"DavidC" wrote in message
news:01c52ffb$4c3a19a0$bafe1345@micron...

About 10 years ago, a buddy and I hiked the Little Kern up from the Forks
looking for the "waterfall". A rough trek. No trail. 7 tricky fords
(with packs). And lots of little bows and hybrid goldens. We had heard
that above the "waterfall" only native goldens abounded. About 3 miles in
we finally came to an impassible (wall to wall) deep pool that required a
swim, so we gave up. Never did find that fall, and it doesn't show up on
the topos as a fall (probably a long cascade that only appears as a bunch
of scrunched isobars)

I'm still kind of curious if that natural barrier exists. However, I have
a naturalist friend that more recently hiked in to the Little Kern (to the
"bridge") from the Western Divide highway access (well above the rumored
fall) and they were catching bows. So it sounds like the Rotenone program
they tried up there to eradicate all but native goldens didn't succeed.

There are a couple of trails from the Western Divide down to the Little
Kern. One of them is a favorite of mine, though I haven't made the hike in a
couple of years. Higher up, where the trails start down, there are several
healthy populations of pure Goldens. But near the bottom, as you approach
the Little Kern, there are hybrids and rainbows. The creeks I am thinking of
have several falls that would prevent upstream migration, but I don't know
of anything on the Little Kern that would. At least not in the first 10
miles upstream from the Forks.

Two weeks ago, the San Diego Fly Fishers had a speaker, Steve Beck, who
talked about fishing the main Kern fork in Sequoia National forest. The
claim was spectacular fishing but it's many miles hike in.

I suppose he was speaking of the main Kern stem above the Forks(?). There's
an awful lot of river from there to the headwaters. I wonder how many miles
upstream he was talking about. Do you know? I'll bet that starting about 2
miles upstream the water doesn't see much angling pressure and that each
additional mile would be better and better. Have you been up that far?

Danl