggs in hatch boxes at three locations from Piedra to the Highway 180 Bridge so the fish could grow out naturally in the river.

"Last year when we did the hatch box program for the first time with 30,000 brown trout eggs, 95 percent of the trout hatched," said Miller. "If somebody told me five years ago that I would be standing side by side the DFG, KRCD and KRWA putting hatch boxes in a river, I would have laughed at them and told them they were nuts.

"Our objective of the hatch box program and other measures, including a turbine bypass project to provide colder water, is to restore the Kings to the blue water fishery that it was years ago," emphasized Hank Urbach.

The initial results of the restoration program on the Kings River are very promising. with a cooperative stocking program of the Kings River by the DFG and the KRCD already bearing fruit in increased return to the creel. The DFG is now stocking 20,000 rainbow trout year round in the river, according to Jim Lindsay, manager of the DFG's San Joaquin River Fish Hatchery. In addition, the KRCD pays for food to raise 18,000 pounds of trout in Hot Creek Hatchery, to be released into the river at 1 pound and larger. The DFG also stocks an addition 25,000 subcatchable rainbows in the stream.

The Kings River is one of the few tailwater streams open to trout fishing in Central California in November and December. Most of the productive lower reaches of other Central Valley streams, such as the Merced, Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Mokelumne, are closed until January 1 to protect spawning king salmon, while the river canyons above the major reservoirs are closed to fishing until the last Saturday in April.

Most anglers I saw fishing the river at Winton Park, one of the popular access points on the river, reported catching quality trout. Ber Vang and his song, Cayne, showed off a -1/2 pound rainbow that they caught on Power Bait. Jose De Leon of Sanger caught two rainbows to 16 inches while fishing salmon eggs and Power Bait while fishing in a deep, quiet pool. Thirteen year old Nikki Danette Blalock was elated when she bagged a 14 inch trout.

I hooked two pretty rainbows, including a wild fish, while drifting crawlers below the Trimmer Springs Bridge just before dark.

Mark Owens at Doyal's Store in Trimmer Springs said holdover rainbows up to 10 pounds have been caught in the Kings River, so the possibility of bagging a real trophy is always there, in spite of the heavy fishing pressure that the river receives on weekends.

For maximum trout success, he recommended fishing meal worms under clear plastic bobbers. In the stretch from below the dam to the Cobbles (Alta) Weir, anglers can use a variety of bait, lures and flies. The limit is five fish, though many anglers prefer to catch and release.

The Kings River from Cobbles (Alta) Weir downstream to the Highway 180 Crossing is also open all year. However, only artificial lures with barbless hooks may be used and the daily bag and possession limit is zero.

If you want to fly fish, the best time is from November through April. "The best flows are 1500 cfs and below," Urbach said. "During the irrigation season, the flows go up to 4,000 to 5,000 cfs." Fly patterns that Miller and Urbach recommended using including pale morning duns, adam, trico spinners, and caddis emergers.

The Highway 180 Bridge is traditionally considered the limit for good trout fishing, but quality rainbows are taken in the river all of the way to Lemoore when flows are favorable , according to Randy Kelly, DFG senior fishery biologist. "Before Pine Flat Dam, the trout apparently moved up and down stream with changing water temperatures, since the lower river would become warm during the summer months," he said.

Rainbows have traditionally dominated the trout fishery on the river, though the DFG has intermittently planted German browns. "The browns seem to disappear after not being planted for a number of years," said Kelly. "It may be that the brown's life history makes the rainbows do better in the long term. The browns spawn in the fall, when conditions are lowest, and the young fish may be washed downstream by the high irrigation flows to areas without good holding habitat."

The Kings River historically had a steelhead run when Tulare Lake would converge with the waters of the San Joaquin watershed during heavy rains in the winter and spring. However, with the draining of Tulare Lake for "reclamation" as farm land in the late Nineteenth Century, the trout of the Kings became landlocked.

For more information about fishing and facilities on the Kings River, call Doyal's Store in Trimmer Springs, (559) 787-2387, Valley Rod & Gun, Clovis, (559) 292-3474, and Fishermen's Warehouse in Fresno, (559) 225-1838.