The hike to Spillway Lake is vintage Yosemite backcountry. It’s one of our must do hikes when visiting the Sierra, because it’s a great combination of beautiful scenery and good fishing for brookies and browns.
When we stay in Mammoth, one of our favorite areas to visit is Tioga Pass. It’s a 40 minute drive that gets you into the Sierra high country. A lot of the hikes in this area make you feel like you’re 10+ miles from the road because its such high elevation.
The Spillway Lake trail begins a the Mono Pass parking lot about 1.4 miles west of the Tioga Pass entrance gate. The parking lot tends to fill up later in the day, so we always plan to arrive early (before 9AM) to make sure we get a parking spot. The hike to the lake is 4 miles with an elevation gain of 800 feet. It’s an easy stroll through pine forests and meadows filled wildflowers.
A quarter mile from the trailhead is the only creek major creek crossing – the Dana Fork of the Tuolumne River. It’s at most 15 feet wide with several logs stretching across the creek which makes it fairly easy to negotiate. The wild flowers in the small meadows around the creek were stunning in mid August this year after an extreme winter.
At 1.3 miles the trail goes by an old log cabin that Native Americans once used as shelter along their summer trade routes to Tuolumne Meadows and beyond. It’s a unique piece of history show casing just how long people have been exploring the Sierra high country.
Once past the log cabin the trail parallel’s Spillway creek the rest of the way to the lake. Spillway creek winds its way through meadows filled with wildflowers and is absolutely gorgeous. There are a ton of deer in this section of the hike, so keep your eyes peeled. I’ve seen one every time I’ve been to Spillway (4 times).
The Mono Pass trail junction is 2.3 miles from the trailhead and is a great halfway check point. The last 1.7 miles is my favorite part of the hike because it starts to gain elevation and get above tree line.
The trail follows the creek closely the last half mile and sweeping views of the Kuna Krest open up.
Spillway Lake sits at 10,450 ft elevation in a large open meadow with only a few stunted trees. It’s vintage Sierra Nevada and I love it. The lake is filled with brookies that stretch to 10 or 11″, but the real treat are the resident brown trout. There are not many high elevation lakes in the Sierra that contain browns because of the water temperature and lack of spawning grounds, so it’s quite the feat to catch a wild brown from a lake at 10,450 ft of elevation.
The browns in Spillway also tend to be a little larger stretching out to 14″. The brookies outnumber the browns about 20 to 1, so if you catch one, especially 12″+ consider yourself lucky!
We arrived at the lake just before 10AM and immediately started fishing. The fish in this lake tend to hone in on big foam terrestrials, especially if there are a few clouds to block out the sun. I’ve had the most success with foam ants, fat alberts, mini fat alberts (home tie!), army ants, and hoppers. The fishing was pretty good – not so fast that we forgot the value of catching these wild fish but not so slow that we were bored.
After sitting and enjoying the views for a while, my Mom finally strung up her rod and tossed in a hopper. First cast, first hit she nailed one of those rare 13″ browns. So typical.
After lunch I was messing around with my brother’s Butterstick 2 WT and absolutely loved it. I definitely couldn’t cast it as far as a faster action or heavier rod, but an 8″ fish sure put a bend in it.
I was fishing one of my mini fat ablert’s when a golden missile came up from the bottom and smashed my fly. It was an easy set after such an aggressive take and I got to say hi to another one of those mysterious browns, this one just a bit over 12″.
Around 2:30pm we packed up and headed back to the car, retracing our steps through the vintage high Sierra scenery. As I said before, this is one of my favorite day hikes because of the combination of scenery and fishing. It’s a must do in the Tioga Pass area.
