For hike-in trout fishing,
Valentine is high, lonely
Sweetheart of a Lake

By Brett Pauly
Daily News
August 15,1996
Outdoors Editor Brett Pauly's column appears Thursdays in the: Daily News.
Editor's note: The following is one in an occasional series on out-of-area hikes.




MAMMOTH LAKES - Resident fishing guide David Moss likes to say that when the fishing gets to be can't-miss, the mission is to find out what fly doesn't work.
Try as he might on this cloud bursting July day at postcard perfect Valentine Lake, the grizzled angler failed again and again.
First his trusty Sierra bright dot brought in the brook trout like chum. Then he rifled through a Twin Lakes special (yellow bodied mosquito), a female Adams, a red-tailed mosquito and a bead-head caddis larvae. All hooked brookies with zeal-a sight-fishing bonanza.
"Sometimes you just can't win," Moss said. I'd like a little of his bad luck.
Despite a trailhead located virtually within the Mammoth Lakes city limits, Valentine Lake at the southeastern base of Mammoth Crest in the John Muir Wilderness is rarely visited and less often fished.
It's a diversion you won't soon forget.
But be prepared. The trail, which rises 1,900 feet in six miles (certainly not insurmountable, but at a base elevation of 7,800 feet, you'll be breathing heavy at the outset), is ranked a four on a scale of five in Tom Stienstra's book "California Hiking." Its beauty rates a nine out of 10.
I planned to camp, and it soon became clear that me and my 30 pound pack were slowing down
my 59-year-old guide, who had completed 18 marathons in his heyday before deteriorating knees slowed him down.
Perhaps as a form of encouragement (considering my advanced state of perspiration), he mentioned it was his 20th consecutive year visiting Valentine Lake named for Los Angeles businessman W.L. Valentine, one of the original owners of Valentine Camp, an exclusive recreational club built in Old Mammoth in 1920.
One fall he even cut short his rehabilitation from knee surgery to keep his streak alive. It was the middle of December. Luckily it was a drought year and the trail wasn't entirely snowed in, but, when he crested to the rockbound lake, a couple was skating on its far end.
"One look is worth a thousand words. Each time I see it, it's like I say hello to an old friend," he said.
I didn't dare state it to Moss, but, after I heard that, I thought to myself that good things are worth the wait. I was muttering "worth the wait, worth the wait" during the final mile push, which includes 19 grueling switchbacks... and is now stained with my sweat droplets.
The 9,698-foot lake yields a spectacular southern view-two angles, actually, as the visage is pristinely reflected by the water- of the granite and glaciers on the edgy ridge that represents one of three walls that surround it. Topping out at 12,075 feet, the unnamed promontory flags the boundary between Mono and Fresno counties and Sierra and Inyo national forests.
Moss wasn't done hiking yet. The #1 prime fishing grounds were a half-mile farther, over slabs of steep rock that separate equestrians from hikers to the inlets side of the lake.
There we pieced together the fly rods, a 4 weight setup with weight-forward floating line, a 12 foot, 5X tapered leader and 6X tippet, and the other a 5-weight with 9-foot leader.
But even before I had a chance to lose my third fly, the first to an unfriendly tree limb on a back cast, the second in the maw of a brookie due to a snapped tippet (or, more likely, a bad surgeon's knot), it began to rain tabbies and terriers.
Fortunately, whoever said fish don't bite when it's raining was probably just a local trying to protect his secret spot. The fish were nearly as ravenous as the mosquitoes that took cover under our jacket hoods and irritated our nose hairs in the Gortex-testing downpour.
Indeed, my third dry fly was a charm. I skipped over the California mosquitoes, black gnats and royal coachmen in my fly box and was drawn to the florescent pink center of a size No. 16 Sierra bright dot. Moss swore by it, "the magic fly of the West," he said , and I would soon be swearing, too, in elation.
The brookies rose to it in the lake's shallows like bears to honey even as those big raindrops uproariously thwacked the water. See the fish. False cast to the fish. Drop the fly in front of the fish's snout. See the fish hit. Raise the rod. Set the hook. Reel in the fish. Repeat.
They rose to that same Sierra bright dot, with the salt and-pepper hackle, fore and aft, and the lip-smacking orange and black tail-where a rotting inlet met the open water. At the edges where the shoals dropped off, over bluer waters.
And, there, between the cover of two submerged boulders in the drainage of another tributary, a brookie, so gloriously hued in yellow, orange and red you'd swear (again) it was a golden trout, finned nonchalantly toward that same Sierra bright dot.
Like all high-country- fish, the brook, not a true trout, but a char, gets its vivid colors from feeding on natural foods, primarily midges in all their life stages, larval to airborne. It is distinguished by the wavy lines (vermiculations) on the top of its head and by the pronounced multicolored spots with blue halos (ocelli) on its sides. The Department of Fish and Game last stocked Valentine years ago, and the population seems to be sustaining just fine, thank you.
Anyhow, this particular specimen must have been feeling good feeling strong, feeling confident about the attractive buggy thing on the surface of the creek. Because by the time it hit the fly, the brookie was swimming upside-down.
It got the surprise of its aquatic life when I pulled it ashore and measured it out at 11 inches, about as big as they come in this neck of the woods, before releasing it.
I never changed that fly. It may be lazy, but, hey, why fix what's not broken?
And the rain never relented. It was sometime between my fourth and sixth catch that it finally dawned on me that not bringing a tent was a simply brilliant idea.
I'm soaked and have no shelter. Yeah, brilliant.
I easily envisioned getting very cold that night, so I opted to hike out with Moss after a four-hour sock-soaking drenching.
What I had planned to be a 6 1/2 mile pack-in trek would turn out to be a 13-mile out-and-back. And for all it was worth, that 30 pounds on my back could just as easily have been a sack full of hammers.
After I lugged that useless pack down those first 19 switchbacks, we looked back to clear skies, above Valentine Lake.
Sunny till we got there; sunny after we left. Isn't that always the way?
At least I discovered that fishing in the-rain ain't that bad.



If You're Going

To get to the Valentine Lake trailhead from Mammoth Lakes, proceed south on Old Mammoth Road and turn left on Sherwin Creek Road. Drive about a mile and turn right where a signpost reads Sherwin Lakes trailhead. Tom left at a second trailhead sign. (A motocross track is to the right.)
A separate trail starts another mid or so down the road, past Sherman Creek Campground, and though the route is shorter, it's markedly steeper, more open and hotter. Both trailheads are also accessible from the Sherwin Lake Road exit west off Highway 395.
Hikers, dogs and equestrians are allowed; mountain bikers are not.
Overnight trekkers must have a wilderness permit, which can be picked up at the Mammoth Ranger Station (located on Highway 203, just before entering Mammoth Lakes) on the day of or day before their hike.
The area is lightly used; there is no quota for overnight hikers and no campfire restrictions. Angler's ages 16 and older must have a state fishing license, but the lake has no special angling regulations.
Valentine Lake is found on the Bloody Mountain 7.5-minute series topography map, Inyo National Forest map and Tom Harrison's "Trail Map of the Mammoth High Country."
Hikers in good shape should plan on at least three hours up and two hours down.
For more information, call the Mammoth Ranger Station at (619) 924-5500.