“It’s got history, great views, great fishing and the Gold Rush was right here. It’s one of a kind,” Don said, and he certainly could have been referring to himself as well.
Part Christian preacher, part fly fishing expert, part walking history tour, Don can tell a story with the best of them, and it helps that Lake Mary has provided him such good fodder over the last half century.
As a child, Don and his family would divide the year between winters in Honolulu, Hawaii, where his father helped found Hawaiian Pacific University, and summers in the Mammoth Lakes Basin, where the Barretts became the third owner of the deed originally decreed by President Ulysses S. Grant, which covered nearly 500 acres and included much of the land in the Lakes Basin.
In keeping with the Sierra’s Wild West past, “land wars” were a part of Don’s young life on the lake. One dispute led a rather shady fellow working up at the Lake George store to march in on Don’s family with six-shooters bared declaring he was going to kill them. Don’s mother, Louise, declared that God wouldn’t let him, and low and behold, the guns wouldn’t fire.
Don said he’ll never forget years later when a man came into the Pokonobe Lodge, sat down and played the piano beautifully for a while and then came over and apologized for trying to kill them that day. “People do stuff you can’t believe,” he said with a chuckle. “Dumb things happen in the Sierras that you would never believe.”
Some downright amazing things happen as well, especially when catching trout at Lake Mary is involved.
The largest lake in the Mammoth Lakes Basin, Mary is located at an elevation of 8,910 feet and is a mile long, a half-mile wide, covers 140 acres and is 114 feet at its deepest. Don said that the record rainbow trout caught at Lake Mary is 28 pounds and with the record brown tipping the scales at over 26 pounds. But as big as those fish were, they still pale in comparison to the lake’s legendary fish.
“Freddy Mo`Ready” was the monstrous German brown that drew acclaim to Lake Mary in the early `90s. Said to be too big to land, the trout was even profiled in the L.A. Times. An angler was said to hook the fish, estimated to be around 40 pounds, the hog was never landed.
The spirit of Freddy, or perhaps one of his offspring, appears to have returned this fall. Don said a few people have recently hooked into a fish too big to move that anglers have literally fought for hours before snapping off on line as strong as 10-pound test.
“I think we’re gonna call it ‘Big Bomber Brown’,’” Don said about a fish he estimates to be at least 20 years old. “It either has dementia or Alzheimer’s because it feeds during the middle of the day when browns usually don’t eat.”
Big fish have always been the norm at Lake Mary as the natural lake’s unique character traits make it an exceptionally great place for trout—and even the native tui chub species—to thrive.
“It’s one of the great fishing lakes in the country. It’s very unique,” said Don, who was taught to fish by Eastern Sierra angling legend Blake Jones and is an acclaimed fly designer.
Don and his wife, Bettyjoy, raised four girls at Lake Mary. He said that what makes Mary so special is that it has four year-round inlets, threes seasonal inlets with numerous natural warm springs bubbling up from beneath the surface. These allow for lots of great spawning grounds and helps create a tremendous amount of food sources, which is why, Don said, the lake is also very popular with ducks.
What’s most impressive is that despite the recent drought conditions, Lake Mary has been producing some of the largest regular catches Don has ever seen.
“The last two years we’ve seen a drastic increase in the size of the fish being caught,” Don said, explaining that he’s seen 13 and 15 pound fish landed every month this season and he recently saw four trout over 10 pounds caught in a single week.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said. “ You need a salmon net!”
As for why so many beasts have been caught recently, Don said it is in part because Lake Mary is natural and not damn controlled.
“This isn’t a manmade lake. This is a God made lake,” Don said, before he took a break to rent out a boat to a couple from Mexico. “I love you guys,” he said as the couple he just met departed.
Love is definitely something Don and generations of folks have for Lake Mary, and it only takes one day to fish, float or camp along its shores to understand why.
