Indian Creek Reservoir Outing 2006
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The Indian Creek Outing had difficulties right from the start. It turns out that the "Death Ride" was scheduled for the same weekend, so we decided to move the camping up to Lower Blue Lake as the start and end of the ride was going to be at Turtle Rock State Park, which just so happens to be right across Highway 89 from teh turn into Indain Creek reservoir. The campground host at Indian Creek's BLM campground was very helpful in pointing this out.
Ron Calvert went up Thursday night and camped at the Upper Blue Lake damsite campground. Then Friday morning he went and fished Indian Creek. Ron said that he the fishing was slow, but he did manage to pick up a 27" Rainbow, the largest he had ever caught! Of course there were no pictures, or witnesses so it could have been a fishing story... Just kidding Ron, way to go!
I headed up on Friday morning and grabbed a campsite right along the water (#1) at Lower Blue Lake. When Ron returned from Indian Creek he relocated his campsite to the one right next to mine (#2). After we got our sites set up we decided to go out and do some scouting of the lakes in the area to see which ones looked good. We started out be heading up past Upper Blue Lake and over the hill to Lost Lake, the headwaters of the West Carson River. There were quite a few people camping at Lost Lakes and we did not see anyone doing much fishing. The lakes were pretty, but we decided to leave the rods in the truck and keep exploring. We then headed down and looked at Tamarack Lake, Upper and Lower Sunset Lakes, and Summit Lake. They were all pretty, but did not look like they had much in the way of vegetation in them. Then we drove into Twin Lake. Twin Lake had some vegetation along the South Shore and looked VERY fishable. We tried to drive into Meadow Lake but there was a snow burm across the road that Ron did not want to try to drive through. Since we did not have any shovels with us we decided not to pursue going any further.
We headed back to Lower Blue Lake and fished it from our tubes on Friday evening. Ron picked up several fish really quick on his go to fly, The Sheep's Creek. Of course, I didn't have any so I got to watch him hook up several times before he took pity on me and loaned me a few. After tying it on I managed to miss two strikes. Ron ended up with three fish and I had none.
Saturday morning found us fishing Twin Lake. We fished for 5 or 6 hours and did not manage one trout. There was awesome mayfly activity along the south shore, with large grey mayflies (size 10-12) ovipositing on the water. With all that activity going on, I was suprised that I did not see any trout pestering the mayflies. It should have been a sign, duh! Anyway, Ron managed to catch about a dozen little gold fish that might have been some sort of Pike Minnow. We couldn't figure out what they were, and forgot to take pictures for reference later. Then around noon I sw a nice fish come up down by the dam. I spooked it trying to cast to it in all my haste and glory. I only saw two fish rise the whole time we were there. We gave up around 1PM and headed down teh road toward Twin with our folding shovels in hand. We decided to walk a little further down the road to check what else we might run into (before we started digging away at the snow burm). It was good that we did, because the road was impassible due to trees and larger snow burms further in. We ended up walking all the way into Meadow Lake (about 1.5 miles). Meadow was pretty, but had really steep sides. Since we did not have our rods & tubes with us we headed back to the truck. A mile and a half uphill made for a tough walk on my lungs at 8,000'!
When we had parked the truck there were a couple of other vehicles parked there. When we returned they were gone, along with the kids we had seen in the creek. While we were drinking some water a fish about 17" long tried to jump out of the pool and up into a culvert onder the road! It turns out that there were at least 4 fish in that small pool, in that tiny creek all trying to make it upstream to spawn!
I hiked downstream a little ways and started removing obstacles (branches, logs etc.) to make fish passage easier. I then found a little diversion that took some of the water and put it into a man-made ditch that ended up flowing into Twin Lake. The rest of the water was heading down the hill and into the creek between Twin and Meadow Lakes. We tried piling up some rocks and logs to increase the elevation of the pond to make it easier for the fish to make the jump. Apparently we spooked the fish with our efforts because they never attempted another jump while we were there. Oh well, I felt better about it. Maybe some of them even made it!
We decided to head back to camp. On the way back out Ron spotted Dennis Larson's pickup by Twin Lake. I got out and went down to the water looking for Dennis. I did not see him, so we headed back out. There is a little cabin on the shore of Twin Lake and I asked Ron to drive down the driveway so I could get a better look at the whole lake. When we got out we spotted Dennis, in his tube, hiding behind the big rock down by the dam. We drove back down and met up with him. That is when he told us that we had missed the BBQ Ron had scheduled for Saturday afternoon. Gary Slade and his wife had driven up for the day and we completely forgot about it! Sorry Gary! We headed back to camp and started getting dinner together. We decided that we would all three fish Indian Creek Reservoir on Sunday and take our chances with bicycles.
