East Walker River
The East has been bumped up to about 454 cfs this week. This flow makes things pretty tough down there but we have still been getting some reports of some nice fish being caught. There is certainly nothing automatic about having success down there with this flow but if you can get your flies down to the bottom where the fish are feeding you should still be able to catch some fish. Most of the successful anglers we’ve talked to are getting into from maybe 1 to 5 fish per day. It seems like the most productive area is the upper mile between the dam and the bridge as this water is a bit more angler friendly than the lower stretch. There seems to have been an increase in streamer action with the higher flow and for nymphing you should be able to size up a size or two on your bugs, 14’s, 16’s and 18’s instead of just 18’s and 20’s.

Recommended Flies:
Dead drift crayfish, sculpzilla, double bunny, moal leech, zuddler, Hell razor craw, prince, pheasant tail, rainbow warrior, rainbow assassin, wd-40, flashback emerger, San Juan worm, squirmy wormy, silver streak.  

 Sceirine Ranch

We haven’t had anyone on the ranch this past week, it should be fishing pretty much like the California and Rosachi sections of the EW though. As stated above the flows make things more difficult but not impossible.    
Hunewill Pond

Due mainly to the weather, we’ve been getting a significant amount of wind here lately, the pond also didn’t see any anglers this week. With the colder weather the weed growth should have been slowed down so things should be good out there as long as the wind lays down. Give us a call if you want to make a reservation out there!
 

Bridgeport Reservoir

Bridgeport has has some really good days and some more difficult days this week, on the good days, when the wind didn’t keep most of the anglers off the water, the trolling was excellent with crawlers, Thomas bouyants, needlefish and Rapalas, with fish up to 5+ pounds making a showing. For the bait anglers the fish seem to be moving around a bit with some days the Rainbow Point area doing the best and other days Buckeye Bay and the East Walker channel out in front of the marina are better. Once you find where the fish are hanging out you should be able to catch them with powerbait, pinched crawlers, inflated crawlers or mice tails. There has also been some decent action from the fly anglers stripping streamers like seal buggers, matukas and wooly buggers.  

 Kirman Lake

I was able to talk to a couple guys who made the trek up to Kirman this week, they weren’t able to catch any fish but they did say there were some cutts up in the spring channel attempting to spawn, or maybe just hanging out up there. That’s good news that there are some fish still in there. They didn’t see any brookies up there but they probably wouldn’t be in there this time of the year anyway. Hopefully Kirman will start getting back on track for the future.

Twin Lakes

We’ve had some good reports as well as some slow reports from the Twins this week again. A couple of the good reports came from shore anglers who were casting bait, inflated crawlers did the best for them with several fish in the 2 to 3 pound range being caught. There were some fish that we know of caught trolling as well with smaller Rapalas and Speedy Shiners fished off of around 5 or 6 colors of lead core. We haven’t talked to any fly anglers up there lately but typically this is a good time to fish the inlets with streamers like Twin Lakes Specials, seal buggers and matukas with a soft hackle or zug bug dropper.    

 West Walker River

With the colder weather the snow melt has slowed down a bit so the flows on the West have come down a bit as well. The water is still pretty cold and the action has been pretty slow so far. The weather has been crazy but when it warms up again the flows will increase and once the run-off is done things should get good up there.

 Virginia Lakes

We haven’t had any reports from the Virginias lately but we figure there must still be some pretty good ice up there. Of course the weather on top has been very windy and snowy lately so that may be why no ones been going up there. When we hear some news about the ice conditions we’ll let you know. 

Random Information

May 19, 2019 - We had an appointment with a structural engineer on Friday and all seemed to go well, we are hoping she will have an engineering plan in the upcoming week for a temporary shoring of the gift shop. Once we have the plan the contractor will get it done and hopefully we’ll be able to get the gift shop open and get rid of all those cones in the street! After the temporary shoring is done we’ll move towards a permanent fix. It’s great to be moving forward with the plans!
 
May 12, 2019 - After about 3 1/2 days of the tackle shop being closed we were able to get it back open on Wednesday morning! All is good right now and the tackle side of the store is structurally safe. The gift shop portion of the shop is still closed right now, we’re waiting for a structural engineer to come (hopefully early this week) to engineer a plan for a temporary shoring of the front of the building. After this gets done they will move on to engineering a permanent fix. Really not sure how long it will take for the gift shop portion to get re-opened but hopefully not too long. Many thanks again for all your positive thoughts and for keeping us in mind!
 
May 5, 2019 - On a different note, Ken’s has had a bit of a set-back yesterday, there has been an accident and a pick-up truck drove through the front of the gift shop side of the store yesterday afternoon. Thankfully no one was injured, including the driver, however there is extensive damage to the store. Mono County has asked us to remain closed until we can get an engineer here to assess the damage and let us know if the main building as well as the two adjacent buildings are safe to occupy. Our re-opening will depend on what the engineer has to say about the situation. Hopefully we will at least be able to get the sporting goods side open as soon as possible and hopefully the General Store will be able to re-open asap as well. Please know, this was an ACCIDENT, there was no alcohol involved, it was purely an accident. We are thankful the driver was not injured and we hold absolutely no ill will towards him. We will do our best to get everything fixed up and back on track as quickly as possible and hopefully be back in business very soon.