California’s Wild Trout Program : Upper Sespe Creek Is Home to the Rainbows
On a cold, windless morning not long ago, in the poplars and cottonwood trees overhead, a pair of mockingbirds split the stillness with noisy screeches.
Beneath them, Upper Sespe Creek paid no attention. It flowed quietly.
It gurgled and murmured, splashing softly between small boulders, flowing toward a series of downstream pools.
Listening to the Sespe’s early morning symphony, it was easy to wonder how long it has been like this, in the quiet, amber mountains of what is known today as Los Padres National Forest, in Ventura County. It was easy to wonder if anything has really changed in the hundreds of years, since Chumash children played and splashed in the cold little creek, under the shadow of the condor.
There has been at least one change. The cold little creek now has trout, wild rainbow trout. This is a relatively new development. And in 1986, Sespe’s wild rainbows were granted official protection when 26 miles of the waterway were declared part of California’s Wild Trout Program.
Jerry Bliss is 59. He grew up in Ventura and has fished the Sespe nearly all his life. He still uses some of the split bamboo fly rods his father made, in the 1930s, when there were enough winter-run steelheads in the Ventura River to keep an angler busy all day.
Bliss kneeled next to a small Sespe pool and studied tiny slivers of ice in the stream-side mud. The elevation is about 4,000 feet. Then he looked at a variety of prints in the mud, left by coyotes, raccoons, badgers and deer, on their nocturnal rounds. The tracks were rimmed with delicate, clear slivers of ice.
“This is a rare piece of water for Southern California,” Bliss said. “We’ve only got three (designated) wild-trout streams in Southern California and this one is the only one without a dam on it.”
For the record, the two other official wild-trout streams in Southern California are Deep Creek, in the San Bernardino Mountains, and the West Fork of the San Gabriel River, in the San Gabriel Mountains. Another San Bernardino Mountains stream, Bear Creek, is managed as a catch-and-release stream for eight miles after it flows from the Big Bear Lake dam.
Bliss was fishing the Sespe this day with two pals from the 108-member Sespe Fly Fishers club, Allen Krahenbuhl of Oxnard and Gary Cooper of Ventura. They had parked their cars at Lions campground, where a Forest Service road dead ends at the confluence of Lions Creek and the Upper Sespe.
“From this point, the Upper Sespe flows almost 30 miles to Fillmore,” Bliss said. “The designated wild-trout section starts right here. From here downstream, it’s all hiking, but you can hike on the old dirt road on the north side of the creek, which is fairly close to the stream most of the way. The last six miles of the stream aren’t presently accessible, they’re on private property”
California now has about 200 miles of streams--most of them in Northern California--managed as wild-trout waters. Wild-trout mangement means that trout populations must be sustained by natural reproduction, that the stocking of hatchery-raised trout occurs only when conditions demand it, such as would occur after a drought. Also, barbless hooks are required and, in most cases, all fish must be released unharmed.
Wild-trout status provides protection against over-fishing, but not necessarily against development. The Sespe Fly Fishers worry about the United Water Conservation District, an agency they say wants to build a dam on the Upper Sespe.
“That’s what we’re fighting here,” Bliss said. “And not just the Sespe, but also the Ventura River and all our streams--the mentality that a every drop of water that flows from a river into the ocean is a drop wasted.”
Sespe will never provide fly fishermen with a trophy rainbow trout fishery, Bliss pointed out. But it does provide an opportunity to experience a relatively untouched area of Southern California--a place to listen to birds and to a creek, to listen to the breeze ruffle the cottonwoods--and to try your hand at Sespe’s wild, feisty little rainbows.
“Fourteen inches would be a big Sespe rainbow,” Bliss said. “In a good year I’ll catch maybe three that size. The average is seven to nine inches, I’d say.”
Standing on a bed of brown, brittle cottonwood leaves, Bliss tossed a No. 14 gray mayfly pattern onto a mirror-like pool.
“The most reliable dry flies are gray mayflies, Adams, elk hair caddis flies, sizes 16 to 18,” Bliss said. “The best wet fly is a gold-ribbed hare’s ear, 14 to 16. If you fished all year with just those flies, you’d catch a lot of fish.”
Other reliable flies are caddis, small stonefly, black caddis and little yellow stonefly patterns. Experienced Sespe fly fishermen use three- to six-weight lines, one- to 3-pound tippets, and size 14-18 flies.
Spring and fall are considered the best fishing times. The Los Padres National Forest road to Lions campground is closed from December 1 to April 1 but other access points are open year-round at numerous points along California 33 as it goes through Los Padres National Forest.
A good way to learn about Sespe Creek fly fishing is to attend a meeting of the Sespe Fly Fishers club at 7:30 p.m. on the third Wednesday of every month at the Senior Recreation Center, 420 Santa Clara St., in Ventura.
Back on the stream, a little rainbow attacked Krahenbuhl’s fly and jumped frantically on the shallow pool. He carefully brought the fish to his feet, delicately released it, and watched it dart away, to the safety of a shaded, rocky area.
“In wet years, you’ll catch a lot of 12- and 13-inch fish,” Krahenbuhl said. “In normal years, 7 to 9 would be the rule. If you get two rainy years back-to-back, you’ll find 20-inch fish in pools like this. Where Bear Creek comes into the Sespe, that’s a terrific pool to find big rainbows after a wet year. I’ve caught and released 50 trout in a day there.
“As a general rule, the farther you hike downstream, the larger you’ll find the fish because the further you hike, the bigger the stream gets. And the downstream pools get much less fishing pressure, too. For the backpacker-fly fisherman, this is a good stream.”
Upper Sespe’s stream-bred rainbows tend toward lean and are a tad more silvery than those of more wooded streams.
Krahenbuhl caught another one, and marveled at its color in the morning sunlight.
“The Sespe doesn’t have much shade canopy, so these fish have had to adapt to getting along in shallow, warm water,” he said. “Wild trout in water where there are a lot of stream-side trees tend to be darker than these.”
Some shade is provided by several immense boulders, some larger than automobiles, that lie in or beside the stream. The nearest other boulders of such size are miles upstream, prompting speculation as to the intensity of long-ago storms that could move such heavy objects so far.
But the little creek yields no answers. It talks only in quiet gurgles and splashes, keeping its centuries-old secrets.
