So as anyone who's ever been car shopping or apartment hunting will understand, I've been BUSY. Too busy to fish, and in that I'm starting a guide service, this is especially problematic. Contrary to my wife's assertions, it really isn't just a "lame excuse" to go out on scouting trips before taking paying clients, since even fisheries the guide knows intimately are always in a state of flux, presenting different conditions with changing seasons, weather and water levels.

To make up for lost time, I devised a plan to visit three of my favorite waters in one day, and the evening of Tuesday, June 11 found me strapping my canoe on my new fishing workhorse, a clean, well-maintained, used Izusu Rodeo. Much as I loved the old Tercel, my wife was correct in her observation that well-heeled, catch-and-release fly fishing clients might not enjoy its permanent slaughtered trout odor or having to help with the occasional push-start. My Rodeo also has more storage space, which is especially important when you suffer from multiple-fishing-personality-disorder, as I do. You see, I'm somewhat of an anomaly among area fishing guides, most of whom are divided into two main camps- captains who take clients in charter boats on Lake Tahoe for limits of mackinaw, and guides who stalk our wild trout rivers, showing clients how to catch and then gently release fish on barbless flies. Here I was, though, loading my trolling motor, depthfinder, live bait, spin tackle, waders, flies and fly rods in the back of my vehicle. Yes, I do it all, I love it all, and starting at 4:30 the next morning, I headed to Alpine County where I managed to fit it all into one 12 hour day; trolling at Red Lake, tossing bait on the West Carson River, and drifting flies on the wild-trout section of the East Carson. All told, I caught over 30 fish, releasing all but two, which I kept for dinner. I also caught Lahontan cutthroat trout at each spot- for those of you who have never tangled with the beautiful and feisty Lahontan, I highly recommend a trip to Alpine County, whichever fishing method you prefer. Here's my report-

Red Lake: This high mountain lake is set at 8,200 feet, with vehicular access off Highway 88, southeast of Carson Pass. It's relatively small, shallow and fertile, with a maximum depth of less than 30 feet at full pool. One of the first lakes in the area I learned to fish from a canoe, it is quite pretty, set in a wooded, steep-walled valley, with no developed camping or boat launch facilities. The trout are abundant, with wild and holdover cutthroat and brook trout mixing with planted rainbows. Most of the fish are of modest size, but trout in the three to four pound range are caught occasionally. Recently, Fish Sniffer reader Sy Siatos sent me a fishing report from the Reno Gazette Journal, which stated that a large plant of trophy-size broodstock trout had been made in Red this season. In that I missed my usual ice-out venture to the lake in May due to the death of my vehicle, this was all the incentive I needed to carry my canoe over the earthen dam and launch at dawn.

Minnows jumped in the shallows and a mayfly hatch was in progress on the lake's calm surface, and I mean calm as in windless, since the water was actually being churned to a froth in some areas by the showy splashes of feeding trout. An excellent opportunity for dry-fly fishing, I thought, but I'm a creature of habit and instead started trolling with my old Red Lake standby, a Rebel Crawdad crankbait. This little wobbling plug has produced well for me here over the years, and its shallow running depth (four to six feet on fifty yards of 6 pound test line) allowed me to swoop into shoreline areas where many of the surface swirls were occurring.

Several passes by the dam and along the northern shoreline failed to produce, though, so I moved into deeper water and switched to a silver Sep's Sidekick dodger trailing a threaded nightcrawler on four-pound fluorocarbon leader. I had just finished letting line out when I had my first hit, reeling in a beautifully marked, 11 inch brook trout. It had my barbless, #10 baitholder hook in the very tip of its snout, so I reached down into the water with surgical pliers and released it easily. Rerigging, I let out the same lure and in short order had a strike from a better fish, this one a 14 inch Lahontan cutthroat. This one had swallowed the hook and was bleeding, so I put it on my stringer. After one more similar sized Lahontan came in the same way, I switched to a brown woolly bugger fly behind the dodger in place of the nightcrawler, and found that the action hardly slowed, but the fish came in hooked in the mouth and I was able to release each one.

