Convict Lake and Sabrina Lake Fall Fishing the Sierras

My wife and I were camping, late fall, at the Convict Lake campground.  I woke up early as usual contemplating where to search out a spot to fish while Meli was still asleep.  I tied up an ultra light spinning rod with a white mini jig and headed down to the outlet stream from Convict Lake.  The stream is very small after the pool just below the lake outlet.  Mostly 5-8 feet across and a short rod works great in the tight bushes.  I found a fool small pools and bounced my mini jig through with not much luck.  I worked my way up the stream towards the lake and found a small water fall and tried below it.  I jigged the mini jig in the white water and soon had a beautiful little brown trout to show for my work.  I released it back after a picture and headed up to the large outlet pools below the lake.  I could see about ten trout swimming around in the pools.  Even though they were there I could not convince them to bite.  Apparently the California Department of Fish and Game often stocks this stream and has put some Alpers in here at times. Without much luck I headed back for breakfast. 

Later on we launched the Kayak onto Convict Lake and trolled all over the place without catching anything.  We tried lures such as Thomas Buoyant spoons, a lake troll with a worm behind, spinners, jigs for nothing.  We saw someone else on a boat drifting night crawlers catch a large rainbow mid lake.  Since we weren't having much luck we headed to the other side of the lake where the inlet stream enters the lake.  After fishing out front for a while I caught a nice little rainbow on a mini jig.  This fish was caught with a Berkley Gulp Alive Fish Fry in white on a Trout Teaser jig head.  Saw some people fishing from shore with the bait and wait technique having some success.  Since the wasn't going to well we decided to back up and head over to Sabrina lake on the way home.      

We packed up and headed to Sabrina lake.  It turns out we had much better luck fishing from shore at Sabrina lake.  We were fishing by the dam near the parking lot since some other people seemed to be having some action there.  We were using Rainbow Glitter Powerbait and sliding egg sinker rigs.  Meli, my wife, started to catch rainbow after rainbow with this technique.  We would cast it out and slowly drag it back, pausing in between small pulls.  My wife outfished me big time!  In the hour that we were there we must have hooked 8 rainbows.  After watching a beautiful sunset it was time to head home.  Dress warm if going to Sabrina Lake it is pretty high up in the Mountains near Bishop.   

The Deer were a little too friendly at Convict Lake Campground, they came looking for breakfast from us.

Good Luck out there!  If you have any questions about the area let me know how I can help.