High Sierras Fishing day W/pictures

Just got back from a fishing trip in the High Sierras. One thing about Fresno is that it's so close to the mountains. This past weekend my girlfriend and I took a 1 day fishing and scouting trip to some lakes on Kaiser Pass rd. we stopped at Portal Forebay, Ward Lake, Florence lake, Edison Lake, and Jackass Meadow/San Joaquin River. Awesome day, both caught our limit, and had some awesome fresh cooked fish. All in all it was an awesome trip and I think my family will be returning to Portal Forebay for some camping in late July.

Portal Forebay:
[img width=800 height=597]http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad88/touacha/IMG_0131.jpg[/img]

[img width=800 height=597]http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad88/touacha/IMG_0139.jpg[/img]

[img width=800 height=597]http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad88/touacha/IMG_0148.jpg[/img]


Ward Lake:
[img width=597 height=800]http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad88/touacha/IMG_0171.jpg[/img]

[img width=800 height=597]http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad88/touacha/IMG_0169.jpg[/img]


Florence Lake:
[img width=800 height=597]http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad88/touacha/IMG_0158.jpg[/img]

[img width=800 height=597]http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad88/touacha/IMG_0156.jpg[/img]


And this was our ride. She ain't much, but she gets the job done, and fires up every time :great::
[img width=800 height=597]http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad88/touacha/IMG_0173.jpg[/img]

[img width=800 height=597]http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad88/touacha/IMG_0177.jpg[/img]

What did you catch and what did you use?

All the lakes we visited get weekly trout plants from The Department of Fish and Game but there are plenty of wild trout in the streams. I didn't want to catch too many planted Rainbow Trout so I opted for lures. My girlfriend and I used Panther Martins tipped with a wax worm on 4lb Berkley line test. The fish weren't too picky on colors of the lure but they were loving her Hot Pink Blue fox though.

The German Browns prefer flies and they regularly strike at wax worms on a drift. I used this combo with a 2lb leader while fishing the river mouth in the picture and it produced a good number of browns (all barbless hooks because I wanted to release them safely). On the other bank of Portal Forebay, other campers were scoring big with planted rainbows using Rainbow/Orange powerbait in garlic and corn trims also with 4lb test line.

I think Portal Forebay will be my family's best bet because we're taking children and they'll have a blast catching lots of fish.

Hey, who killed my ropeswing! :angel:
[img width=597 height=800]http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad88/touacha/IMG_0171.jpg[/img]

Do me a favor, get me some pics of Huntington since you're out there. I keep forgetting to ask Mike Czajkowski to do it. We ended up getting our reservations this season cancelled b/c the snowpack was so bad, cabins and campgrounds inundated, and the lake was being kept low to cover flood controls. Sucks b/c I'll bet there's some nice big one's out there with all the holdback of the season opening with access limited. Try out some red, white, and yellow brokenback rapala's to troll with or some similarly colored rooster tails from the shorelines.

Yeah, Kaiser Pass Rd barely opened up on about 3 weeks ago. All the crawlers in Fresno have itching to get up to Dusy but with the bad snow the trail might not be opened till mid July. Huntington's like at 95% lake capacity. Not too much going on there other than the planted rainbows in Rancheria Creek. I'm just waiting for the smallies to start biting. but I'll definitely get some pictures posted for you. Actually planning to head back up there this weekend or maybe Wishon area.

:thumbup:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-v...2018-28-16.jpg
Huntington..Fish off the Northside of the lake around the far side of the dam past the Ranger's house. Trolling, boat out to the island, sweep around the dam and cove and then drop back down the western shoreline and out about to the middle of the south point of the island, point the bow straight at the point south of the western dam, go past the power towers there, just to the edge of the cove there, cut sharp left and go back up towards Billy Creek. There's a sunken valley there that the big one's migrate to around 8am and 2-5pm for feeding.

Hmmm, I'll have to try that place. With everyone heading to shaver for those trophy trouts i might as well try that spot out. Thanks for the tip :great::