Eastern Sierra snow bow season has come and gone once again. Since I missed my opportunity in the winter of 2014/2015 due to some unexpected living conditions, I made it a point to put some time on the upper Owens this year. Let me tell you, this is one brutal unforgiving fishery when it wants to be. It can be a river of a million perfect drifts without a single bump, on top of that you have crowds on the river worse than Disneyland. I decided to fish the river during a snowstorm with the usual suspect. We thought it would thin the crowds as we are both gluttons for punishment. Punishment, it was.
This was a two day trek into the tundra conditions of the upper Owens Valley, snow shoes and frozen fly lines. My first day on the river I hooked into a damn beast of crowley lake migratory rainbow trout. The beast took a black crystal bugger on a dead drift. It felt like I snagged a log, I set the hook and it took me for a fast and furious ride down river. Rewind about two hours. I was rigging my line, debated whether I should run 4x or 3x tippet. I had a gut feeling that 4x was going to be too light, but I rigged it anyways... every damn time. Fast forward to my fight with what I can estimate to a trout in the 26" range. I'm yelling to my buddy to come help, doing what I can to keep it away from the riffle water. Well... you probably can guess what happened. My advice go one line size heavier than you think. You can always adjust down if the fish are line shy, but you can't always get a second chance hooking a trophy on the same trip... at least in these high pressured fisheries. Until next year.
