Whoppers Spring From Pure Water : Ponds at Alpers’ Ranch Are Good Environment to Grow Trophy Trout

The water gushes from the earth, clear and pure. Born in a prehistoric volcanic cataclysm, these fountains of life flow peacefully through lush alpine meadows where trout thrive. They never stop--day or night, winter or summer, drought or deluge.

What a plumbing system! Here, at the headwaters of the Owens River, it’s as if God left the water running for the fishes’ sake. There may be no better place on earth to rear trout, and this is where Tim Alpers operates a private hatchery, on the 210-acre Owens River Ranch his grandfather Fred bought from the original homesteader in 1905.

A log cabin dates to 1860. The main lodge’s tired roof sags in the shade of the aspens. But the ranch is more than historic.

“I’ve probably got the cleanest facility in California,” Alpers says. “I’m sitting right in the spring water. I’m very lucky that I had a grandfather who knew how to pick property.”

Alpers attended the University of Nevada and Humboldt State, and in 1971, with degrees in wildlife management with emphasis on fisheries biology, he started growing fish. For a while he was an assistant basketball coach at the University of Tulsa, but in ’79 he returned to Long Valley to develop his hatchery.

“Every lake from Carson Pass to Crowley that I can drive to I stock,” he says.

He has two custom-equipped tank trucks and contracts with Mono County, for which he once was a supervisor; Alpine County and the town of Mammoth Lakes. He also sells to private marinas and resorts that want to boost their fishing prospects. Especially around Mammoth Lakes, the locals know his trucks and look for them.

“When I go through town it’s like trolling,” Alpers says. “I go up that grade (into town) and start collecting ‘em behind me.”

Alpers’ ranch is 10 miles north of the Mammoth Lakes junction off California 395. His springs are a mile downstream from where the Owens originates, a couple of flycasts east of the highway.

After winding eastward through his ranch, the river bisects the adjacent Arcularias Ranch and the Inaja Land Co. property before turning south through Long Valley to Crowley Lake. Then it goes to work, producing electricity for the Los Angeles City Department of Water and Power as it charges through the Owens Gorge until, its energy spent, it flows gently past Bishop, Big Pine, Independence and Lone Pine before being sucked up by the last intake of the aqueduct, leaving dry Owens Lake to wonder where the water went.

But first, it serves the fish. The water from your tap may have held a trophy trout under a cut bank on Alpers’ land. But your swimming pool was never as clean as Alpers’ ponds, which don’t need chemicals.

Alpers lifts a lid on a tank of squirming fingerlings, reaches for a long-handled ladle and scoops up a drink--careful to avoid the tiny fish. The water has gurgled from the bottom of a hill only a few yards away. Ah, he gulps, that pure spring water.

“I’m real pleased with these fish,” he says. “They were in eggs a month ago. I have high expectations. These fish came from 15-pound parents.”

Alpers has arranged his tanks and rearing ponds off the mainstream of the Owens, exploiting either natural spring-fed tributaries or digging diversions. There are drops to aerate the water and maintain an oxygen content, and all are screened so the fish can’t escape into the river and interfere with the native fish that return to spawn every year. Some are covered by netting to frustrate birds.

Yet, because of the tall grass, the operation is virtually invisible from ground level, preserving the beauty of the valley. Alpers stocks one winding, man-made, two-mile tributary--”Alpers Creek”--for bait fishing by his guests.

Like his downstream neighbor, John Arcularias, Alpers also rents cabins to fly anglers for exclusive catch-and-release fishing for the Owens’ wild browns and rainbows, and he believes his hatchery fish are “the closest you can get to a wild fish that’s domestically raised.”

Driving out from the lodge to his ponds, Alpers passes the mill his grandfather built for electricity in 1920. It ran until ’82 when Alpers replaced it with a turbo system. He has 60 head of cattle, but keeps them fenced off from the streams and ponds.

Alpers raises three strains of rainbows: Colemans, Whitney and Mt. Lassen. He has high expectations for the Colemans, who seem especially aggressive.

Walking out to feed a pond full of one-pound Colemans from a bucket of special pellets, Alpers is still 15 feet from the edge when the water starts to boil 20 yards upstream. The boil grows as it works toward him, and soon there’s a full-on feeding frenzy at his feet. Some are tailing in the shallows, like bonefish, digging pellets out of the mud.

“They’ll be the trophy fish next year,” Alpers says. “By Memorial Day they’ll be three to six pounds. They fight hard and are growing faster than anything I’ve ever had.”

Alpers’ ponds are earthen, with natural moss and algae growth, unlike the state Department of Fish and Game’s concrete hatcheries, which are built for efficient production in volume. The DFG inspects Alpers’ operation once a year for disease and certification but for its own purposes must concentrate on quantity. Alpers can focus on producing larger fish, he says, “with size and fight.”

Kent Hashagen, hatcheries supervisor for the DFG, said, “There is no conflict with us in any manner. We’re going in a different direction.”

Alpers, who plants about 35,000 fish a year, has several advantages over the state, which has to plant nearly 9 million to keep anglers happy.

“Fish and Game has a much broader responsibility, a lot of bureaucratic headaches from Sacramento and the drought has hurt them,” Alpers says. “My hat’s off to them. They have a huge responsibility . . . all the back-country lakes, all the streams.

“They have some very capable people, but their hands are tied. They’re understaffed. They’re under-budgeted.”

Occasionally, the DFG will unload over-the-hill broodstock, but “you don’t want big dead ones,” Alpers says. “They’ve been pulling eggs out of ‘em for four or five years and they’re tired. It’s like pulling in a log.

“I grow my fish slower than Fish and Game. The slower you grow ‘em the healthier they are.”

Alpers sells his larger fish, 3 years old and two to five pounds, for $2.70 a pound. Fish and Game can’t wait three years for fish to grow. Alpers’ smaller fish, one-half to three-quarters of a pound, go for $2.10 a pound. The state fish average about half a pound.

Walking the meadows along the ponds, Alpers says, “You’ll see these fish have no marks on ‘em from scraping up against concrete walls, and they get better, natural feed.

“They’re thinned out. That’s the key to it. Fish like to be thinned out, like people aren’t meant to be jammed into cities.”

But the lifeblood of his operation is the water. Alpers’ main spring pumps 250 gallons a minute and remains at 59 degrees year-round, while the river averages 50 to 55.

“In the winter this keeps the ponds from freezing and warm enough to keep the fish eating so they’ll put on weight,” Alpers says. “Most of the demand is for the big fish.”

Recruiting the assistance of two young visitors, brothers Tyler and Spencer Naake, Alpers loads his new, 450-gallon truck for a run to June Lake. He scoops 200 pounds of catchable-size fish from one pond, then 200 pounds of whoppers--80, by actual count--from another.

He plants as far north as Red Lake at Carson Pass and in all the lakes and streams on the eastern side of Alpine County, including the east and west forks of the Carson River, Markleeville Creek, Silver Creek and Indian Creek Reservoir. He goes as far south as Johnsondale on the Kern River.

As he backs the truck down the launching ramp at the June Lake Marina, a crowd gathers. Some kids have fishing rods. Marina manager John Frederickson senses that business is about to pick up.

“Tim’s operation has probably increased my business 30%,” Frederickson says. “I know the importance of a trophy fishing program.”

Alpers’ ambition is even higher.

“We’re gonna transform the fishing up here in Inyo and Mono Counties,” he says. “That’s been my dream from day one.”