Water samples are taken from a high mountain lake by a back-country survey crew. 

 Second Dinkey Lake, Fresno County. 



Project F-3-R— Experimental Back-country Fish Management 



Unless one has flown over the Sierra Nevada ranges, or has spent 

 months back-packing or traveling by pack train, it is impossible to realize 

 that California contains several thousand high-country lakes. Usually 

 clustered in groups, their average size is small ; less than 10 acres in the 

 southern Sierra, for example. They all lie at high altitudes, and most of 

 them are accessible only by trail. Primarily of glacial origin, most of 

 them were originally barren of trout because of their origin and because 

 of waterfalls in their outlets, which prevented the natural ascent of 

 fishes. 



However, the majority have now been stocked with trout : especially 

 eastern brook and rainbow, with lesser numbers of golden, brown, and 

 cutthroat. The early planting was started by stockmen and has been car- 

 ried on by sportsmen, wardens, and finally today by our hatchery crews. 



The early workers expected natural reproduction to replace the stock 

 and usually transplanted only a few individual trout. Later it was found 

 that many of the lakes lacked suitable spawning grounds. This resulted 

 in a rather heavy stocking program of fingerlings, but for many years it 

 was a hit or miss program. Some waters were stocked too frequently ; 

 others went unstocked for years even after the population had died out. 



In 1934 our first modern lake surveys were conducted by several parties 

 of the then U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, and since that time routine initial 

 surveys have been made of some hundreds of lakes by our own staff. 



In 1945 we started the California management binder system. One of 

 the major features of this system was to set up a "basic management 

 policy" for each lake. The policy stated whether or not the lake was to 

 be stocked and, if so, specified the species, number, size, frequency, and 

 time of year. It also specified other measures, such as special regulations 

 and the type of improvement work to be done. 