I trolled until mid-morning when the wind came up, catching a total of 13 Lahontans and 2 brook trout. Most were small, with the biggest Lahontan going 15 inches, but later in the day when I stopped in Woodfords Station and spoke with Dave Kirby, this font of Alpine County fishing information told me that there had in fact been a stocking of 240 large broodstock Lahontans in Red Lake. "They're spawners from Heenan," he told me "and some of them were 27 to 29 inches long." Heenan Lake is California's breeding lake for these endangered cutthroat trout and every year when large, spawning fish run up the tiny inlet creek, DFG biologists milk them of their eggs and sperm. Some spawners are put back in the lake, while others are stocked in area waters, as a bonus for anglers. Unlike hatchery broodstock fish that spend their lives in concrete raceways eating Purina Trout Chow, these Lahontans have grown up in a natural environment, growing fat on Heenan Lake's rich insect life. They have full fins, pink flesh, and at large sizes have probably been caught and released several times over the years during Heenan's special catch-and-release fishing season. Immediately after spawning, they are lethargic and unwilling to bite, so I can rationalize not having caught the big boys on my trip, but any day now they will stop sulking and begin to provide exceptional sport for those who visit Red Lake. Shore anglers who bother to walk around a bit also have an excellent shot here- try bright, flashy lures such as Panther Martins or Vibrax Spinners on spinning gear, or woolly buggers and beadhead nymphs on a sink-tip fly line.

West Carson River: On my way back down Highway 88 after my morning trolling trip, I stopped at scenic Hope Valley to drift some flies in this small river. The West Carson has some wild brown trout, rainbows and cutthroat, and in addition is heavily stocked. This year's stocking program has been the heaviest I've ever seen, with numerous five to ten pound rainbows and Heenan cutthroat joining the thousands of standard 10 to 12 inch rainbows in weekly plants by the DFG and Alpine County. As I parked by the bridge at the western, upstream end of the valley, I was actually followed by the hatchery truck, which also pulled over at the bridge to deliver a few squirming netloads of trout into the pool directly downstream. Two spin anglers who had been working the pool whooped ecstatically and redoubled their efforts, but like post-spawn trout, fish taken from the hatchery, transported in a tanker truck and thrown in a river tend to sulk, reluctant to bite, until they have adjusted to their new environs. In a hole with more trout than water, these fishermen couldn't get a bite. I chose instead to wet-wade upstream of the bridge and drift beadhead nymphs through the pockets and riffles, picking up one hatchery rainbow and two more cutthroat, all between 8 and 10 inches long. These were released- I already had two nice trout from Red Lake in my cooler, and I had one more baitfishing stop- Woodfords Canyon.

One of the great things about the West Carson is its changing character in different sections. At its headwaters, anglers find a tiny creek holding small wild trout that demand a stealthy approach; in Hope Valley, it is a meandering meadow stream, heavily stocked and, due to the easy access, heavily fished. Here it is possible to sight cast from grassy cut-banks to individual fish visible in the smooth flows. Downstream as the river drops into Woodfords Canyon, it picks up speed as it tumbles over boulders and falls into churning pockets and deep pools. Here the access is much tougher, and the fishing pressure drops off accordingly. Flies work well in the lower water of late summer, but currently this stretch is largely raging whitewater, with scattered spots that hold trout which are more easily taken on bait, either salmon eggs or worms on a short leader, weighed down by a few split-shot or a small egg sinker. Driving down a rough dirt access road to the canyon, I pulled to the side and parked when the ruts and rocks became impassable. I hiked down the rest of the way to the river, scrambling over rocks and downed trees with my spinning rod, stopping at select pockets and runs to flick out a line baited with Pautzke's salmon eggs ("Soft But Satisfying").

