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Brown trout are usually thought of as the main quarry of solitary trollers who spend many hours working Rapalas, Rebels and other big lures along the shoreline of Sierra Nevada lakes. But browns, including some big trophy ones, can also be caught by anglers fishing the high elevation lakes of the mountains on summer and fall afternoons. Chris Hammond of Diversified Marine Products in Sacramento showed me how this is done several years ago when Chris, his son, Justin, and I went on a bank fishing adventure to French Meadows Reservoir, accessed by a long, grueling ride. "The key for browns is to fish the afternoon when the wind stirs up the insects, minnows and other forage," said Hammond. We got there in the morning, mainly because both of us had evening meetings to go to. However, we caught only one trout, a measly planter rainbow, by 2 p.m. The wind came up and suddenly the brown trout bite caught on fire. Chris tossed out an inflated nightcrawler as the wind kicked up and hooked a quality brown of 14 inches. He landed another before I hooked a fish, another scrappy, beautifully colored brown. However, we both had to leave just as the bite was breaking loose. |
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Tom Mulderrig and I encountered similar conditions when we went up to Silver Lake off Highway 88 on September 2. The fishing started slowly, but suddenly broke loose when I tossed my inflated nightcrawler off a rock ledge at the edge of a creek channel. I hooked four scrappy browns, while my cousin nailed one 13 incher on a day when fishing pressure was light and nobody else was catching hardly anything. All of these browns were pretty, colorful fish that contrasted with the clear blue water. Our key was to fish in a key feeding area - off a ledge and creek channel where browns can ambush forage - with a weed bed nearby. The other key to our success is that we didn't get there until around lunchtime, when the wind was blowing. If we had fished early in the morning, we might have caught nothing. The wind does two things; it puts riffles on the water and makes the browns less spooky in the clear water and it moves forage, including insects, aquatic invertebrates and minnows, towards the windward side of the lake. Inflated nightcrawlers are by far the top enticers, but tossing Rebels, Rapalas and other lures can nail some quality browns, particularly in the early morning and late evening hours. So give it a try - you don't need a boat to catch yourself some German browns when fishing the high elevation lakes of the Sierra Nevada! |
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