San Gabriel River, Saturday.

We had a craving for fast moving water and wild trout. That meant we were heading north to the San Gabriel river west fork.  For those that might not know it can be found off the of the 210 fwy heading north on Azuza.

Carefully wading up stream

SGR was a new experience for all five of us.  There were lots of high points to the trip and everyone was able to catch (and release) some beautiful wild rainbow trout.  The downside to the trip was sadly the impact from humans.  The massive volume of trash and graffiti absolutely infuriated me. In a few instances I saw a bag of trash complete with dirty diapers left on the ground and weighted down with rocks...  I couldn't FATHOM a situation were it made sense to bag up trash weight it down but not just carry it out?!


There were quite a few oddities as well.  Like the truck bed that made a nice platform to cast from and the copious amount of discarded clothing (something else that made no sense) but the weirdest thing, hands down, was when I stumbled onto a buddy of mine fishing a small dammed up pool.  By him in the water were what looked to be over fifty egg shells, standard market variety in a pile with looked like loose change sprinkled around the outside.  The air also had a whiff of perfume or detergent.  I got a bad feeling and we booked it out of there.

 

As far as the actual fish, the biggest of the day was about six inches and the most fish seemed to be caught by the guys with the flies, my buddy with ten me with eight.  Originally I decided to use my cellphone to take pictures, but given how tough the wading was I just skipped it.  I'm saving for a nice waterproof camera so all future catches will be preserved.

Water temps were in the high sixties and was refreshing from the hiking and heat when not under the cover of the trees.

One of the lunkers :)

All and all I was pretty satisfied with SGR.  We have all agreed to try the East fork next trip and one of our buddies has decided to get a fly outfit.

Man of the day, the Fish Whisperer.

On this particular day I was using an Eagle Claw Featherlight 7' with some 4wt line spooled onto a high value, low cost Okuma 4/5wt. reel.



Josh-