East Fork San Gabriel River
Hit up the East Fork for a couple hours yesterday afternoon. Water level and flows have come back down to wade-able levels. Fished a dry fly. Lots of good looking pools but still no fish. Hope they come back real soon.
On the drive down, I spotted the local bald eagle soaring overhead. Pretty rad. Seems like it's easier to spot bald eagles than to see trout up in the San Gabes at the moment!
Thanks for the post on East Fork it used to be stocked with trout in the 70's and got some nice ones there years ago. And that eagle spotting is cool and I seen one at the pudd about three years ago.
Trout stocking on all forks of the San Gabriel River stopped around 2009/2010 I think. It's been a few years since the bite on the East Fork has been pretty consistent. A fire that swept through the North Fork area totally messed up the river stream flow and wiped out whatever fish were left there.
There was a time when fishing in the Forks of the San Gabriels was pretty special for both stocked and wild trout. Years of Drought, poaching, dredge mining, silt and hot water have decimated the fishery. The Forest/monument does not have restoring them on the radar anytime soon. It will be years of good water seasons and the fish may come back. But they may never. All of our locals have been used hard and put away wet. It's what happens when 22 million people live an hour away.Originally Posted by foo79
Hit up the East Fork for a couple hours yesterday afternoon. Water level and flows have come back down to wade-able levels. Fished a dry fly. Lots of good looking pools but still no fish. Hope they come back real soon.
On the drive down, I spotted the local bald eagle soaring overhead. Pretty rad. Seems like it's easier to spot bald eagles than to see trout up in the San Gabes at the moment!
Even as recently as 10-12 years ago there was pretty good fishing, and it got better the further upstream you went. But yeah, between the fires, silting, and drought, those days are long gone. Without stocking, I doubt decent wild trout fishing will return up there in my lifetime. Maybe never, it may end up being completely fishless like the Arroyo Seco and others in the area.
Similar story with Piru, as I understand it...
It takes a lot of bush whacking and Google Earthing to get into any of these fish that remain around these parts.
Hopefully they make a comeback with the wet winter, although we all know it takes a lot of consecutive wet winters to counteract the decade of low waters that have plagued our local mountain waters.
Sad. Some creeks have returned but many haven't. East Fork was already pretty crappy just before the drought :/
At least it looks fishy. Had lots of good times up there, actually where I got bit by the fishing bug. Camp Williams, Memorial Day Weekend, 1979.
Lets see, where do I start, Circa 2009 there was a bill passed that banned the planting of hatchery trout in the Arroyo Seco and one of the forks of the San Gabriel river, however I cant recall which one. The Mountain yellow frog and the arroyo toad are an endangered species. The dfg went as far as to kill of some existing trout in some streams of the upper san gabriel mts, again I cant recall which ones. That being said I personally havent caught a wild trout from a local stream since about 2009. Only hatchery stock trout at regional parks. I may be wrong partially because I really dont fish for trout anymore only bass and maybe catfish/ carp.On the plus side, I believe the lower east or west forks of the san gabrial river contain warm water fish such as sunfish, bass and mayby the odd catfish. Still worth a try for the driveIMO:}
Yeah it sure looks fishy,nice effort,to bad it seems like it's been along time since those areas were really productive.
Cya Tuna Vic
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