Mountains and Marshmallows
A weekend ago we ate the last trout, thawing it out, soaking it in brine and smoking it over wood chips of apple and cherry. It was a big occasion because Greg, my youngest child, finally got to eat his fish, the biggest any of us caught last summer in the Sierra. Matt, the eldest, caught the most, and Ramona caught the first and last. Dad hardly did a thing. Fishing can be that easy in the Eastern Sierra.
We fished June Lake, just north of Mammoth. We rented a knotty pine-paneled cabin on the lake; it had a view of the mountains and a little porch where we could get out of the afternoon thunderstorms. Fifty feet away was a dock and a rented boat. We got up early, motored slowly out onto the lake to our secret spot and watched the sun come up on the mountains until the lake was no longer in shadow. Then the fish would bite, with only an occasional lull--enough time to pour a cup of coffee from a thermos.
To June Lake we bring a few gold-plated treble hooks, a split shot or two and an ordinary bag of marshmallows--the little kind, about the size of hominy. The kids eat a few marshmallows and put a few on hooks and the latter we toss over the side so that they sink slowly to the bottom. In a minute or two a trout picks one up. The only trick to this kind of fishing is trying to set the hook before the fish swallows it so you can decide whether to keep the fish or let it go. And you had better plan to let some go.
If this sounds a bit like Happy Jack’s Trout Farm, it really isn’t. The fish are feisty in their cold surroundings, and they will run like yellowtail, jump and dance on the surface like steelhead and fight you every inch of the way into the net.
We prefer fishing the Sierra early in the summer, and we are off the lake before the 3 o’clock thunderstorm strikes. Snug in our cabin, we can sip soup while the clouds build up over the mountains, then enjoy the play of lightning through the peaks. With any luck at all, it will hail, and the kids can put on every piece of clothing they’ve brought and run around like madmen with hail bouncing off their hats and parkas, looking like some crazy pinball game. Late in the afternoon, we will clean the fish and pack all but a chosen few into plastic bags of five fish each--the makings of one meal to be enjoyed back in Los Angeles.
A few will be dinner, pan-fried the first night, then stuffed or cooked however my wife decides. She likes cooking fish as much as I like catching them, an enviable situation.
Fishing friends ask why I do this--catch hatchery-reared fish with marshmallows on a lake--when I could be fly-fishing a Sierra stream for goldens or the big, bad browns; or why I don’t at least troll for bigger rainbows in Crowley Lake, or here on June. I think perhaps that even a fisherman needs a break, and a serene week on a glassy lake that mirrors those magnificent mountains--that seems to do the trick.
