WILD-TROUT STREAM : Survival of Bear Creek, Basically a Product of Leaks in Big Bear Dam, Assured Even After Facility Is Fixed

A pristine little fishing stream--unknown to many anglers, unfished by most--flows only about a two hours’ drive from downtown Los Angeles.

Bear Creek is the most subtle of streams. It is only 8 3/4 miles long and its source these days is what water seeps through the 76-year-old dam that restrains Big Bear Lake, Southern California’s highest open and accessible mountain reservoir. Its initial trickle is swallowed up quickly by thick brush in a bottomless gorge but widens to 12 or 15 feet when augmented by a few feeder creeks downstream on its way to the Santa Ana River.

Sometimes, however, beavers plug the feeder creeks, reducing the flow.

So, essentially, Bear Creek is a leak. Those 47 gallons of pure mountain water that find their way through the cracks in the dam every minute are critical to its existence. Thus, when it became necessary to fix the dam, Bear Creek’s future seemed about to dry up.

Although estimates are that the stream is fished only about 200 times a year--compared to more than 80,000 times for the lake--that, said environmentalists and the California Department of Fish and Game, would be a shame.

“For the purist, if he understands native streams, it’s an experience,” said Cliff Fowler, owner of a Big Bear Lake sport shop. “There are no dumb fish in there.”

And they are virtually all native trout, descendants of German browns planted by the Big Bear Valley Sportsman’s Club in 1971.

“They actually carried (the fingerlings) down on their backs,” Fowler said.

Frank Hoover, a biologist for the DFG based in Chino, said the stream also had been stocked “sporadically” from the early ‘50s through the mid-’70s with rainbow trout.

The department ran a survey in the summer of ‘87, Hoover said, “trying to delineate the quality of the fishing and the fish population in there. We recognized as a result that it was a superior trout stream.”

Pete Bontadelli, DFG director in Sacramento, said Bear Creek has more native trout than five other major Southern California streams.

Hoover calculated that there were 742 trout, 8 inches or larger, per mile. There also are some silver salmon that escaped over the dam when water was released after the wet season of ‘83-84, bringing a brief flurry of fishing activity when the event was reported in Western Outdoor News.

Since then, one fisherman has hardly ever seen another on Bear Creek.

“It never has been routinely stocked with hatchery fish,” Hoover said. “On rare occasions, like maybe every five years or so, a small plant of fingerling fish will be put in to give it a shot in the arm. But the surveys indicated that as a fishery, it is above average.”

Historically, the struggle for the water in the lake has been between the farmers in the valley and the property owners 6,750 feet up the hill who formed their own Big Bear Municipal Water District in 1964 to prevent the lake from becoming a puddle and destroying tourism and property values.

Earlier, its level was controlled by the farmers, represented by the Bear Valley Mutual Water Company.

“They would release water until the lake went dry and the (Big Bear) economy would fluctuate accordingly,” said Janet McCord, speaking for the water district.

Well, the farmers figured, that’s why, in 1912, they built the dam larger than the original 1884 structure, which lies underwater 200 feet away.

They needed an irrigation reservoir that turned out to be the world’s largest man-made lake at the time, although little thought was given to recreation or aesthetic values a mile up in the San Bernardino Mountains. It was just a good place to store their water. It still is, and it’s still their water.

That was determined in 1977, after 13 years in court, when the sides settled on a complex agreement that for $4.7 million gave the water district title to the dam, the surface of the lake and the bottom of the lake, but gave the farmers free rights to as much as 65,000 acre feet--an acre foot is an acre covered by a foot of water--in any 10-year period.

The water district, however, has the option to keep the water in the lake and buy some elsewhere for the farmers, as it did last year at a cost of $600,000.

But with three dry years in a row, no water has been released since 1985, and Bear Creek has survived--in fact, thrived, it seems--on what little has dribbled through the dam.

But a crisis has long been on the way. In 1984, the state division of dam safety had concluded after a four-year study that an 8.0 earthquake on the San Andreas Fault 10 miles south, or a 6.0 shaker on the Bear Creek thrust fault just a mile north, could knock down the dam.

Then in 1986 the dam people warned, “Fix it by Oct. 31, 1988, or you’ll have to drain the lake.”

Said McCord: “There was a sense of urgency.”

The farmers wanted their reservoir and the lake folk--who include 14,000 permanent residents and 41,000 property owners--wanted their lake, whose fishing, sailing, water skiing and other recreation support their community.

But as soon as the leaks were plugged, it would be bye-bye Bear Creek, a tragedy for the fishery. About then, the DFG moved to have Bear Creek designated a wild-trout stream, only the third in Southern California, along with Deer Creek in the San Bernardino Mountains and Sespe Creek in Ventura County.

Later, it extracted an agreement from the farmers and water district to continue to release an equivalent amount of water after the leaks were fixed. The wild-trout designation hadn’t hurt.

“It’s pure speculation,” McCord said. “But it did happen at an opportune time.”

Hoover said: “Being designated as a wild-trout stream merely indicates that the department will manage it as a wild-trout stream and not routinely stock catchable hatchery trout. It means we have recognized its superior angling qualities.”

Work on the dam started this week. The project is budgeted at $10.8 million, $4.5 million of which will be supplied by the state. As the leaks are fixed, pipes will divert a sustained flow to the creek.

DFG official Keith Anderson said from the department’s Long Beach office: “We are still insisting the district conduct flow studies to determine the level necessary to maintain fish life.”

Jere Mitchell, general manager of the water district, said he has committed $5,000 to that study.

“The environmentalists haven’t given up yet,” said Mitchell, who used to be a forest ranger in the area. “They feel there needs to be additional water released, (although) it’s been able to sustain a flow for 70 years. But anything more than that, someone will have to pay for. That’s expensive water--about $80 (an acre) foot.”

The water district also estimates, however, that the leaks have drawn off only a quarter-inch a year from the level of the lake, which loses a calculated 48 inches to evaporation.

Still, in dry years the inflow from rain and snow fails to match even the evaporation, so every little drip counts.

There are three reasons that Bear Creek isn’t heavily fished: most people don’t know about it, or don’t how to get to it, or don’t rate it worth the considerable effort.

It is accessible from only two points, the Glory Ridge Trail--look for forest road 2N15 off California 18 exactly 2 miles west of the dam--or through Barton Flats around the backside off California 38 and through the mobile home community of Seven Oaks, near where Bear Creek runs into the Santa Ana River. The Glory Ridge endeavor involves a rough drive followed by a stiff hike to the bottom of the gorge. Forest Service maps may help.

“There are some people that are energetic enough to hike down there,” said Mitchell, who has fished the stream with his sons.

But Fowler said: “I have talked to only one angler over all the years that was successful in finding the junction of the (Santa Ana) river and the creek.”

Also, since it has been designated a wild-trout stream, the limit is two fish in possession, and only single barbless hooks may be used, with no live bait.

“If you know about Glory Ridge, it probably takes 30 minutes to hike in and an hour to hike out,” Fowler said. “Who’s going to work that hard for two fish? But once you’re down there, you’re in God’s country. It’s one of the true wilderness experiences in Southern California.”