memorial weekend 2014
First sierra trip of the year, was fairly successful, had better, had worse. Me and the bro left the house on saturday about 5 am, drove straight to bishop creek canyon and arrived around 10 at willow (tent only) campgrounds. the other campgrounds were pretty full, but everywhere cleared out by sunday afternoon. fishing from shore was pretty tight everywhere, luckily we planned on tubing any lakes....
395 at 6 am
modest camp for 2
first lake was north, for a couple small bows on a dry fly near the inlet. people from shore with worms and eggs and such seemed to be killing it while everyone on tubes and people from shore tossig lures seemed to be rather slow...felt like it wasnt a good sign... no pics of the small 2 i caught but i love the background here...
next was wier... got a small brown and very small brook on a parachute adams, my brother got a nice sized brown on the same that i wish he photographed before it flopped out of his hands... didnt take long to realize the fish were going for something else floating on top of the water, witch turned out to be black gnats, so we decided we'd come back another time after hitting mac's to restock.... note:the other two guys there were doing well in the deeper part of the pond with jigs...
decided to hit intake to close out the first day. caught 2 on a pink powerworm and 5 on a green lip ripper with white jighead... no luck trolling the fly rod. some paisas were also doing well from shore with powerbait and powerworms. the lake seems to be a bit up compare to last year, for the time being atlleast, and was looking nice despite all the people on shore.
most fish on our trip were in this size range... caught a couple other with pretty beat up lips, you can tell intake has been getting heavily fished.
the next morning we headed to mammoth... i think i heard on here that mamie was doing well and heard elsewhere that mary was being triple stocked... set out on tube, talked to another guy tubing who hadnt caught all day on the fly... another bad feeling... so i made sure id atleast enjoy being on the water and only caught aa buzz with a nice view... over an hour or so threw out jigs and several flys to no avail at mamie and then carried my tube over the bridge to mary for about aan hour or so for the same results. carried the tube back to the car instead of floating.
hit convict on the way back... everyone near the back tables said they hadnt caught anything... decided to carry our tubes down a way to launch near the back... we saw one guy on the lake catch 2 fish with nightcrawlers.... no luck with us... things started to get frustrating, so i opened more beer and enjoyed more view...
we called it after that and headed to camp for some awesome bacon burgers on the griddle. woke up the next day and headed for hot creek... it was pretty f'n hot but at least i felt a tug on my fly rod a few times. fishing was fairly nice, there was people but they were nice enogh to give eachother space... left pretty early again because my bother nearly fell down the cliff (sober) and hurt his leg. c&r 4 bows (suprisingly no browns) within an hour on small BWO's.
after that we tubed hillton bay at crawley, with such good reports over the weekend. wind kicked up like crazy once we got in the water, one guy on a boat said he got 5 all day, so as we were being blown into the middle of the lake we decided we better get the f out... wasnt easy. would rather not relive that with pics... wanted to do upper owens but chose to head closer to camp.
so far this trip has been minuscule compared to some of my others, we were kind of wondering why and decided to stay in the canyon and try weir again and maybe sabrina the next day with more lures and jigs.... got back to weir that afternoon and finally slayed. c&r over 25/30 between us and got tons of bites on any color jig, remembering those guys using them the previous day. also got a few more with that black gnat we picked up, but the jig bite was so good we stuck with that. we could have done it all night but got pretty cold and hungry, feeling satisfied with fishing finally we called it. all the fish out of weir this time around were about this size.
nothing too big, but had atleast one solid run and a few nice ones at hot creek, called it a success, threw some hot links, baked beans and corn on the cob on the fire and packed up and left a night early. booked a couple nights at crystal crag in august, hopefully the mammoth basin will be nicer to me then.
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Originally Posted by FishingBarber
