UP TO THE SIERRA WITH NADIA and MILES…

I have been somewhat remiss in putting up posts. Life has a way of taking over. I completed a miniPCNL surgery in June, 2022 to remove all remaining kidney stones and fragments. The Doctors tell me it was successful and now it’s question of preventing the formation of new stones – given that my Ostomy is a creator of the same. Got slammed by COVID  early in January, spending four days in the hospital and a visit with Ally to the emergency room a week later for COVID / COPD related breathing problems…Got all my vaccinations and  boosters so I am still above ground and sucking in air… it would not have been so pleasant had I not done that. The anti-vax crowd can take Elmo’s rocket to Mars or just drop dead…Three members of my Senior Georgia Military Academy class are gone due to COVID. One was a best, lifelong friend who refused to get vaccinated and had become a devoted cult member … SMDH

So I have all these pictures to put up and I will start HERE:

Departing Los Angeles for Bridgeport, CA with my oldest daughter Nadia and my Grandson Miles…

The remains of the Homestead, where Hwy. 14 turns into Hwy. 395…burned to the ground in April 2022…a lot of great meals were served there to my family from the 60’s on…

The remains…

Approaching Red Hill above Little Lake…Owens Valley ahead…

…another casualty …the Ranch House in Olancha, CA…

Owens Lake in need of water…

…somewhere down there, on the road to Owens Lake, out in the sand and sagebrush, lies a wedding ring that my Mother tossed after an argument with my Father around 1953…

The Winnedumah Hotel in Independence, CA…a bit of roadside history…

…walked a lot of miles in the sand and alkali dust over there on the right with my Dad, Twin Brother and kids…

Ally likes this BBQ joint in Big Pine, CA…

A family favorite in Bishop, CA...Schat’s Bakery…

Crowley Lake…Mammoth Lakes ahead…

Gotta’ stop here for a few essentials...Troutfitter

Mono Lake, CA where the seagulls breed and brine shrimp live…

Coming down the grade towards Bridgeport, CA…

Virginia Creek Settlement source of most excellent pizza and other good eats…

I have not been here since October 2017 so it’s treat time for the guys… Bridgeport Inn

The only place I will order meat loaf with mashed potatoes…Yummy

The Usual Virgin Bloody Mary…

Miles is so easy to feed …chicken nuggets and fries…

The Old Guy is pleased…

…an early evening trip down to the East Walker River…

..warm, dirty water with lots of algae and biting bugs…

Miles at the pipe…on the East Walker River…

Very little water in Bridgeport Reservoir…

Just a pretty sunset looking up towards Twin Lakes…

Early morning sunrise from the Walker River Lodge…

Heading up to Little Virginia lake for some coffee and bacon with Carolyn Webb…

That guy can’t wait to wet a line…

The catch board…

Time to rent the boat…

…so I let Miles row…

Not bad Miles !!!…First time Miles has fished since 2017…

OK…the Old Guy…

We quit around noon and decided to head up tp Green Creek. I haven’t been up there in quite a few years…

Nice pull in spot…there’s water…a biting bugs …

The fenced meadow…

Wet wader, scaring the Brookies…

We decided to have dinner at the Virginia Creek Settlement… no pizza this time…

I haven’t had this since I was about seven years old…

Taking a look at the menu…

Went with the fettuccine alfredo with chicken…

Burger Boy…

Salad Mom…

So…they raise Trout at the settlement that are planted in Green Creek. Miles go a bag of pellets to feed the guys…

He really enjoyed this…

…a quick run up to Twin Lakes to see what was going on….

...the dude ranch where Miles wants to stay on his next visit…

Last day of fishing…back up to Little Virginia Lake…

Miles can’t wait, so while we eat, he does the fly and bubble from shore…

There he goes…rigging up…

He caught one while waiting for us to finish eating…

…was a bit slower than the previous day…

There…pure joy !!!

All the Trout we caught were released to make someone else have a good day…

WE again quit around noon and drove to Leavitt Meadows for Miles’ and Nadias’ trail ride…

…geared up…

Trail riders…

While those guys went off into the hinterlands, I went down to the West Walker River to peek at the flows…

Very low and warm…

Miles the dog whisperer…

…next on the agenda was a soaking at Travertine Hot Springs…

Miles is an alien…

One more go-round at The Bridgeport Inn…

Garden salad…

Prime rib, Mashed potatoes and real horseradish…

Back to LA…

…but not before a stop at Schat’s in Bishop…

…YIKES !!!

