I was a little under the weather last Saturday so did not make the trip to the Eastern Sierras for the opener. I will probably hear what I missed out on at my FF club meeting Tuesday.
But, my grandson and I made the drive up to Bishop Tuesday morning, stopping at Lone pine creek, Big Pine creek and a few other spots on the way up. Didn't see any fish. Bishop creek at the North lake road was blown out. In over 30 years of fishing there I have never seen that much water in it. South Fork was not as full but was almost at flood stage. Again no fish to be found. We fished Intake II for about 2 hours and didn't have any luck. We finally drove down the mountain to Pleasant Valley res. and hiked in the south end over the dam and about half a mile up finally saw some fish rising. I threw everything I could think of without one bump. Eddie was having the same luck. Just before sunset we hiked back to the car. On the way back we had a near miss when he told me, "Snake!" I looked down to see a small, about 10" pacific rattler coiled in front of us. I tapped it on it's back a couple times with the tip of my rod and it slithered off the road and into some rocks. Headed on to the car and went to dinner and then our motel room.
Wednesday morning we hit the Owen's river from 5 bridges road to Warm Springs road without one nibble. The river was bank to bank and flowing fast. Went back up on the mountain and tried a few more spots on Bishop creek. Watched some fellas ice fishing at Sabrina but didn't see any fish being caught there. We finally packed it in and headed south to Big Pine. Drove up to Glacier Lodge and fished a number of spots on the creek coming back down. Again there was a lot of water and few fish. About 2 in the afternoon we stopped in at the sand trap on George's creek and watched fish rising to what appeared to be white blossoms falling off the trees along the bank. I tied on a EH caddis and soon had a few misses. Eddie put down the fly rod and tied a spinner on his ultralite and caught 2 small trout in about 5 casts. I tried a few streamers with one missed and one long distant release. We were tired and getting hungry so packed up and drove into Lone Pine for a hamburger and talked about going to Cottonwood creek. We decided against it and headed on home.
The best part of the trip was getting to spend time with Eddie. He has enlisted in the Air Force and will be going to Basic in San Antonio in August. I hope to have a few more outings with him before he leaves.