Hike to Green Lake October 2008

Carrie and I hiked up to Green Lake in October of 2008, just a few weeks before the end of the fishing season up in the Sierra Nevada's. Green Lake is located in the John Muir wilderness in Bishop Creek. You can find the trail from the parking lot in South Lake. You can hike up to many other beautiful lakes from South Lake such as Long Lake, Riu Lake, the 3 Chocolate Lakes, and Bull Lake.

Green Lake is my favorite hike and favorite lake to fish at in the back-country. It's no big mystery as to why they call it Green Lake, the lake is green from the water being so clear yet the bottom of the lake is mossy green. 

If you ever hike up to Green Lake, do yourself a favor and follow the pipeline. There is a man-made pipeline that scales the mountain and allows you to bypass a lot of switchbacks. If you walk on top of it instead of taking the trail, it nearly cuts your hike in half. The pipeline is safe however, there are a few areas where you need to be extra careful that you don't fall down for a 10 foot drop. The pipeline eventually ends at the trail leaving you with about 40 minutes left in your hike. A few more switch-backs follow but then the rest of the hike is relatively flat and extremely beautiful. You walk through green meadows and valleys with plenty of wildflowers.

You can stop at a lake people call Brown Lake. You pass it on the trail on your way to Green Lake. Brown lake is small but fun to throw a few lures in. You most likely will catch little Brooks and the occasional Rainbow trout with a shiny Thomas Bouyant, Panther Martin or even a rainbow colored bullet jig. Don't stay too long at Brown lake because Green Lake is much bigger and much better fishing.

Unfortunately, when we went this last October, the wind was blowing and as you can tell from the pictures it was also snowing. The snow was beautiful during the hike, but once we got to the lake the wind made it miserably cold. We fished for about an hour and got a few bites but nothing came of it. The cold weather took it's toll on us so we started heading back for the beautiful hike home.

Green Lake is one of the best lakes for fishing in the Sierra back-country. I've have hiked up to this lake about 5 times and almost each time, we all caught our limit within 30 minutes. Shiny Thomas Bouyant's and Panther Martins have done really well. Also, wet fly's such as woolybugers have been great and even orange sparkle Powerbait has produced.