Hello,

This trip will highlight a special weekend with my boys and a much needed break for a birthday girl named April.

One of the things I try and do with my boys is called ‘Daddy Time’. It’s a time I take one of the three of my boys and go do something spectacular with them one on one; no brothers allowed. On one of these events I was introduced to Billy Reynolds a man who runs the non profit ‘Teaching Kids to Fish’ we joined this group to visit a local lake named Lake Isabella. Each year the local town promotes a fishing derby, they stock and tag fish and if you happen to be the lucky catcher then you could win a large cash prize.

So when I was spending time with my middle child Jacob  pictured below.

We learned of the Lake Crowley fish opener, an event that takes place between Bishop and Mammoth in California. The lake belongs to the Department of Water and Power. It turns out this event is quite popular and people travel from some distance to attend. Billy invited me to attend with all my boys and would even teach the boys to fish. While I am a seasoned fisher not necessarily a catcher of fish, I took him up on the offer as every dad knows boys never listen to their father and welcomed the opportunity to have the boys learn a new skill.

One of the unique aspects of Lake Crowley is the lake sits at about 6,500 ft in elevation and under normal seasonal weather the lake does not freeze in the winter and stays below fifty degrees in the summer. This result produces some of the larges trout one can ever catch. As the lake is only open six months out of the years, thus when the lake opens people are looking to catch a huge trout who has been just waiting to be caught all winter.

Upon our arrival we set up the camper, it began to flurry the boys were excited and made comments like “hope it picks up so we can have a snowball fight”, I then thought it better not that would be just one more thing for poor dad to figure out. So we decided to set the BBQ up and cook our tri-tip, surprisingly the boys felt it was too much meat and we had plenty to spare.

The next day we awoke to the most beautiful morning it was sunny with a slight breeze, the boys quickly began to explore while dad had some coffee and relaxed in an easy chair outside the camper, it was a wonderful morning. I cooked eggs and bacon and set the boy free; yelling as they ran off to check in every hour or so.

Lake Crowley runs a special for this opening weekend, and as luck would have it I was able to obtain an RV site which makes camping much more enjoyable. It turns out Billy had tried to get a spot all spring but was unable to, but we were lucky as there was a last minute cancellation. Crowley opens the gates two days before fishing takes place, this day we choose to explore the lake and well stand in awe of Gods beauty.

In the above picture we are facing west and in the background you can see Mammoth Mountain, we figured if the opener tomorrow is like today we will have a great fishing trip on the lake which today is like a mirror. I took the following picture from our camp site before all the LA crowd arrived, such a beautiful and relaxing day with the boys.

We are quickly learning that the weather here changes quickly, I even made the comment that the weather is made here. As no predictions even came close to being correct on any of the various weather channels.

Since we were without a boat once the opener kicked off on Saturday we met up with Billy and the boat he had was not working, he was very frustrated. This was probably best as we only lasted about 20 minutes in the cold rain and sleet, this day turned out to be quite cold and we retreated to the camper for the rest of the day as it was so cold and windy.

On this trip we also included a local family to join us, the French family. Lawrence also thought it a good idea to spend some time with his boys Adrian and Justin. In an effort to save the day we decided once the wind calmed down some to destroy a watermelon.

Getting closer! There was several times in which the rubber bands I purchased would break so it was kind of like playing Russian roulette.

Lawrence then decided to have mercy on Isaac by providing him some eye protection as he took a rubber band to the eye. It would turn out this watermelon would never pop. Dad had bought the wrong size rubber bands. Lawrence and I even traveled down the road found a country store and bought more rubber bands, these were also the wrong size. Finally drove to Bishop went to the grocery store and were blessed with the manager giving us a huge bag. We placed every rubber band and no bang! Sorry boys I guess it was not meant to be.

So Sunday we choose to find a quiet spot by driving around the lake in the truck to fish as we only had a rented boat on Monday as I quickly found that this event all boats sell out quickly.

We found the spot pictured below we had to hike down a hill about a hundred feed down. I make this point as it turns out much easier to go down with handfuls of gear then going up which proved difficult.

So I will finish at the spot where we spent Sunday as Monday would turn out to be a bummer as well since we would be skunked by them silly fish…I guess we are fishermen not catchermen.

Until next year Lake Crowley!

aCSguy