Little Lakes Basin A High Sierra Backpacking Adventure By Ron Francis
T
he three of us hearty backpacking fly fishermen, Ron Francis, Frank Otto & Mike Leong completed the Little Lakes Basin Trip from August 13th thru the 17th. We had perfect weather, and we were just late enough in the month to miss most of the mosquitos. As planned, we camped at East Fork on Rock Creek to acclimate. We then spent 4 nights in the Wilderness at Chickenfoot Lake (elevation more than 10,000 feet). Fishing
was not easy but we found fish in almost all the lakes we visited. Chickenfoot, our home base, had Brook and Rainbows…the best of which were maybe 10-11”. The nearby Gem Lakes are an easy day hike away from our base camp and produced a fair number of trout. We also made a longer hike over Morgan Pass and fished all three lakes: the lower was supposed to have lots of Golden trout but we only spotted one. I highly recommend the Upper Morgan Lake, a long stark lake with some interesting
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