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West Walker River
Cinco | Harriet | Upper/Lower Long | Cora Lakes

Mono County
Toiyabe National Forest
Contributer: Will Oxx
Aug 10-16, 2017

Getting There

Leavitt Meadows trailhead. Portions of the Pacific Crest Trail. This was our 4th trip into the Hoover Wilderness from the Leavitt Meadows Pack Station on Highway 108. 2017 is a BIG water year and the snow finally cleared from the lakes and most of the trails. We hired horses & pack mules and spend a solid week fishing different rivers and lakes every day during mid August 2017. We chose our camp near the wooden bridge that crosses the west fork of the West Walker River just off the PCT. This Base Camp shortened all of our day hikes to various lakes and rivers. We can confirm the fishing is excellent in many of the surrounding lakes and poor to non-existent in the upper portions of the West Walker River & West Fork of the West Walker River.

Leavitt Meadows Pack Station

Walker Meadows. Photo: Will Oxx

The Hike

We rode horses in and out and camped in style thanks to Craig, Matt and Eb at Leavitt Meadows Pack Station. We hiked with lightweight day packs everyday. A pair of waiters / float tube works great in Upper Long Lake. We crossed paths with less than a dozen PCT hikers, a hand full of Forest Service gals chopping logs by hand, and a group at Walker Meadows. We saw no one else fishing - except for 2 gals from Bishop who rode their own horses to Upper Paiute Meadows (where there were zero fish). I am impressed by the number of women we saw in the wilderness! When we came out we ran into Matt (Craig's son) who said his horses were slipping on the snow and he couldn't reach Dorothy Lake. We helped a young gal named Mika (from Portland) cross the river below Harriet Lake who'd lost the PCT under the snow. Gave her a bunch of chocolate to lift her spirits.

Crossing the West Walker River near Lower Paiute Meadows in the Hoover Wilderness. Photo: Will Oxx

Walker Meadows area. Photo: Will Oxx

We established our Base Camp roughly 100 yards northeast of the wooden bridge that crosses the west fork of the west walker river ~ 8600' elev. Staying at this location had a great advantage in that it allowed us to spoke out in a different direction each day to a new area with minimal elevation gain or loss. We hiked around 40 miles during our 7 day Hoover Wilderness excursion only carrying light day packs. We took different trails and fished a different lake or river each day between August 10 - 16, 2017.

Kicking it in our Base Camp for 2!. Photo: Darryl Lauren

The Fishing

First the good news: we caught and released over 150 trout using barbless hooks and flies. Cinco Lake: 50+ Brook trout 6-14"; Harriet Lake: 40+ Brookies & Rainbows 10-16"; Cora Lake: 40+ Brook's & Bows 8-14"; Upper and Lower Long Lakes: 20+ mostly bigger Rainbows 12-18".

Beautiful High Sierra Brook trout from Harriet Lake. Photo: Will Oxx

Small Brook trout - West Fork West Walker river. Photo: Will Oxx

Bad news: winter snows killed thousands of trout living in the Lower & Upper Paiute Meadows portion of the West Walker River and West Fork of the West Walker. It will take a few years for the trout to make a comeback in these areas - which is stunningly beautiful. The upper portion of West Fork of the West Walker River had a few smaller trout that survived in deep holes. We fished this river up where it blends with Grizzly Creek below Cinco Lake down past the lower Walker Meadows area. Grizzly Creek had a few bigger trout. Mosquitoes were light in most areas, thick in marshy shaded areas around Cinco and Lower Long Lake.