little Lakes Basin

A High Sierra Backpacking Adventure By Ron Francis

The 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

THE IRIDEUS - SEPTEMBER 2019 fish points. It provided the best trout, and we harvested a few Brooks to 11+ inches for a great dinner, poached Trout with a garlic, rosemary, balsamic, EVO reduction sauce. Our wildest adventure was deciding to Cross Country to Treasure Lakes, where the 3rd and 4th Lakes were supposed to have Golden trout. But none were found and both fishing and hiking were difficult. Frank and Mike made up for the absence of fish at other times, by fishing the creek in the meadows for the numerous smaller trout between Gem Lake and Chickenfoot. The Tenkara even came out and was effective there. Long casts in the lakes were the name of the game, and small flys at times necessary. But I hooked one at Upper Morgan on a orange rubber legs dry…so a variety was working. If you go, I recommend going mid-week. We hiked in on Thursday and out on Monday. The weekend was full of people camping and there were many, many day hikers.

Here are some photos….

Above: The intrepid heroes of this story

Below: East Fork Campground, yes there are fish in Rock Creek as well

Left: Perhaps the full moon put the fishing off a little bit...

Right: High Altitude Fly Fishing on Upper Morgan Lake

Left: Chickenfoot Lake where long casts were often needed, but made setting the hook hard.

Above: Alpine Beauty at Treasure Lake Number 3

Below: How we ever got down this Rocky Drainage I don’t know...

By the way, Frank my brotherin-law, had the only Brown on the trip and I the only Golden, so none of us managed the Grand Slam. Mike is a fishing guru, making trips with not only our club, but the SF and Oakland ones also.

We all caught fish, but most of all the scenery was beautiful.

Some Final Reflections from our Trip