The Big Ones That Don’t Get Away

Fishermen slumped in beach chairs suddenly sit up and crane their necks as the tanker truck with the distinctive, leaping trout logo backs up to the lake. Sunburnt men seem to sprout from the aspens, fishing poles in hand. A white-haired grandmother whips her car around and hurries back to the shore.

As Tim Alpers methodically scoops net after net of glistening 5-pound fish from his truck into the lake, a few of the witnesses actually gasp. One lets out a short “Hoo-weeeeee!” And a woman says simply: “Fantastic!”

Trout season in the Sierra Nevada has begun in earnest, and the Mother Lode has just arrived on the shores of Gull Lake.

Alpers is the leader of a new generation of trout farmers not content to rely solely on Mother Nature or the state of California to produce trophy trout. Buoyed by his success, marina operators, Mono County and a nonprofit foundation are getting into the boutique industry of raising the large fish. Even the conservative state Department of Fish and Game--which once specialized only in bulk production of pan-sized fish--has begun releasing lunkers into the icy lakes and streams off U.S. 395.

Each new wave of mega-trout provokes a frenzy for even more, but success and admiration have not come without a few small jealousies. Tired of hearing Alpers get all the credit for every big fish in these mountains, the Department of Fish and Game now marks its big rainbows with gold tags.

Some ask whether the $66,000 that Mono County pays Alpers annually for his fish could be put to use on other wildlife programs. Others would like to see preservation of endangered native trout receive half the time and money that go into growing big fish.

“There are mandates to protect native fish, but no money to do it with,” said Brett Matzke, public lands director for the nonprofit group California Trout Inc. “Are we going to give up on something, the natural fish, that it has taken a million years to produce?”

But with sport fishermen demanding ever bigger fish, the farming programs keep expanding. Headlining the phenomenon has been Alpers, a lanky, 51-year-old rancher who gave up a career as a college basketball coach to grow giant trout on the headwaters of the Owens River, a few miles northeast of Mammoth Lakes.

Fishermen crow about the sass and fighting spirit of Alpers’ fish, chefs marvel at their pink flesh, and boat dock owners beam about increased revenue.

“It’s really great catching one of these fish,” said Jim Saiz, a 65-year-old retiree from La Puente who brought in a 17-pounder at Silver Lake a couple years ago. “They really, really give you a fight.”

The reputation of the Alpers trout has grown to the point that some anglers no longer boast of catching a rainbow, cutthroat or brown trout--but simply “an Alpers,” though no such breed exists.

Alpers’ opportunity arrived unexpectedly more than a decade ago, about the time the Department of Fish and Game changed its trout-raising philosophy. The agency began to produce fish that averaged half a pound; previously, hatchery fish averaged just a third of a pound.

With no expansion in the size of its hatcheries, that meant the department could release only 1.5 million fish a year into the lakes and streams of Inyo and Mono counties, compared to about 2.3 million when the fish were smaller. Stagnant budgets for much of this decade caused fish production to drop an additional 20%, state officials say.

Into the void stepped private aquaculturists. The state’s top trout farmer, Mt. Lassen Trout of Red Bluff, has nearly doubled its production since 1990, to 1.3 million pounds. Fish and Game officials estimate that the entire California industry now produces more than 2 million pounds of trout, about double the output of a decade ago. Alpers plants about 50,000 pounds in area lakes each year, fetching $3.50 a pound for the biggest fish.

Those are the ones anglers most covet. It used to be that a boat-landing operator would thrill at the sight of a 15- or 16-pound rainbow. But now some demand a few fish of more than 20 pounds, said Phil Mackey, co-owner of Lassen Trout.

“It’s the Las Vegas concept,” he said. “They want someone to hit the jackpot with a big fish. Then it’s splashed all over the papers, and they make money.”

‘It Just Turned Our Business Around’

Seeing the benefits of planting larger fish, marina managers at June Lake have teamed up to raise 20,000 trout in cages at the end of their docks. The Mono County Board of Supervisors is negotiating to turn over a ranch to a new nonprofit group that would raise more big trout for local waters.

Alpers has been the prime beneficiary in the Eastern Sierra, the region that is a favorite of Southern Californians for a fishing season that begins April 15 and runs into the fall.

He grew up on a cattle ranch that his grandfather started northeast of Mammoth Lakes before going away to the University of Nevada, Reno, to play basketball. Later he became an assistant coach at the University of Tulsa. But he returned 20 years ago to join the family business, which has included a string of fishing cabins since the 1920s.

Until the mid-1980s, Alpers raised trout only for his Owens River Ranch and its guests. But then a marina operator at nearby June Lake asked to buy some of the fish. Alpers started delivering hundreds of slippery 2-pound rainbows.

“It just turned our business around completely,” said John Frederickson, owner of June Lake Marina. “Sales went up, like, 20% in a year.”

Word spread, and soon anglers were talking about not only the size of Alpers’ fish, but also their sharp coloration and outstanding proportions. Because he raises his fish in long, earthen raceways, their fins and tails are not worn down like those of trout from Fish and Game’s concrete pens, he said.

The arrival of the big fish can create a sensation. Alpers’ tanker trucks sometimes draw a caravan of followers as they wind their way up mountain roads.

Alpers also gets a healthy push from local tourism promoters, businessmen and outdoor writers, the latter calling his fish everything from “acrobatic” to “big-shouldered.”

Alpers sells most of his fish to Mono County, the city of Mammoth Lakes and various fishing operators. He gives some away to trout derbies for kids. He also rents out fishing cabins and time on his private, four-acre lake.

Alpers can’t produce enough fish to meet demand. He has limited his operation, no longer delivering to the Southland, because “I was becoming too much of a truck driver and not enough of a fish farmer.”

Queries from Los Angeles and Napa Valley restaurants also have gone unmet, because Alpers does not want to tackle the logistics of getting his fresh fish to those distant places. He smokes the trout for consumption at a few local eateries. The Eastern Sierra’s only four-star restaurant, at Convict Lake, serves a delectable Alpers almondine.

Alpers credits family tradition, hard work and a prime locale for his success. Watching an underground spring dump water into the meandering Owens, right in the middle of his 210 grassy acres, he rhapsodizes: “That’s 1,200 gallons a minute of pure, cold, liquid diamonds.”

The water flows gently downhill over his land, giving the fish a current to fight. It conditions them like athletes, so they don’t become the “footballs with fins” that some trout farms produce, he says.

The eggs he buys from commercial operators combine several strains of rainbow trout with their large and powerful cousin, the steelhead. Alpers hatches them in baskets and then moves the small fish, as they grow, through a series of ponds and raceways. It takes three years to grow the 5-pound-plus fish that are his stock in trade.

Alpers served on the Mono County Board of Supervisors two years ago but said he left to devote full time to his fish. The money’s not bad, but the adulation seems to be what keeps him going.

“Yeee-ha!” he declares, beaming, as another load of fish streams from a giant hose into Silver Lake. “Look at ‘em go!”