WEEKEND ESCAPE: EASTERN SIERRA : Searching for the perfect cast and catch in the trout-filled waters near Bishop

BISHOP, Calif. — Gray clouds grumbled behind the knife-like peaks of the Inconsolable Range. Rain pattered down onto our ponchos and formed perfect circles on a High Sierra lake. Did we care about the icy breeze just starting? Not at all. We’d gone fishin’, and almost every cast was bringing in a perfect vermilion-bellied brook trout.

Still, as most fishermen know, it’s not just about the catching. Fishing comes closest to capturing the total absorption I felt when I played with toys as a child. There’s the gear--the leads, the flies, the lures, the rods--and then there’s the joy of a perfect cast and, best of all, the mindless concentration of reflections in a lake, the sound of running water, the heat of the sun on an exposed arm.

My husband, Mark, and I left Los Angeles late on a Friday morning in late summer, and by midafternoon were nearing the alpine canyons of the Eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. Our destination is Bishop Creek Lodge, about 17 miles west of Bishop, the main town in the Owens Valley, five hours’ drive north on U.S. 395 from Los Angeles. Its sister property, Parchers Resort, is located a few miles from the lodge in the same canyon.

As we drove up into Bishop Creek Canyon, clouds misted down around its flanks, making the peaks spiky, more a Chinese landscape than a California one. In all the years I’ve been coming up here--more than 20 in all--I’ve never arrived in the rain. But it was September, and usually we come in early October, when the crowds are gone, the clouds are few, and the aspens blaze up the canyon like licks of golden fire.

Still, I didn’t mind the rain. It kept me sedentary for the first few hours after our arrival, which helped me acclimate to the 8,500-foot altitude of Bishop Creek Lodge. I settled down into a chair by the window of our cabin and looked out across the valley, watching a misty cloud send traces across a platinum waterfall. The fish could wait until tomorrow.

Our cabin was cozy, with a tiny front porch, a picture window and a fully equipped kitchen. There was a separate bedroom down the hall and a living room with two single beds. A forlorn deer head hung on the living room wall, but otherwise the decor was functional and comfortable. The 10 other cabins on the lodge’s grounds are scattered throughout an aspen grove. A yard-wide stream snakes through the property. Each cabin has a different size and shape. Some offer views up the canyon; others tucked under the trees sleep 10; one sleeps only two.

The main log cabin of Bishop Creek Lodge, built in 1928, is a jovial gathering place for canyon locals. Several men were elbowed up to the long, narrow bar, which faced a window with a view of aspens and a pinkish-red rockslide.

The main dining room is a thickly timbered, deer-head-studded, manly kind of place, with a massive stone fireplace. I perched my booted feet up onto the curved dragon andirons and baked them against the glowing coals.

The special that Friday night was tasty spicy chicken fajitas. The waitresses were friendly and solicitous, and one even offered Tiger Balm for my altitude headache.

Mounted on the walls were several monstrous trout hooked in the surrounding waters. I was struck dumb with envy at the Polaroid of a 12-pound trout caught last summer at North Lake, where I’ve spent many a hopeless hour casting my lure out toward disdainful circles of rising trout.

The next morning, after a free continental breakfast, we donned hiking boots, hats and long pants, and stuffed our day packs with rain ponchos, peanut butter sandwiches and collapsible fishing rods.

Bishop Creek, which runs right next to the lodge, is a wonderful place to fish, with large, shallow pools for fly fishing, tumbling cataracts for those challenged by swiftly moving water, and long stretches where the creek meanders through meadows. But on weekends it gets crowded, so I like to hike up to more isolated lakes, where whole afternoons can go by without us seeing anyone. We drove up to the South Lake trail head parking lot, located at a stunning 9,800 feet.

After a steep climb of a mile, we forked left at the Treasure Lakes trail sign, then tramped up another steep mile to the left-hand fork for Bull Lake. The lake is a farther precipitous push up a tiny canyon, filled with tumbled, monolithic boulders and starred with galaxies of columbine. We panted up over a lip, and there, at close to 11,000 feet, Bull Lake spread out in front of us. It’s a shallow lake, tucked below a red volcanic cone, and its glassy waters literally spun with rising trout.

My first 10 casts brought in three native brookies, a deeper, more brilliant orange along their bellies than a California poppy. They are the best to eat, their flesh the same color as salmon but more delicate and subtle. But these were too small, and we released them to grow for another year. Mark’s third cast brought in a rainbow also too small to keep, his fifth a speckled brown.

At first the air was perfectly still, no breeze, only the occasional call of a bird and the distant babble of a brook tumbling into the far side of the lake. Then the gray clouds darkened, rain hissed down onto the water, and the bigger brookies hit on every cast. We caught enough to store in our freezer back at the cabin and haul back in our cooler to L.A.

Just as we were packing to leave, the sun came out and the snow-covered peaks around Bishop Pass revealed themselves, a row of 13,000-foot ice maidens.

We hiked cross-country to Long Lake. Our golden cocker spaniel, Roscoe, bounded across the meadow, and so did Mark because the flash of sun had brought out the bugs, and the fish were jumping in a small pond beyond. One cast was all it took, and another bright green and orange trout flopped on the stringer.

But the clouds rushed back in, my knuckles were red with cold, and the rain started in earnest. We beat a retreat back down the two-mile trail to our truck and then to our warm, knotty pine, fully equipped cabin, which had hot showers to ease aching muscles and lamps to read by.

The next day we drove up about a mile to the Tyee Lake trail head and crossed a snazzy footbridge to the solitary trail, a new one for us. We had heard that the trail offered a string of lakes, each prettier than the last. Just a few hundred feet above the road, white birch framed a dark alley of pine beyond which slid a silver waterfall. A meadow of golden grass followed, exactly the color as Roscoe. But after a few moments on the Tyee Lake trail, I stopped noticing much of anything: The climb was brutal. We plodded 2.2 miles straight up 1,400 feet. The first lake had a sandy beach, and only one other angler was casting his line out toward a grassy area.

We caught four fat rainbows at Tyee Lake No. 1. Onward to Tyee Lake No. 2. The trail became steeper and steeper, but the endorphins kicked in. Suddenly, as a hailstorm smacked hard against my poncho, those endorphins fled as quickly as they had come. After one more giant push, we reached Tyee Lake No. 3, and it was magnificent, a true alpine lake with clear green waters, the towering 12,993-foot Thompson Ridge looming over its western end.

Mark and I stood on a flat, golden boulder. The sun came out, turning the water sapphire, and we caught three fish in quick succession. They were the color of molten copper, and we realized we had hooked our first golden trout ever.

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Budget for Two

Bishop Creek Lodge,

2 nights: $287.00

Lodge dinners: $56.12

Groceries: $32.39

Gas: $29.28

FINAL TAB: $404.79

Bishop Creek Resorts, 2100 South Lake Road, Bishop, CA 93514; telephone: (760) 873-4484.