Trout season opens under dangerous conditions
Bruce Levine did not land the largest trout on opening day of the Eastern Sierra fishing season.
That honor, as of late Saturday afternoon, belonged to Santa Barbara’s Bill Danult, who caught a 10-pound-8-ounce rainbow at June Lake.
But Moorpark’s Levine and three buddies might be catching sizable colds after their Saturday morning odyssey on Crowley Lake’s namesake reservoir.
It began with a post-dawn journey across vast and choppy waters in a bass-fishing boat with low draft. It ended several hours later with their humiliating rescue after the boat was swamped and shoved aground by ocean-like waves and fierce north winds.
“We’ve been coming for the opener for 25 years, and this is the one that’s most unforgettable,” a drenched Levine acknowledged, sheepishly, after stepping from the rescue boat onto the docks. “At least we didn’t lose the boat; these guys did a great job.”
To be sure, Mono County Sheriff’s Department officers were the real heroes at Crowley. They performed 15 rescues before lunchtime during one of the coldest, most blustery openers in recent history.
“I would rank it in the top five,” said Gary Williams, patrol boat officer for 18 years.
It became clear a day earlier that weather would be an issue for thousands of visitors to a region spanning Inyo and Mono counties and 100 miles from Bishop to Bridgeport.
It snowed all day Friday above about 6,000 feet. Wind speeds in advance of the storm reached 80 mph in higher elevations and 60 mph at Crowley, an exposed lake south of Mammoth and east of U.S. 395.
Early Saturday, as the storm subsided, bundled anglers braved temperatures in the teens and 20s. Some areas were calmer than Crowley, but still dangerous.
Atop Bishop Creek Canyon, just below 10,000 feet, at least one vehicle slid from the road and overturned. Its occupants were not seriously injured. Many vehicles became stranded, and roads to South Lake and Lake Sabrina were temporarily closed.
Anaheim’s Marlon Meade was among about 25 anglers who began fishing high in the canyon at 12:01 a.m. Saturday -- the true season’s beginning in Inyo County.
“It was pitch black and snowing hard,” said Meade, 50, who was at Intake II below Sabrina. “Only a few brave and hardy souls were still there when we left at 3 a.m. The snow on the road had frozen, so we slid all the way down the mountain.”
Saturday was otherwise marked by mere angling semi-prowess against rainbow, brown and cutthroat trout that had not seen a baited hook in five months.
At Crowley, where crowds were down substantially because of 30-mph winds, persistent fishermen caught quality fish.
“It was cold and choppy, but the fish were better than during the past two years,” said Torrance angler Kelsey Baughfinan, revealing a cooler containing eight plump rainbows and browns.
At nearby Convict Lake, the parade of anglers toting impressive stringers was steady -- and most went straight for the warmth of rented cabins.
“It was so cold it wasn’t even funny,” said Las Vegas angler Justin Mayorga, 16, who fishes once a year, always on opening day. He and his father filled a stringer with nine rainbows totaling 18 pounds.
At Gull Lake on the June Lake Loop, Shawn Arnold and Joe Trgo of Huntington Beach caught and released more than 50 rainbows, while keeping three, including a three-pounder by Arnold.
They were outfished, however, by Garrett Arman, an 8-year-old whose 5 1/4 -pound rainbow dwarfed other trout on a stringer he could barely hoist.
The kid didn’t mind the cold, though, being from Oregon. “I just like going out there for the fun and joy of catching big fish,” he said.
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