Endangered Species : But for Now, Manzanita Lake Offers Good Trout Fishing in the Ever-Threatening Shadow of Mt. Lassen Volcano

It was a come-to-life scene out of a coffee table photo book about fly-fishing.

In early-morning quiet, a half-dozen fly-fishermen in waders stood, casting, in hip-deep water along a grassy shore, near an old tree that lay, dead and gray, in the green shore grasses. The lake reflected the sullen, gray mass of a snow-clad volcano.

Small, noisy black birds flitted about the shoreline, snatching insects out of the air. Families of ducks splashed nearby. Overhead, an osprey circled the lake, looking for a trout.

It seemed that nothing could interrupt such a tranquil scene.

Well, not quite. How about an 80-m.p.h. landslide, bearing tens of thousands of boulders? That would interrupt it, right?

That’s Manzanita Lake for you. It’s one of California’s more beautiful drive-to lakes, located just inside the north entrance of Lassen Volcanic National Park. But Manzanita’s beauty is tinged with an eerie quality, too.

Some geologists believe that 10,457-foot-high Mt. Lassen, five miles away, which erupted almost continuously from 1914 until the early 1920s, could destroy Manzanita Lake, given the right set of circumstances, in some future earthquake or volcanic event.

“Immediately above the lake, near the slopes of Lassen, is an area called the Chaos Crags,” said Steve Zachary, Lassen Volcanic National Park geologist. “It’s about 150 million cubic yards of volcanic debris, created in an eruption about 1,050 years ago.

“There is a division of thought on this, but one school holds that the Chaos Crags are oversteeped, that a major earthquake or volcanic event involving Lassen could start a high-velocity landslide of the Chaos Crags that would sweep across the lake at 80 m.p.h., smashing everything in its path, and burying the lake.

“The other school of thought is that the debris in the Chaos Crags has settled sufficiently over the years, so that a major slide is unlikely.”

At the park’s visitors’ center, a sign gives fishermen, campers and other lake visitors fair warning, calling the crags: “ . . . a disaster waiting to happen.”

Sobering stuff, particularly if you spend significant amounts of time fishing here. A reporter recently asked a fly-fisherman at the lake if he was aware he could be snuffed out in seconds by a world-class landslide.

“No kidding!” replied Phil Megahan of Santa Rosa. “Is this supposed to happen today, or what?”

When informed that the avalanche could occur at any time in the next five minutes or the next five centuries, Megahan laughed. Fearlessly, he resumed tossing a leech fly pattern in the general direction of Lassen Peak.

“Saw an awful big dorsal fin break the surface right there about 15 minutes ago,” he said, trying again.

The gray-tan hulk of Lassen dominates the Manzanita scenery, from any direction. Lassen is a Cascades volcano, a slumbering, southern brother of Mt. St. Helens. On May 19, 1915, huge explosions triggered mudslides carrying 20-ton boulders five to six miles down Lassen’s northeast slope. Three days later, a mammoth blast sent smoke, ash and super-heated gas 40,000 feet into the air.

In Lassen’s shadow, a healthy population of wild rainbow trout lives, attracting fly- and spin-fishermen from throughout northern California to little-visited Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Manzanita is the latest addition to California’s wild-trout program, which requires the State Fish and Game Commission to add 25 miles of streams and one lake each year to wild-trout status, where special regulations encourage development of wild-trout populations. It’s also the only designated California wild-trout lake within a national park.

“We’d been talking to the Lassen Park people about adopting special regulations at Manzanita, to try an experimental program to turn that lake into a high-quality fishery,” said Dick May of California Trout, a wild-trout group.

“The regulations were adopted in 1985 (two-fish limit, 10-inch maximum size, barbless flies and lures only), and it’s been one of the most talked-about lakes in the state ever since. The release rate on trout is about 99%, and we’re getting reports from fishermen there that they’re catching nothing under 15 to 16 inches. Last spring, Manzanita Creek was bank to bank with 15- to 18-inch spawners.”

One of the joys of fishing Manzanita is discovering not only the natural beauty of the lake itself, but the absence of people. Lassen, among U.S. national parks, is deep in the bottom third in annual visitors. A reporter who recently visited Manzanita on a summer weekday found seven vehicles in a parking lot with perhaps 75 spaces.

“We have big July 4 and Labor Day turnouts, and that’s about it,” a park employee said. “The rest of the time, you can always find a few fishermen at Manzanita, a few campers here and there, and there’s almost always someone climbing Lassen.”

The Lassen Peak trailhead is located just off California 89, at 8,500 feet. The 2 1/2-mile hike to the peak takes from 2 to 2 1/2 hours and provides hikers with a superb view of the next volcano in the Cascade chain, Mt. Shasta.

Lassen Park is the scene of considerable winter activity, with a family-oriented Alpine ski facility at the park’s southern end. Cross-country ski programs are also available, and snowshoeing the park’s back country is a growing activity.

But if Manzanita’s trout keep growing at their present rate, the lake could become a landmark as well known as the volcano.

Andy Burk, 19, is a fly-fishing guide who works for Spring Creek Anglers in nearby Burney. Guess where he was one recent afternoon, after having worked nine straight days, taking people trout fishing? Manzanita Lake, fishing by himself.

“This lake has really turned around,” he said.

“Five years ago, it was really dismal. Everything was hatchery size, and they were getting slaughtered. But ever since last year, the size has really gone up. Just now, I fished almost three hours and had 15 grabs and caught one between 23 and 24 inches long.”

Burk recommends callibaetis paradun, nymph and leech patterns for Manzanita.

“There are a lot of leeches in this lake, and these trout eat ‘em like a fat kid eats French fries,” he said.