Eagle Lake

Overview

Eagle Lake, about 16 miles north of Susanville in Lassen County, is the second-largest natural lake wholly inside California, a closed basin at 5,100 feet with no outlet, which is why its water is alkaline with a pH near 9. Its surface has ranged from 16,000 to 29,000 acres with runoff, and it is shallow: the north basin averages about six feet, the middle ten, and only the forested south basin reaches 92 feet. It is the native home of the Eagle Lake rainbow, a California heritage trout adapted to that water and shipped from here to stock alkaline lakes across the West. Because Pine Creek, the lake's only permanent tributary, rarely runs long enough for natural spawning, the population is maintained entirely by trapping adults at Pine Creek and rearing their eggs in hatcheries. The trout grow on tui chub, leeches, scuds and snails rather than on insect hatches, so this is a streamer, leech and scud lake with only light midge, Callibaetis and Hexagenia activity. Timing is everything, and there is no summer closure: Eagle Lake is closed from March 1 until the Saturday before Memorial Day. The best fly fishing is June, when trout feed shallow, and again October through December, when they come back to the points and tule edges and turn hard to chub. In July and August they go deep as surface temperatures climb past the high 60s. Troxel and Bucks points in the north, Pelican Point in the middle, and Wildcat Point, the Eagles Nest and Shrimp Island in the south are where regulars start.