Day 7 - Three Passes & Five Fish

Friday July 23, 2010, Day 7

Daily Stats: Glacier Lake to Bishop Lk, Starting Time 7:30-Finishing Time 5:30, Distance-9.00 miles, Moving Time-5.5 hrs, total Ascent-2400', Total Descent-2725'

I knew there had to be big fish in the Sierra. These lakes were stocked a century ago, and although the lakes that are easy to get to are fished daily and the fish are small I was hoping some of the remote lakes on the SHR would be just waiting for someone with a pole to come along. Today, that someone was me!
All good fishermen hate to reveal there special fishing places. I am not by any stretch a good fisherman, I am just someone looking for a cheap meal and a good time reeling them in. But, I am still unwilling to reveal it's identity so I will refer to my spot as "the lake".
We had been hiking for a couple hours over slabs of granite, working our way over Potluck Pass and down toward Knapsack Pass. We were hiking along "the lake's" shore and met these two gentlemen. Now, I had tried fishing on the other side of the lake to no avail, but one of the gentlemen began to expound on the size and number of fish he had seen as he had walked the shore of the lake. As we stood there talking I reached up and pulled my pole from my pack, telescoped it out to it's full length and cast. All four of us (Craig was there, too) watch the lure come in as I reeled. We also saw a huge trout come racing up from the depths and hit the lure about 15 feet off shore. A quick struggle ensued, the end product being an 18" fat trout laying at our feet. The gentlemen were astounded, as was I! One of them taped the whole event of landing the behemoth, and promised to email me the footage.
Andy, Sandy and Lynn had gone ahead, so after a few fruitless casts we began to traverse the shoreline around the lake, Craig carrying the fish and I casting at regular intervals. 10 casts and 400 yards later there were 5 trout, the smallest at 14" laying on the bank. We threw them in a bag, stowed them in my pack and raced along the lake shore to try to catch Andy and company who had disappeared past the lake.
We stopped once more before leaving the lake to clean the fish, then bagged up the 10 pounds of meat and again high tailed it after the other half of the group.
We crested the ridge at the outlet of the lake with a clear view of the route ahead all the way to the next pass over treeless ground, yet saw no sign of our partners. Had we missed them along the way? Were they behind us by the outlet waiting to enjoy lunch with us? Not sure, we forged ahead for a while, looking for signs of their passage and staring at the scenery ahead trying to detect their movement. We saw nothing. So, I dropped my pack, removed the fish to a shaded rock in case a bear should happen by and rip my pack open to get to the fish in my absence, and ran back to be sure we had not passed them. 30 minutes later I returned to my pack, still without a sign of them. Gary and Craig had been scanning the countryside without a spotting, so we decided to forge ahead, as the only logical place for them to be was ahead of us. Sure enough, a few minutes
later we saw the three silhouetted against the snow up near the pass.
We quickened our pace to close the distance, but lick was running Against us. First, we got cliffed out and had to retrace our steps to avoid the precipice, then Gary's boot sole had had enough and completely fell off. Twenty minutes, a couple of yards of duct tape and Craig's handy work with a sail needle and sail thread and Gary was back on the road. We negotiated the steep talus and slabs the final 400'
to the pass where we met up, packed the fish into their own bear barrel filled with snow, wolfed down a quick lunch and then descended the pass into the upper reaches of Dusy Basin.
Rather than dropping down to the trail, we angled up and to the left through field of heather, flowers, waterfalls and ponds for the next hour, angling toward the trail. We connected about a mile and a half below Bishop Pass, then hoofed it up to the pass and down the other side to camp near the lakes in the basin below.
The fish were punishing me. The combined weight of 10 pounds of fish and 10 pounds if snow to keep them fresh made the two passes we ascended a little more painful and by the time we were at camp I was ready to get the behemoth off my back and put the weighty creatures in my belly.
The fish were way too big for any pan we had, so we set up a production line and cut the fish into steaks, the fried them in our cooking pans. Sandy turned out an excellent fish, breaded with triscuit and Goldfish cracker crumbs.
Fish are great, but they create such a mess. Oily pans, bones, backbones, heads and guts all have to be taken care of. Compared to our meals requiring only the boiling of water, they are a pain, but oh so good.