Attempting two more Redbands

Sept 28-29

We decided we would head back to Modoc County and try again for a Warner and Goose Lake Redband. Andy got off work on Sunday night around 8:00 p.m and the plan was to swing by my house and pick me up around 9:30. Mr distracto got distracted and showed up around 11:00. That was ok, the plan was to drive all night and sleep on the side of the road. If we did it this way we would be closer to the spot and start fishing at first light.

We arrived in Alturas at around 4:00 a.m. We were both feeling pretty good so we decided to try and find the trailhead and try to get a couple of hours of sleep and be ready to rock and roll. We found the trailhead and grabbed an hour or so of sleep. The next morning we had a beautiful two mile hike into a small lake that was fed by a creek that we knew had Goose Lake redbands. We arrived at the lake and noticed fish rising and cruising the shore. Andy caught a fish on his first cast. I paddled over to take a picture and to my disgust, it was what appeared to be a beautiful wild rainbow. A few minutes later I caught a nice little fish that looked like it may be a redband except it was more silver and its parr marks and red band were extremely faded. We decided to take a few pictures of these fish. I was told by a biologist that when fish spend time in a lake they loose there natural colors. This made us believe that these fish may indeed be redbands. I was getting hungry and figured it was time to head into Alturas and grab a bite to eat and discuss our next plan.

      A friend had told us about a beaver pond that was located in a creek that contained redbands. The beaver pond would be large enough to float tube and I was excited to get started. As we were driving towards Goose Lake we noticed a grayish brown cloud coming towards us.  I could not make out what it was until it hit us. It was the biggest dust storm I had ever seen. It looked like something out of the movie Hildago. It was so massive we had to slow down to 10 miles per hour on highway 395 just so we could see.

The rest of the day had an over cast look to it and we were filthy from all of the dust in the air. When we arrived at the creek Andy just shook his head and gave me a funny look. The creek was only two feet wide. If anyone saw us carrying our float tubes we would look pretty funny. We found the beaver pond and it was much larger than we expected. We pumped up our tubes and put in. We were into fish right away. Could it be we caught two redbands in one day???

No ………When we got back I received an email from somebody I knew in the DFG office in that area. He had confirmed that the first pond we fished had been stocked with rainbows. We would come back from this trip with only one Heritage trout.

      Oh well until the next adventure.