Indian Creek Reservoir is a high desert reservoir that is fairly shallow at its southern end (away from the dam). There are a lot of tules and other weed beds along the shorelines. This usually means that a lake produces a lot of insects for fish to feed on and grow quickly. We started out fishing along the tules and not much was happening. It was real slow until Dennis found an old creek bed on his depth finder that seemed to have fish stacked up in it. Dennis ended up landing three fish, Ron caught two and I only managed one! But what a fish it was! The wind had been blowing from North to South and pushing us away from the creek bed. I had been allowing it to push me downwind and trying to cast into the pockets in the tules, with no luck. I decided to kick my way back up closer to Ron and Dennis and troll my way back up there. Now, I had been catching tules and salad all day long, and when the rod stopped I figured I had snagged it something good! Then, right after stating that I had snagged, the snag started moving and taking line. Ron said, "That snag is moving!" Sure enough, it was a heck of a fight. When I finally netted the fish, I let out a huge sigh of relief because the knot that was holding my butt section to my fly line was really big and I did not want to lose the top section of my rod because the fish ran and the knot grabbed it! Tense times indeed. I picked the fish up so that Ron and Dennis could take pictures. Man that fish was a lot heavier than I expected. Well over 5 pounds and closer to 7! I released the fish and went back to getting skunked. Until the thunderstorm rolled in and parked right on top of the lake that is. We decided that none of us wanted to be a grounding rod for the lightning, so we bailed out.
Dennis headed home and Ron and I headed back to Lower Blue Lake. The other edge of the storm was sitting right over the top of us. Luckily no rain had fallen on my sleeping bag and blankets, like it did on Friday! Ron and I went down to the launch ramp and we were checking for fish activity. The DFG truck had been there Friday, so when we saw the huge amount of fish by the launch ramp and in the spillway, we ASSUMED they were truck trout. We hurried back to camp and grabbed our stuff. When we returned we could not get the fish to come up for a dry fly for anything. Ron switched over to a nymph and hooked up on the first cast. Ah, the old pellet fly! Not really. It turned out that the fish were the same sort of thing he had been catching at Twin Lake. We proceeded to hook a whole bunch of them and release them all. Again, no camera to take pictures... Then our friends the mosquitoes came back and we both gave up and headed back for camp.
Ron headed down to Tamarack Lake on Monday and I headed home. Here is Ron's report on Tamarack. "Tamarack Lake reminded me of a girl I dated once - real pretty to look at and great structure, but not much action. I fished it for two hours with no results. Conditions were real similar to Twin Lake, though I couldn't find a real distinctive inlet where any former resident fish may have exited to spawn. On the way home I took a side trip to Scotts Lake - Forest Road 079 starts at a green gate and cattle guard off highway 88, just south of the Hope Valley Junction with Highway 89; the road is about 3 miles of 4 wheel drive road up to a scenic, secluded lake. Wind was really ripping through there around noon, so I just snapped a picture and headed for home."
Apparently Lary Shaw tried to make it into Indian Creek on Saturday. Here is the message that he sent.
"Well, I'm afraid I plunged ahead on Saturday and hit the hundreds, if not thousands of cyclists between Carson pass and The turn-off to Indian Creek. I made the mistake of forgetting the sheets you gave out with telephone numbers when we left Pleasanton for our cabin. I decided if I didn't make contact I might just go ahead and fish a while at Indian Creek anyway. However, the weather sure didn't cooperate. By the time I reached Indian Creek the thunder and lightning had started and the rain started really coming down. I drove around the campground talking to a number of campers none of whom had seen anyone who resembled AFF fly fishermen. When The rain refused to let up (I had been watching the growth of a humungous thunderhead as I drove over the summit and it obviously parked right over Indian Springs), I waited for over an hour, I gave up and headed back. The weather was really rough on the bikers. The temp was in the mid 50s and they were soaked to the skin as they came down 88 and then down 89. By the time I got up by Sorenson's Resort in Hope Valley it was perfectly dry, they hadn't had a drop of rain. I talked to Don Mittelsteadt who spent the weekend golfing and fishing with the Diablo Valley Fly Fishers at Lake Almanor, and they had severe thunderstorms Saturday as well."
"Charging blindly to Indian Springs was pretty naive on my part. The least I should have done was phone either you or Dustin to check since you had no idea I was even considering showing up. The only thing that could have helped me would have been a blanket email to the membership announcing the change. This type of announcement helps compensate for members like me who don't cover all the bases. Glad to hear you latched onto some big fish."
This is why we have signup sheets for the outings. I contacted everyone on the list ahead of time. I guess Larry is right, I should have sent the notice to everyone, but not everyone has email. Does this mean I have to call everyone who doesn't as well? It seems like quite a burden to put on one person.
