I used to fish big plugs and spinners on the Walker, and I caught some good 3 to 5 pound browns, but over the last few years, I have developed a fixation with flyfishing wild trout rivers, and I actually catch more fish than on spinning tackle, with at least as many big ones. Jeff is a flyfishing freak and when he tells me what to do, I listen. On Tuesday, May 2, I drove the ninety-odd miles from my house to the same stretch of pocket water he told me about. My plan was to fish from midafternoon until dark, and at two thirty, I was sitting bankside by a promising, boulder strewn run. The desert sun was burning overhead and I began to sweat in my waders as I put on a foam strike indicator four feet up the leader, then tied two nymphs on four pound fluorocarbon tippet, pinching on a tiny split shot ten inches up. The secret to casting two nymphs at once is to tie the second fly not on a separate dropper leader, but on an 8 to 12 inch tippet attached directly to the curve of the first fly's hookshank. The entire rig then moves in a straight line and casts and sinks as one fly. I tied the marabou caddis on top, with a #16 beadhead olive hare's ear on the point.

Within the first five minutes of bottom bumping drifts through channels formed by large rocks, I jumped a 16 inch brown that popped out of the water and threw the hook immediately. I moved upstream from pocket to pocket, turning one more good fish then landing one rainbow and one brown, both eight inchers caught on the olive. Then the bite shut off. I worked my way upriver until close to six in the evening without a hit. I tried several other flies that work for me on the Walker, including pheasant tails, egg patterns, and small, beadhead woolly buggers. As I trudged back to my car, I decided to drive closer to the dam and fish the deeper channels and pools of the of the meadow section just below Bridgeport Reservoir at sunset. This stretch traditionally holds some of the biggest fish on the river, but the fishing pressure is highest as well.

Sure enough, there was an angler just up the bend from the spot I chose a few hundred yards below the dam. I was after trout though, not solitude, and combing the deep pockets and bank side holes as the evening sun disappeared, I worked toward him. I had on a small black and olive woolly bugger and a secret East Walker nymph- a bead head hare's ear, tied with a shiny white synthetic dubbing instead of the rabbit fur. My strike indicator stopped in a drift behind a rock, and I set the hook on a 14 inch rainbow that leaped twice before I could bring it in. I moved slowly up, and at the next rock hooked a larger rainbow which also jumped , then made an amazingly powerful run upstream, taking two thirds of my fly line and leaping again near the other angler, startling him before fighting its way back down to be netted, measured and released. Seventeen inches, with the full fins and brilliant colors of a wild trout. Both fish hit the "Polar Flash" hare's ear. I waded mid-river, cast to a channel against the opposite bank, and my strike indicator never moved, but at the end of the drift an 18 inch brown leaped out of the water, bent my rod over, and was gone before I even knew I had hooked him. I moved up once again, and a few drifts later my line tightened as I saw a huge dark shadow, at least three feet long, twisting violently in the water. My leader sliced downstream and the drag on my fly reel clicked in an almost leisurely fashion, as I realized that the fish was first of all, foul hooked somewhere on its back, and second, a ten to fifteen pound CARP.

With no real hope of getting it in on light tippet, I leaned back with my seven weight rod, and over several minutes, succeeded in slowly moving it about a foot closer. It still didn't seem to know it was hooked, though, until suddenly it splashed at the surface and came unbuttoned. Checking my flies, I found a scale the size of a half-dollar stuck on the woolly bugger's hook point. I kept it as my trophy of the day. By this time I had worked too close to the guy upstream, who I watched land a 15 inch rainbow.

"Carp, the other white meat." I replied to his curious look and hands spread out in the universal symbol for "How big was it?" I waded to shore and walked through the meadow up to the channel right after the "Big Hole" pool at the base of the dam. There was another angler throwing crappie jigs on a spinning rod in the run below mine, so I concentrated on the water upstream, and this time, in the last half hour of twilight, I saw the strike indicator move, then finally set the hook fast enough to see and feel a four pound brown jump, dive, and shoot downstream.

The man below me reeled in and chatted amicably when I asked him if I could "play through". My fish, however, was much less cooperative, heading down into fast riffles as I was forced to stumble over a bottom I've heard described as "snot covered bowling balls". There was nothing to do but follow and lay my rod over toward the middle of the river to keep the trout out of bushes in the water along the bank. Around the next bend, I came upon the same angler I had just been fishing with downstream. My brown ran between him and his fly, and as I was yelling "Fish coming!", he set his hook, doubling his rod over. For a moment, all three of us were connected, then only two, and as I moved closer so we could untangle and separate our leaders, I saw that my special #16 hare's ear had been broken off. I apologized to the other angler for running my fish into his line, but he just grinned and said, "That's the biggest one I've had all day."

Jeff reports that he returned to the Walker and fished the meadow section at sunrise on May 7, enjoying great action on big brown trout to 6 pounds in the deep runs, fishing with the marabou caddis and beadhead olive nymphs. He finally switched to 6 pound tippet because too many of these pigs were breaking off on four pound. Well, then he hooked a carp, and shattered his dainty four weight rod trying to move it. Driving home, he hit a deer , damaging his vehicle to the tune of $2800, slightly more than the cost of the fly rod. Please watch out for both of these dangerous species when in the area.

Note: The California fishing regulations for the East Walker have changed this year. Previously, a two trout limit of fish over fourteen inches was allowed downstream of the Highway 182 bridge, two miles from the dam. Now, regulations posted bankside list the entire river from Bridgeport dam to the Nevada border as a true trophy fishery: only barbless artificial lures are permitted, with a limit of one fish over eighteen inches per day. (You can bowfish carp, though!)