Eastern Sierra Trout Season Opens : This Year, Gull Lake May Rival Crowley in Popularity

MAMMOTH —  When the Eastern Sierra trout season begins another six-month run at dawn Saturday, officials at Crowley Lake say they have no reason to expect any fewer than the record 18,825 who showed up there a year ago.

Much of the attention Saturday, however, will be focused on a lake roughly a hundredth of Crowley’s size, Gull Lake, in the June Lake loop.

A year ago Saturday, you see, Gull Lake was the place to be.

Shortly before opening day in 1985, a Department of Fish and Game trout truck was depositing brood stock rainbow trout, 4 to 10 pounds each, into each of the four loop lakes.

Gull Lake, by far the smallest of the four, got its small allotment of big rainbows, but when the planting crew wanted to move on to the next lake the truck wouldn’t start.

Rather than risk losing the remaining trout in the truck’s water tank, the crew unloaded them in Gull.

“What it amounted to was that Gull got an extra truckload of brood stock fish,” said Bill Rowan, the state’s trout hatchery chief for the Eastern Sierra region.

Then on opening day, those at Gull could scarcely believe what was happening. Fishermen caught arm-sized rainbows all day. On the opening weekend at Gull last year, fishermen caught:

--About 25 rainbows weighing more than eight pounds each.

--About 75 rainbows weighing more than five pounds each.

--A 9-pound 4-ounce, 32-inch rainbow by Pasqual Marjil of Los Angeles, largest opening-day catch in the entire Eastern Sierra.

No one was more surprised than Pete Levy, who only a few months before had bought the fishing concession at Gull Lake for $350,000. The DFG hadn’t told anyone about Gull’s bonus stocking of brood trout.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Word spread and people started pouring in all weekend to shore-fish here. It didn’t mean much extra business on opening day, since I had all my boats rented anyway. But that opening weekend notoriety helped me for the rest of the season.”

Around June Lake, where Levy, 31, has lived since 1974, he’s known as the man with the golden touch, whether it be real estate or fish.

“When I came to June Lake, I was a paramedic and I’m still a paramedic,” he said.

“In 1974, I bought a little house for $12,000 and sold it a few years later for $89,000. Then I bought a nicer place and sold it a few years later for another 700% profit. And the amazing thing about all that is, I don’t know a thing about real estate.”

When the fishing concession at Gull Lake was put on the market, Levy bought it.

For $350,000, Levy got 30 aluminum skiffs, 30 outboard motors, a dock, and a small tackle shop.

Levy, as are most concessionaires in the Eastern Sierra, is looking for a banner opening weekend.

“I’m sure a lot of people will come to Gull who figure the big brooders weren’t all caught last year,” he said. “And I think signs indicate crowds will be up generally, since the cost of gas is down and because people are vacationing more in California now instead of going overseas.”

At Crowley, fishermen should observe continuing effects of the disastrous outbreak of whirling disease that shut down the Mount Whitney hatchery more than a year ago. The fish disease wiped out an entire supply of brown trout brood stock.

“We stocked Crowley with between 450,000 and 500,000 Coleman strain rainbow sub-catchables last summer,” Rowan said. “Normally, we put in around 100,000 sub-catchable browns, but we just didn’t have them this year.”

Rowan also said fishermen who favor high streams and lakes may encounter the same road condition problems his trout truck crews have.

“We’re trying to get the South Fork of Bishop Creek and the upper stretches of Rock Creek stocked by opening day,” he said. “There’s still a lot of snow and ice on the roads up there.”

Rick Rockel, who owns Ken’s Sporting Goods in Bridgeport, is hopeful that the big browns that dominated opening day three years ago, then disappeared for nearly all of the last two seasons, will reappear this year.

Two years ago Saturday, John Minami of Carson caught a state-record 26-pound 5-ounce brown at Lower Twin Lake, near Bridgeport.

“I graphed (with an electronic fish finder) both Lower and Upper Twin the other day,” Rockel said. “In the middle of the day, I found big fish at 90 to 120 feet in Lower Twin, and at 70 to 90 feet on Upper Twin. Those fish are going to be in shallow water early in the day, and since both lakes have been ice-free since January, I expect them to be very active on opening weekend.”

Rockel also predicted that most of the action on two- to six-pound trout on opening day would occur at Bridgeport Reservoir, both for shore fishermen working the lake’s dam end and fishermen working trolling rigs from boats.

The East Walker River, one of the California’s premier wild trout streams, also looks promising, Rockel said.

“The East Walker has a high-medium flow right now and looks very fishable,” he said.