Cool Way to Fish--on Ice : Lake Sabrina Offers Alternative on Opening Day

Fishermen lined the shores of Crowley Lake for opening day of the Eastern Sierra trout season. They were walking on water at nearby Lake Sabrina.

And while the thousands at Crowley scratched and struggled through large swells and face-chapping winds to catch a few fish, most of the few hundred at Sabrina had caught their limits before Mother Nature could muster so much as a breeze.

The wind would come, but the water would not stir, frozen three feet thick from the surface by the storms of March and a late-winter freeze that created an opportunity that doesn’t come often in these parts--ice fishing.

Ice fishermen found conditions ideal on opening weekend for the first time at Lake Sabrina since 1986 and for only the second time since 1982. “In our first 10 years here we had only one year of ice fishing,” said Rick Apted, whose family has run the Lake Sabrina Boat Landing since 1974.

This year they stepped out onto the frozen surface at dawn, milling about the ice beneath the steep and snowy peaks that climb jaggedly and high, majestically toward a turquoise sky. Braving dawn temperatures in the teens, it was time to do their thing.

Augers in hand, they drilled the holes that allowed light to penetrate a lake in which inhabitants had been living in darkness for weeks.

To the trout such holes seemed to represent the beginning of a spring thaw, one that would bring with it a life-sustaining element that for the smaller fish had for the most part long been missing--food.

They attacked almost anything dropped into the water, from cheese to worms to shiny iron lures.

Rainbow trout were pulled from the holes in great numbers, glistening a silvery green and pink in a colorful contrast to the bright-white ice on which they now lay.

Most, thanks to a five-fish limit imposed by the California Department of Fish and Game and the general trend toward conservation, were sent back into the dark and icy waters, a ceiling of light-giving holes overhead.

Many more filled the stringers of fishermen who found in Lake Sabrina an attractive alternative to the typical opening of trout season in the Eastern Sierra.

“You can fish on open lakes all year, but you very seldom get to ice fish,” said Lloyd Linton, a construction director for the Irvine School District. “Besides, you’re standing shoulder to shoulder at Crowley.”

No such worries at Sabrina, a reservoir 1 1/2 miles long and covering 180 surface acres, nestled at 9,000 feet, just above town, and with plenty of room for the opening weekend crowd.

Linton, of Norco, would spend the day on his chair, his belongings strewn on the ice, his light-tackle rod bending to the strength of the struggling trout, his stringer filling slowly with the fish he would put on the table--including a two-pound brown trout--and a look of relaxation on his face.

“I imagine just about everybody fishing could have their limits by now,” Linton commented. “I don’t mind catching 100 fish.”

Len Sinfield, a San Diego resident who had been coming to the opener since the early 1970s, had drilled his hole a hundred or so yards away. He had heard there was ice this year and decided to give it a try.

“It just sounded like something to try once,” he said. Sinfield had no complaints. He was on the ice not longer than 20 minutes before catching five rainbow trout and losing another dozen. “It’s kind of like meat-fishing I guess,” he said. “It’s definitely something different.”

Complaints were scarce in this pristine setting of ice and snow, among the alpine wilderness and amid a population of rainbow trout waiting for anything palatable to drop into one of the light-giving holes.

There was the time a fisherman ran out of bait and decided to ball up a piece of his peanut-butter sandwich and give it a try. He pulled in a 5 1/2-pound trout.

“So everybody was trying to get peanut butter on their hooks,” said Juanita Apted’s son Mike. “We had people buying Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, jars of peanut butter--anything with peanut butter.”

There was the year golden trout seemed to prefer orange Starburst candies, and there was a run on both.

But people were wondering what happened to the three- to five-pound trout that were put in the reservoir last year, as most coming out of the holes on opening weekend were in the one-pound range. Nothing came close to the 1982 catch of a lake record 15 1/2-pound brown trout that required a 45-minute fight--and an additional hole--before being pulled through the ice by Fred DeGarmo of Torrance.

“I’m kind of disappointed in the size,” said John McLaughlin. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many we caught but. . . . “

“It’s probably because the big ones have been eating on the smaller ones,” reasoned Juanita Apted. “The smaller ones are relying on what trickles into the lake.”

What trickled into the lake on opening weekend were the usual insects and small grubs from area runoff, and then there was the not-so-usual baits and lures that fooled a population of trout that had long been in the dark.

Juanita Apted calls the sport of ice fishing “a novelty” and few could disagree.

But northern Minnesota this is not. Nary a hut nor a shelter--necessary in the sub-zero temperatures of the northern Midwest winter--accompanies an Eastern Sierra ice-fishing outing. A warm jacket, a pair of gloves and a beach chair will do.

But whereas subzero temperatures will assure a solid foundation of ice beneath your feet, readings that climb into the 40s and 50s can make an Eastern Sierra ice-fishing adventure just that--an adventure.

Don’t even bother to call ahead for assurances that the ice on any of California’s high-elevation lakes will support your weight, because chances are you will get none. Officials in Inyo and Mono counties will discourage your venturing out on the ice and remind you that you will do so at your own risk.

“They’re not promoting it because everybody is so doggone scared, of course, that it’s going to turn mushy and someone’s going to go out there (and fall in),” a spokeswoman for the Bishop Chamber of Commerce said, referring to the drowning last year of seven people who fell through thin ice on Mono County’s Convict Lake.

Juanita Apted claims that the ice on Sabrina will probably accommodate fishermen for a few more weeks, but she’ll also point to the lake-front sign that reads “Enter at Your Own Risk.”

Falling through thin ice is not an uncommon occurrence.

Don McLaughlin did it a month before the April 27 opener while making his annual firsthand check of conditions. He broke through near the Lake Sabrina dam in late February, before the actual freeze.

“I went right through the snow and there was a thin layer of ice and I went through that,” he said, adding that he has never fallen below his waist. “One leg went down and through and the other one was up and dry.”

Juanita Apted remembers the time a priest was dropped off at the lake and fell through immediately after stepping on the ice. Many took that as a sign and took their equipment elsewhere.

Linton fell through once, at Rock Creek Lake in Mono County, but was able to lift himself out with his arms. “When you hit that cold water you can’t even talk,” he says.

Linton recalled the time five years ago when a man fell through while sitting on his chair. “He had his wife, daughter and son along and his wife and son fell in trying to rescue him,” he said. “Two other guys that were with me went in trying to help. We lay on the ice, took our jackets off and pulled them off the ice (with the jackets).”

But as of Tuesday the ice at Sabrina was said to be at least 2-feet thick and was easily supporting the 30 or so fishermen, who were still attracting trout with their light-giving holes, taking them with their light-tackle rods and puting them on ice.