THE OUTDOORS : The Trout No Longer Rules the Waters at Crowley Lake : It’s Perch, Perchance
Pete Seguin swears it’s true. He saw a local angler throw back a fair-sized trout the other day on Crowley Lake.
The guy was fishing for perch.
Perch? At Crowley? Is nothing sacred? Next we’ll have heavy metal in the Hollywood Bowl.
Magnificent trout is what Crowley is all about, not low-brow fish that showed up without an invitation.
Some sailing and water skiing are done on Crowley but basically, the Eastern Sierra artificial lake with its barren shores has little else to recommend except its reputation as one of the West’s best fishing holes.
But what are they fishing for these days?
Perch. Precisely, Sacramento perch, virtually a throwback to the Stone Age and certainly not a member of the latter-day, upper scale of fishdom.
And they’re bringing them home in baskets. Seguin caught 125 in one morning. He saw a couple bring in more than 300 one day last year.
“I do fish for trout,” said Seguin, a retired assistant bank comptroller from Hemet who helps man the boat-rental office. “But I’d rather go for the perch. They taste better, and it’s a lot of fun catching those things.”
That isn’t what the people at the Department of Fish and Game like to hear.
Curtis Milliron, a DFG fisheries biologist, said: “I can tell you that Fish and Game had nothing to do with bringing them into the Owens Valley, and we’re not too pleased about it. There are only so many mouths that can be fed out there.”
Most DFG biologists believe that the perch are dragging down the trout population by eating their food and, possibly, by being eaten by the trout, who choke on the spiny little creatures.
Lake Manager Dave Griffith had noted earlier that Crowley’s traditional opening day was slow for trout in both size and quantity, and this week he lamented that, for this season, “The trout are just about gone.”
Even some of the perch fishermen are complaining. Bill and Kathy Barnes said they caught only 33 Monday.
“Slow,” Kathy said.
On a good day, they’ll catch more than a hundred.
Behold the Sacramento perch, scorned by purists but beloved by others who have come to appreciate its virtues.
They don’t get very big, averaging about three-quarters of a pound, but Barnes said he caught one that weighed 2 pounds 9 ounces this year. He’s having it mounted.
The state record is 3 pounds 10 ounces, caught May 22, 1979, by Jack Johnson of Carson, out of Crowley.
That’s a minnow compared to the Crowley record for a brown trout: 25 pounds, 11 ounces by Rich Reinwald in ’71.
“But they are better than trout,” Barnes said.
Tasty and readily available--there is no limit on catches--the lowly perch has its points.
Scientific name: Archoplites interruptus, with the classic deep-bodied shape of the sunfish family of centrarchidae.
The reference book “Inland Fishes of California,” by Peter B. Moyle of UC Davis, says the species is “rather sluggish in its movements . . . (but) a scrappy fighter.”
Moyle also says the Sacramento perch is “more characteristic of fossil sunfishes than of modern forms.”
A low-brow--but, a survivor, able to sustain itself through the ages not only in the pure waters of Crowley but in some alkaline waters that won’t support other fish.
Does that earn it any respect? Not much.
You can’t even order one from a menu anywhere in the Eastern Sierra. But, then, as one area resident says, even the trout you are served in the lodge overlooking Convict Lake will be from Idaho, because the local products aren’t available for health department approval.
That leaves the perch, largely a local phenomenon that the DFG and others see not only as a nuisance but a threat to trout populations.
Griffith said: “We’re very disappointed that the trout fishing has been so poor. All I know is about 1968 (the perch) started showing up. No one really knows why, but someone had to bring ‘em.
“Someone obviously brought a bucket of these things from some place--they live forever--to use as bait for bigger fish. Back in the old days it was legal to fish with live bait. I’m not a biologist (to say) how a basket full of those things can start the whole thing, but I guess all it takes is two.
“We had a ‘Purge the Perch’ program in 1978 (because) we thought they were the reason the trout fishing was so bad. People caught thousands out of that lake. And there are still thousands in there--maybe millions.”
But Griffith also sees the bright side.
“I’m interested in the recreation end. A much bigger percentage like to catch trout. They fight more. The people who come on opening weekend would scorn those perch. They don’t want ‘em around.
“But when it gets down to eating fish and catching a lot of fish, you’ll find a lot of people enjoy the perch, especially the locals.”
When Griffith says, “They’re relatively easy to catch,” he means they all but jump into the boat. He recommended drift-fishing, using a yellow, purple or red and white lead-head jig, accompanied by a worm or a piece of a worm up until July 31. After that, live bait becomes illegal.
“They just bite that thing and they’re on,” he said. “If you run into a good school, you can catch 35 or 40 of ‘em at a time.
“I’ll have boatloads of kids from youth camps in July and August that have a good time catching those things.”
And in one of its recent weekly Eastern Sierra fishing reports, Sierra Bright Dot Guide Service of Mammoth Lakes noted, “Do not underestimate the fishing potential of the Sacramento perch.”
Bill and Kathy Barnes are busy at their fish cleaning table on a slope overlooking Little Round Meadow and California 395. It’s a day the Chamber of Commerce would like to bottle and mail to travel agencies.
They moved up from Santa Paula with their son Billy and daughter Kathleen seven years ago and manage the Fobes 40 motel a mile up the frontage road from the historic commercial settlement of Tom’s Place, where Bill works.
“They’d have to blow this place up to get us out of here,” Kathy said.
She also works at the Crowley Lake General Store, but when time permits, their passion is perch fishing. Nobody in these parts catches as many perch as they do.
“That’s about all we fish for anymore,” she said.
Bill: “I’d bet we caught about 3,000 perch out of there last year. We had two big fish fries down at Tom’s Place.”
Kathy: “We had one where the whole county was invited. Must have been about a hundred people.”
Bill: “It’s good for their bar business.”
What they don’t eat, they freeze.
“We freeze ‘em in (plastic bags) in water,” Bill said. “(That way), they won’t dry out.”
Their fishing technique, they say, is nothing special.
“Just like fishing for crappie,” Bill said. “Identical jig.”
Kathy: “Kind of throw it into the water . . . “
Bill: “Real, real slow, and then every once in a while give it a little twitch . . . “
Kathy: “Make it look like the jig is alive.”
Bill said: “We don’t fish for trout much.”
But not because they don’t know how.
Kathy: “If you look over the fireplace at Tom’s Place, there’s a 7 1/2-pound female brown up there with a trophy for (Bill).”
Bill: “Two years ago, I got the largest trout out of there, and last year I got the third largest. But I was fishing for perch.”
A few such monsters may still lurk deep down in the cooler depths of Crowley, too smart to be caught, and Griffith doesn’t think the perch will ever drive out the trout entirely.
“As long as the Department of Fish and Game continues to stock (trout) in there, you’ll have relatively good fishing,” he said. “They’re in there now. I caught a 3 1/2-pounder Wednesday. They do survive, and they do get bigger.
“But all those big 19- and 20-pounders just can’t get that big anymore.”
Chris Davison, an L.A. City lifeguard and rescue boat operator, said there are usually a few float-tube anglers at the Owens River inflow each day, trying for trout.
“They get upset when they hook a perch,” Davison said.
