Hello Everyone!  It has been an amazing summer with all kinds of fun going on and plenty of fish for everyone!  Lots of snow last winter lead to good water levels, amazing waterfalls and wonderful wildflowers.  Hiking was also extremely beautiful this year.  Temps have cooled down but the Fall Colors are starting to show all along the Eastern Sierra.

On August 2nd & 3rd we held our annual fundraiser, Fish Fest.  We raised a lot of money for our Twin Lakes Trout Foundation.  We are working hard to build and maintain sustainable fisheries here in the Twin Lakes Drainage.  If you are in the Bridgeport area next year, join us on 7/31 & 8/1 for this awesome event!  Live music, $1,000 grand prize and so much more!

Fishing report - Fishing the Twins this year has been interesting to say the least.  Spring and early summer were great but later summer brought us high temperatures and sleepy fish.  We are seeing the action pick up now with cooler temperatures.  Browns have been showing increased actions and C&R is being practiced by most fishermen which is great for sustaining the brown population.  Fishing for Rainbows has been good trolling the road side of the lake along with bait fishing near the inlets.  Please remember the inlet from upper twin into lower twin is closed for fishing.  If your planning on coming up, just keep an eye on the forecast and watch for the wind.  We expect October to be a great month for fishing up here. 

Stocking - DFW has been consistent on their stocking this year.  We have seen an increase in the size from last year and are glad to see them stocking good fish consistently.  Mono County also did 2 stockings of Trophy Trout here on Lower Twin and also did the same in Robinson Creek and Upper Twin.  We are very grateful for this program and continue to speak to the Fisheries Commission and Board of Supervisors asking them to continue this stocking program.  We have also been privately stocking the lake along with 3 stockings this year of trophy fish from Twin Lakes Trout Foundation.  We have not seen any stocking this year from BFEF in the Twin Lakes area.  There were a couple fish we saw in the Spring come out of Robinson Creek but nothing more than that.  From our experience with BFEF, their primary focus is stocking Bridgeport Reservoir, so if you fish Twin Lakes, you may want to work with Twin Lakes Trout Foundation or Mono Village's stocking program to support the programs that are stocking in this area.  As you have seen from our previous discussions, we are not very fond of the practices we experienced and witnessed when we were on the Board of BFEF and are even more disturbed by the actions we are hearing about more recently, which is why we parted ways and started focusing on building sustainable fisheries, working on stocking plans that supported Twin Lakes & Robinson Creek and discussing the future of these fisheries with DFW, the county & the Fisheries commission.  The focus needs to be the fisheries!  

Browns - We have not yet done our private stocking of Browns but spoke to DFW and plan to release them in the Spring.  We have applied for our Aquaculture Permit and also have a pre-order of Browns placed to stock in Lower Twin.  This is huge as Browns have not been stocked here in many years and we are very excited for this.

Diploid vs Triploids - On our blog posts we got a lot of talk about Diploids and Triploids.  Per DFW - a triploid fish is merely a fish that is sterile. Triploid fish have three sets of chromosomes, unlike a fertile fish that have two sets of chromosomes (a diploid fish).  Any fish which are purchased privately for stocking in Mono County are triploids.  This includes all stocking done by the county, resorts, non-profits, etc.  In addition to this, DFW is also stocking triploids in these waters.  So while these trophy stocking programs are great, we feel that we need to also discuss what the future of these fisheries is if the fish being planted are all sterile (aka can not have babies).  

Sustainable Fisheries - With increased tourism in Mono County, we believe the waters are getting a lot more pressure than they have in the past.  As a business and also being on the board of a non profit, asking for visitors to the area to donate to keep the waters stocked just doesn't seem like a long term plan.  We have recently sent a letter to DFW, Mono County Board of Supervisors and the Fisheries Commission to further discuss this topic.  There are many local businesses both from Bridgeport & Walker who also endorsed this letter and we look forward to working with the County and DFW to come up with a long term plan for these fisheries.  We will keep everyone posted on this.  

The discussion - We hear a lot of input on what people would like to see these fisheries become.  Year round fishing, C&R only, Special regulations, Etc. For us we want to make sure the people are getting what they want.  This means we will try our hardest to get the information out there so that everyone can have a say in the discussion and we hopefully end up with a plan and regulations in place that will help build and maintain sustainable fisheries and trophy trout fishing for the future generations.  

If you would like to speak to us about any of the above or anything else, we would like to encourage you to reach out.  You can email us at misti.sullivan@yahoo.com, call us at 760-932-7751 or message us on Facebook or Instagram.

We look forward to sending you more updates!  Tight Lines everyone!  Be sure to share your fishing moments with us on Facebook and Instagram!