Five casts, five minutes, and I caught three more hatchery rainbows. One was released, but the other two were destined for my cooler, to combine with my Red Lake cutthroat to make a meal for the family. It was now midafternoon, and I broke out lunch and rested a while. I was tired from a decent day's fishing, but not yet finished. Hopping back in my vehicle and making a twenty-point turn on the narrow road, I pulled back onto Route 88, then hung a right onto 89, toward Markleeville and my favorite river of all.

East Carson River: Tired or not, I was too close not to check it out. The roadside section of this stream is, like the West Fork, heavily stocked and fished, but unlike its sister river, the East Carson has an extensive wild-trout section, where it winds away from the road, hiking is required, only barbless artificial lures or flies may be used, and all fish must be released. The fishing for wild and holdover rainbows has improved every year since the zero-limit regulations were implemented, and last year was my best season ever here, with nymphing techniques producing excellent numbers of average sized trout, punctuated nearly every trip by at least one fish over twenty inches. This year I'm especially excited, since I am offering my guide services under the auspices of Tahoe Fly Fishing Outfitters (530-541-8208, or click on the banner at the top of this page), and have access under their exclusive commercial permit to guide on the river's very best sections, including the first couple of miles in the wild-trout stretch, starting at Hangman's Bridge. If you're a fly enthusiast, this is a must-visit destination in California, and if you've never been here, a competent guide can save you much time and effort in learning the river. I know every pool by name ("Hello Markleeville Pool, how are you today? Hey Gauging Station Pool, do you have a big rainbow for me in your tail-out, like you did last time?"), and I know what works.

What works now, as I quickly found out, are big flies and a lot of lead. This river has been running very high and off color so far this year due to snowmelt runoff, and at flows close to 1,000 cfs, fly presentation is difficult, and wading downright dangerous. I've been checking the flow rate on the Internet (usgs.gov) nearly every day since the season opener, and just in the past week or so have been watching it consistently dip below 700 cfs, which is the upper end of decent flows for fly presentation. As I put on my chest waders and strung up my fly rod I looked at the green, rushing water and selected a team of subsurface flies that would sink fast and be visible in the murk. Using strong, 2X tippet, I first tied on a heavily weighted conehead woolly bugger, then on a short dropper tippet attached a bright pink krystal egg fly. Wading cautiously out into the long run directly downstream of Hangman's Bridge and using a wading staff for balance, I positioned myself to cast upstream and drift my flies near the bottom along a seam where a slower channel met the raging current mid-river. An initial drift told me I needed to adjust the position of my strike indicator and add some lead splitshot to tap bottom, and as soon as I did so- BAM! Fish on, and leaping wildly. I worked it in and admired yet another Lahontan cutthroat, this one around 16 inches, with scarlet spawning colors overlaid on its cheek-plate and silver-olive flank. Working no more than 200 yards of river for no more than an hour, I caught another dozen trout. Most were 12 inch hatchery rainbow trout that had washed down from upstream stockings in the put-and-take-section, but two were wild rainbows, brilliantly parr-marked, a bit larger, and twice as powerful as the government-issue fish. Half the trout took the egg pattern and stopped my indicator on a dead drift, and the other half slammed the woolly bugger as I swung it on a tight line downstream.

Wading is still treacherous at these flow rates, and the deeper pools that hold the largest trout are hard to fish effectively, but the river is dropping daily and this will soon change- I predict that by mid-summer, this will be the best water in the region to test your fly angling skills. Contact Tahoe Fly Fishing Outfitters or Email me directly to plan a guided trip. As my long day on the water in Alpine County demonstrates, there are also many excellent opportunities here for anglers of every stripe, and guided spin-fishing trips can also be arranged, either wading, shore-fishing, or float tubing. We are currently working out the insurance and permitting needed to provide canoe trolling trips, but I do also currently offer special instructional seminars for boaters. Topics include deep water techniques for mackinaw, topline trolling for trophy trout, and live bait presentations for everything that swims. Remember, I do it all, I love it all, and you can too.

Until next time, remember, never stand in a canoe!
Mark Wiza
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