Outdoor Notes / Earl Gustkey : Lack of Rain May Force Closure of Local Wild-Trout Stream

Unless the Southland receives some significant rainfall soon, area fly fishermen may have to do without one of the region’s prized wild-trout streams this summer.

The West Fork of the San Gabriel River, designated as one of California’s catch-and-release streams, is rapidly losing water because of one of the area’s driest years in recent memory. The Los Angeles Flood Control District said that normal rainfall for the San Gabriel Mountains by the end of March is 23.90 inches but that only 11.51 inches had fallen by March 31.

“We’re not considering at this time a closure of the stream to fishing, but if it gets bad enough--to a point where we had a flow so low that we were dealing with a series of pools--we might have to,” said Keith Anderson, Southern California inland fisheries chief for the Department of Fish and Game.

“We’re having one of the driest years ever for that drainage, and even at best it’ll be a poor year for maintaining a wild-trout resource. In most years, we have enough water in the reservoir (Cogswell Reservoir, the West Fork’s water source) to supply a flow. This year that source may not be available at all. In fact, Cogswell may go completely dry.”

The 5.5-mile West Fork, stretching from Cogswell Reservoir to California 39 in Angeles National Forest, is one of three Southern California wild-trout streams, along with Deep Creek in the San Bernardino Mountains and Sespe Creek in Ventura County. But fly fishermen consider the West Fork unique--a trout stream, just up the road from the San Bernardino Freeway and 35 miles from Los Angeles City Hall. It’s within an hour’s drive for a million people.

Anderson said Deep and Sespe creeks also face tough times, unless the rainfall picture changes.

On spring and summer weekends, up to 100 fly fishermen can be seen on the willow and poplar-shaded stream banks.

Most heavily affected by the dry year will be juvenile rainbow trout, biologists say. The smaller fish will find themselves in trapped in pools, where they will be preyed upon by larger trout.

About 700 volunteers from five states have signed up for the May 30-31 volunteer fertilization project for Lake Mead’s Overton Arm.

In one of the largest projects of its kind ever attempted at a lake in the U.S., the volunteers will treat the lake with thousands of gallons of phosphates in an effort to increase the fertility of the lake and its food chain.

Largemouth and striped bass have declined precipitously in recent years, in part because of the lake’s declining phosphate levels.

Briefly Wyoming hunter Dean Ross bagged by far the biggest whitetail deer ever taken in Wyoming last season, the state’s Game and Fish Dept. says. Ross’ buck weighed 327 pounds field dressed. . . . A handgun and rifle, said to be the world’s most powerful, will be fired for spectators at the Budweiser Shooting and Hunting Sports Fair May 15-17 at Raahauge’s Pheasant Hunting Club in Corona. The handgun is a .454 Casull, made by Freedom Arms of Wyoming. The big-bore rifle is a .460 Weatherby, which propels a one-ounce slug 2,700 feet a second. . . . Duane Milleman, manager of the Lava Creek Lodge at Fall River Mills, Calif., will present a fly fishing slide show for the Pasadena Casting Club next Thursday at the Pasadena Masonic Temple, 3130 Huntington Drive, at 7:30 p.m. The show will feature slides of the Fall, McCloud and Pit rivers, as well as Hat Creek and Baum and Manzanita lakes. . . . U.S. BASS says it will offer the largest all-cash purse ever offered--$300,000--at a bass tournament at the Fisherman’s Dream tournament, May 12-16 at Chickamauga-Nickajack lakes in Tennessee. . . . Biologists from Oregon and Nevada recently live-trapped 43 California bighorn sheep in Oregon’s Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge and released them in several Nevada ranges. . . . Fishing guide John Seaman will present a slide program on how to catch trout in Montana’s Madison River and other area streams Tuesday night at 7:30 at Rio San Gabriel Park in Downey.