Guys got the goods and some lunch stuff…

Wanted to give Miles one last chance at a Trout, so we stopped at the George’s Creek Sand Trap above Lone Pine…no moving water, algae and muck…

Really disappointing…

When one knows they have left the Owens Valley…Red Hill headed South…

 

These are the soft hackle patterns that I tied for this trip and for Cairo’s trip up to the Sierra…

 

NEXT: Cairo in the Eastern Sierra…

 

PT/TB

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

BRIDGEPORT / EAST WALKER RIVER …last leg of MONTANA trip…

I arrived in Bridgeport, CA around 6:30PM from West Yellowstone, MT on Tuesday September 26 and checked into my usual haunt, the Walker River Lodge…

Walker River Lodge in Bridgeport, CA…

After unpacking, I walked over to the Bridgeport Inn for a bite to eat and the best Virgin Bloody Mary in the Eastern Sierras…

On Wednesday morning, September 26th., I drove up to visit with my friend Carolyn Webb, who, along with her husband John, operates the Virginia Lakes Resort…

It had snowed up there while I was in Montana and some remnants remained in the parking lot…Carolyn fixed me a great bacon breakfast and I reviewed a lot of the photos Michael and I had taken on our Montana trip with her…

As I made my way back down the mountain, I stopped to take some photos of the foliage that was just beginning to change with the colder weather…

This is a view looking East towards Nevada…

After a stop at the Walker River Lodge to get wadered-up, I headed on down to the meadow section of the East Walker River to finally fly fish in some warmer temps and wear a T-Shirt… the couple that had parked next to me were kind enough to take this photo … 🙂

This is the meadow section of the East Walker River just below Bridgeport Reservoir…

Because of the drought here in California, the East Walker River has not sustained any heavy fishing pressure in the last five years. Subsequently, there has been an explosion of stream side vegetation growth over that period of time…which is great. The problem is the effect that the drought has had on the quality of fishing on this river. To put it mildly, it has suffered…particularly in it’s once legendary population of large Brown Trout…

There was once a small island in the middle of this run that disappeared after 1988 when the reservoir and river were de-watered. The die-off of Trout and other creatures in the biomass, affected the quality of fishing on the river for the following twelve years or so…the island disappeared after the silting was removed from the river in this stretch… Here & Here 

Back in the 1970’s, this meadow was like a giant sponge. Walking on it, a swishing sound could be heard…

The water was a bit off color, but the heavy flows through the Spring and Summer removed the weeds and moss that made fishing in here a disaster the previous year (2016)…

This is a few hundred years upstream and closer to the dam…I caught two Trout this afternoon, both were small Rainbows on Midge patterns. The couple that parked next to me got nada…

On Thursday morning, I decided to try the water closer to the dam and parked here. I was the first vehicle in that spot at about 8AM…

I used some caddis patterns from this box first…

…and decided to give the Winston BIIIX Super 10, 5wt. a work out…

I played around in here for awhile…Supposedly, the flows were running at 195cfs.

Uni no…watching this blow out of the pipe at the toilet bowl and checking the gauge confirmed something was way off…

So I moved down river to one of my favorite spots….

Tied one of these on as a dropper…

This pattern…

Over the next couple of days, I worked this general area over from bank to bank, using Midges for the most part. This anchor pattern produced a couple of nice fish too…

I also hooked a couple of larger Trout that I LDR’d and never saw once they got below me here…

Strangely, for the first time, I dredged a number of these guys off the bottom fishing in a couple of different sections. Time to tie some of these up in a couple of sizes for use next year. These were about 6″ long…

Snagged a couple in here…

I also used a lot of various deer hair wing Serendipities that proved productive…

I really didn’t need to trip over a concealed fire ring in the underbrush and fall flat on my face…

The colors in the fading sunlight were spectacular…

Ate a bunch of great meals…

In some great places…Virginia Creek Settlement…

Fast food Gourmet…The Jolly Kone…

Got to see a great sunset from the porch at the Bridgeport Inn…

A few memories with these guys…I had a discussion with the guys at Ken’s Sporting Goods in Bridgeport about the ratio of Rainbows to Browns that I was eating ing the MM section of the East Walker River. They were of the opinion that a good number of Rainbow Trout were blown out of Bridgeport Reservoir during the heavy releases during the Spring and Summer. I would have to agree …some of those fish were really grotesque and distorted…

 

…and back down the grade into Bishop towards LA…

NEXT: … back to tying…

 

 

PT/TB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »