A Throwback Opener for 1996 Trout Season

Jason Walton was halfway between the docks and the cleaning tables when a friend saw what he was lugging up the bank and jokingly remarked:

“What were you doing, throwing hand grenades in the water?”

Walton, 27, of Placentia, merely smiled, and kept walking.

That same question could have been asked of practically all of the more than 5,000 anglers at opening day of the 1996 general trout season at Crowley Lake.

In Walton’s sagging net were five plump trout, including a 3 1/2-pound rainbow and a beautifully colored brown.

But at the cleaning station Saturday were dozens of fishermen like him, standing elbow-to-elbow, slicing away at sizable trout of their own.

And dozens more, coming from every direction, hauling stringers of fish they filled under sunny skies out on the sparkling blue reservoir that sits invitingly alongside U.S. 395 on a barren patch of land beneath snowy Eastern Sierra peaks.

Trout were yanked from their icy domain within minutes after the flare was fired at 5:15 to signal the season’s beginning. The first five-fish limit was plopped on the table at 7 a.m.

“It was bad out there,” said Chris Matheson, 37, of Burbank, as he walked through the doors of the Crowley Lake Fish Camp tackle store shaking his head.

In his case bad meant extremely good. Matheson and two companions, fishing from a boat, caught 34 fish by 10 a.m. “But we only kept four,” he pointed out, acknowledging the presence of a Department of Fish and Game warden.

Others boasted of similar results and some went so far as to claim that Saturday would go down as one of the best opening days on record, which is saying a lot given the reputation Crowley earned in decades long past.

“I’ve had people come in who had been fishing here every year for 40 years and say this is the best they had ever seen it,” said Don McPherson, working behind the counter of the tackle store. “You could probably stick a hook through your pencil and catch a fish.”

A successful opener had been predicted for weeks. The vast reservoir received an unusually large stocking of more than one million fish, from fingerlings to nine-pounders, late last summer and early fall.

And unlike recent seasons, Crowley benefited in that it never iced over during the winter. The water remained comparatively warm and the fish comparatively active, feeding and growing.

Still, few expected them to be this cooperative.

Preliminary reports from DFG biologists indicated that the rainbow trout showing at the tables--there were also about two dozen browns checked--were extremely healthy specimens averaging between 1 1/4 pounds and 1 1/2 pounds, nearly one-third larger than last year’s average.

There were several larger trout caught at Crowley, including a 5.12-pound rainbow by Whittier’s Chris Vandorn.

The biggest fish caught on opening day in the Eastern Sierra as of late Saturday afternoon was a 7 1/2-pound brown pulled from lower Twin in Bridgeport and weighed at Twin Lakes Resort, then revived and released. Lower Twin also produced two 6 1/2-pound rainbows.

One of the most impressive catches was a 7.3-pound cutthroat at June Lake by Steve Cote of Lake Tahoe while trolling a Super Duper.

Many fish in the five-to six-pound class were caught in creeks and lakes from Mammoth Lakes to Bishop. Despite the consistent bite at most waters, conspicuously absent were the really big fish--the double-digit trophies. One theory is that because of the mild winter they had been active and feeding long before opening day, and thus did not feel the need to pounce on just anything passing their way.

As Adrienne DeSurra at Convict Lake Resort said: “They don’t get that big by being stupid.”