Fishing will only get better as fall progresses, with mackinaw, brown trout, and bigger rainbows moving into the same shallow, rocky structure.

East Walker River: Get there, fast! The California side closes November 1, and on October 25, I fly fished below Bridgeport Dam, enjoying one of the best days of my life. I caught close to thirty trout and left, exhausted, before noon. What's the secret? Scouting. I had fished this stretch two weeks prior, and observed a spin angler catching large numbers of fish from a point extending into the huge pool at the base of the dam, known as the "Big Hole." This time I arrived well before dawn, staking out the same spot. At one hour before sunrise, legal starting time for fishing in Mono County, I started casting and retrieving large streamers on my seven weight rod. This produced only one fish, a 14 inch rainbow trout, so I changed to a team of conehead woolly buggers, suspended under a large foam strike indicator. I dead-drifted this rig, bouncing the heavily weighted flies along the bottom, and began to believe those stream surveys taken by the Department of Fish and Game that show the East Walker to harbor up to 9,000 trout per mile.

Lahontan cutthroats and brown trout from 14 to 18 inches made up the majority of my catch, topped by a 20 inch cut' and a humpbacked, 22 inch broomtail brown. When action slowed, I replaced one of the conehead buggers with a small egg-pattern fly, and moved to the channel below the Big Hole. Here I caught several more cutthroat, then hooked something bigger. It shot downstream and after following for close to 100 yards, I finally caught up and moved below it, netting and releasing a ridiculously fat rainbow at 21 inches, weighing close to five pounds. Other anglers took turns at "my" point, but the sun was on the water now and the bite slowed considerably. I took a coffee break and watched them try their luck, but when the clouds rolled in with a stiff wind, and the point was again vacant, I hustled over to make a few more casts before leaving. Sure enough, three drifts brought two fish, both cutthroat, then my line came tight against something solid and motionless, so I started flipping my rod tip, trying to roll-cast my flies off what I thought was a rock on the stream bed. Suddenly, the "rock" shot out into the whitewater at the center of the huge pool, peeling off half my fly line, then holding deep. Whoa! Upstream against the raging current to the very lip of Bridgeport Reservoir's outlet pipe, then zig-zagging into the shallow whitewater at the tail-out, the fish stayed deep, my rod deeply bent. Five minutes of give-and-take hardly seemed to tire this dog, which I still had not even glimpsed. "Big brown." I whispered reverently, then the fish decided to head at high speed in the one direction it had not yet tried, straight at me! I stripped in my line frantically to keep tension, then leaned forward, dunked my net underwater, and made a lucky grab, scooping up a gorgeous, golden, seven pound CARP! Yikes! I finally landed one, and I don't care what anyone says, they are a worthy goldfish, I mean gamefish.

I watched a spin angler hook several good trout from the Big Hole on a large, silver Kastmaster as well. Whatever you use, make sure it has some flash and color to it- the water is quite brown and murky. Fine leaders are not necessary in these conditions, either. Use at least six pound tippet if you hope to land the carp of a lifetime.

Fallen Leaf Lake: Amazing, revealing, bizarre! I was still tired from my East Walker adventure the previous day, but the cloudy, rainy, yet calm conditions were too good to pass up on October 26 for a dawn patrol on Fallen Leaf. My friend Jeff Keyser had reported catching several big, wild rainbows here recently on a dodger and minnow. This intrigued me greatly- I have fished the "Leaf" for years, but never consistently catching the resident rainbows. Just as in Lake Tahoe, they are an introduced species here that has made use of tributary streams to spawn and establish a wild population. I trolled along the west shore of the lake, at the base of Mount Tallac, pulling plugs while I waited for my minnow trap to fill up. Set 35 feet deep and baited with dry cat food, in thirty minutes it was loaded with several dozen lahontan redside shiners. I transferred the biggest ones to my minnow bucket, then switched to slow-trolling a Sep's dodger, with six-pound leader and a minnow. This is the rig that drove the rainbows crazy the previous week on Tahoe, and I had great confidence, which was repaid after twenty minutes, when I marked a school of fish in 50 feet of water on my depthfinder, then tracked my bait through them. My spinning rod bent over and began that frantic "wild rainbow" kicking that again reminded me of Tahoe, and when I had the fish boatside, reaching down with pliers to release it, I saw that in appearance, too, it mimicked a Tahoe trout- nearly pure silver, 16 inches long and muscular.

Two more passes through the area failed to produce another hit, so I trolled back the way I had come, along the steep western shoreline drop-offs. This time it was my casting rod that that began dancing in its holder. A set of brass/nickel "Cousin Carl" beer-can style flashers and minnow had called in another rainbow, this one 15 inches, with a slight pink hue and a few black dots on a bright silver background. As soon as I released it, put on a fresh minnow, and set my lines out again to continue trolling, I caught a small mackinaw, around 17 inches, on the same rig. This fish twisted free, releasing itself at the net. Yet again I replaced the shredded minnow and let my line out to approximately 50 yards behind the boat. As I replaced the rod in its holder, my spinning rod in the opposite holder surged, jerking down hard repeatedly. The buzzing sound of line rapidly peeling off the spool against my lightly-set drag told me I was dealing with a better fish, and I quickly picked up the rod and began reeling. Up to this point, I had been reeling in fish while still underway in a forward troll, but for this one, I turned off the motor to reduce the pressure on my light leader. The kicking and frantic runs had me congratulating myself on hooking a big rainbow, but then, fifty feet from the canoe, it thrashed its bright ORANGE tail at the surface. I was dumbfounded. A big Kokanee! What's wrong with this picture? First, the fish was in full sockeye spawning color, with an elongated, toothy black jaw, deep red, humped back, and day-glow tail. These fish aren't supposed to feed when they're spawning. No one told this one, though, because it slammed and swallowed a minnow, which kokanee aren't supposed to feed on at all. It fought like hell, too, at a time when it should be lethargic and nearing death. "What is going on here?" I said to myself. The fish had sucked the hook all the way back to its gill, and was bleeding heavily. I netted and measured it- eighteen inches! Kokanee in Fallen Leaf normally run small, 8 to 10 inches. Stranger and stranger. At this point the fish was clearly dying and I was dying of curiosity, so I called it a day and took my strange catch home to further investigate the mystery. In my kitchen sink, I squeezed its flanks, milking a few orange eggs out of its body. A female! And she's already dropped most of her eggs! I gutted and cleaned the salmon, finding firm pink flesh and insects in its stomach! Barbecued, the meat was quite palatable, similar to the rich taste of mackinaw.

So what IS going on? Did I just catch a mutant freak, or are we witnessing the evolution of a new breed of salmon? Minnow eating kokanee that don't die after spawning, growing larger and larger? Probably not. Maybe it's just a super kokanee from Tahoe, where they do grow that big, that spawned in Taylor Creek, then refused to die and struggled through a trickle of water up and over the essentially impassable fish-ladder in the dam at the outlet of Fallen Leaf. Either possibility is hard to believe, but what other explanation is there?

Kokanee experts, please report! Have you ever seen anything like this? Email me.

Until next time!
Mark (Never stand in a canoe) Wiza