Fished Hot Creek and the Upper Owens last weekend with my father in law. Great weather, cold nights and sunny days with a bit of sunburn. We fished the Upper Owens Sat. morning with disappointing results. We each had 8-10 fish to hand in 5 hours of fishing but not one fish was over 12". You name it I tried fishing it, and it didn't seem that the fish were keying on anything. There were quite a few people fishing the upper section and all reported that Saturday was slow. All the reports said that fishing was "awesome", maybe it was lower down towards Benton Crossing where the planters are????
Saturday afternoon we headed over to Hot Creek where we fished it alone for almost the entire time we where there. Fishing, while technical was really good. The weeds are thick, making the feeding lanes difficult to get to. Lots of stack casts giving you a 2 or 3 food drag free drift was all you could hope for in many areas. With that said if you could hit your mark and are familiar with what fish feed on there life was good. We both hooked quite a few small fish (6"-8"
, but there were also a surprising number of larger fish to be taken. I saw and hooked more large fish then I have in the last couple of years. Downside is that I said "hooked", fishing with 6X or 7X on a creek full of weeds with fish that know to head for those weeds as soon as they are hooked makes for pretty difficult "catching".
Sunday we spent the day at Hot Creek. The fishing was much slower, it seemed as though they might have been releasing more water out of Mammoth creek, the creek seemed to be a couple of inches higher and the fishing suffered because of it. Neither one of us had as much success as the day before. While numbers weren't as good, once again the quality (read size) was quite good.
SUMMARY: The Owens didn't fish that well for us Saturday, contrary to many local reports, way more people than normal.
Hot Creek, if you know how to fish it, it was really good, if you don't know how to fish it, I saw a few people really struggle. Fly selection is really important (size), and dealing with the wind trying to hit tiny feeding lanes can be difficult but the results are well worth it. Very, very few people.
The weather looks like it's going to change and that has often led to some really good fishing over there if your willing to put up with the cold and a little snow!
Mark
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