- Joined
- Mar 11, 2001
- Messages
- 70,011
- Reaction score
- 1,003
Jim Matthews, ONS
6/11/03
A LITTLE TOURNAMENT: The Kennedy Meadows General Store is having a fishing derby this Saturday. The longest trout measured at the store will win a whopping $75 and the kid, 10-or-under, who has the longest trout will win $25. It's not $50,000 but we're talking stream fishing for mostly wild fish.
This is the 12th annual event held on the upper reaches of the South Fork of the Kern River, as long as Al Hansen has owned the little store. Hansen said the big fish opening weekend, when he has a similar event, was a whopping 16 5/8s-inch brown trout. That is an impressive small-stream brown. When I asked Al the size of the biggest trout he'd ever seen from Kern, he didn't have to ponder the question at all.
"About eight years ago, a guy caught a 26-inch wild brown from Monache Meadows that weighed five pounds," said Hansen of a skinny fish that was all head and hooked jaw. A 21-inch fish landed by a 12-year-old from the lower South Fork in the Domelands Wilderness was the best fish in the last couple of years, and it probably weighed less than three pounds. A 26-inch brown from Lower Twin Lake near Bridgeport would weigh 18 pounds or more, but these South Fork fish are wild, stream-bred browns on a limited food supply. A 12-incher is a whopper.
6/11/03
A LITTLE TOURNAMENT: The Kennedy Meadows General Store is having a fishing derby this Saturday. The longest trout measured at the store will win a whopping $75 and the kid, 10-or-under, who has the longest trout will win $25. It's not $50,000 but we're talking stream fishing for mostly wild fish.
This is the 12th annual event held on the upper reaches of the South Fork of the Kern River, as long as Al Hansen has owned the little store. Hansen said the big fish opening weekend, when he has a similar event, was a whopping 16 5/8s-inch brown trout. That is an impressive small-stream brown. When I asked Al the size of the biggest trout he'd ever seen from Kern, he didn't have to ponder the question at all.
"About eight years ago, a guy caught a 26-inch wild brown from Monache Meadows that weighed five pounds," said Hansen of a skinny fish that was all head and hooked jaw. A 21-inch fish landed by a 12-year-old from the lower South Fork in the Domelands Wilderness was the best fish in the last couple of years, and it probably weighed less than three pounds. A 26-inch brown from Lower Twin Lake near Bridgeport would weigh 18 pounds or more, but these South Fork fish are wild, stream-bred browns on a limited food supply. A 12-incher is a whopper.
