Up at 6:15AM and breakfast at "Pig Out @ Marge’s" in Kernville at 7AM. Marge’s small café was lined with an eclectic assortment of pig memorabilia and seemed to be the favorite breakfast spot of the locals. Breakfast was hearty and reasonably priced.

Leaving town to the north, along the river on Sierra Way (aka: mountain road 99), we headed to the Johnsondale bridge, a left turn and 5-miles further was the R-Ranch (looked like a fancy resort) and a right turn FS road 22S82 (aka: Lloyd Meadows road) to the campground at the forks of the Little Kern & Kern Rivers. The Kern River contains Rainbow Trout (O.m. giberti) and the Little Kern River the Golden Trout, subspecies O. m. whitei.

Eleven miles up the Lloyd Meadows road we came to Peppermint Creek. There were several groups using the campground, so we decided to move down the road a bit and bushwhack into the stream below the campground hoping to avoid the crowds. The fish in the stream were small and aggressive; most were rainbows with a few rainbow/golden hybrids. Mark & Pops worked downstream to where they heard rap music blaring and teenagers were sliding down the natural smooth granite rockslides in the stream. It was time to move on.

At 23-miles up the LM road and 5900 feet of elevation we came to a dirt road, FS road 20S67, that continued to the Kern River junction campground and trailhead. As we drove up to this point, there were vantage points where we could see the Kern River in its’ canyon far below…..I mean far, far below!

Information we had said the trail down to the confluence of the rivers was 1 to 2 miles…..all said the trail was grueling.

Mark started to gear up while Pops & I looked at each other with that "NO WAY!" look in our eyes. We’d had about enough hiking for one trip and seeing how far it was down into the canyon to the rivers convinced us that the trail was more likely a cliff than a trail.

As Marked hiked off at 11:30AM, I hung a radio on his pack and said, "Keep in touch". He said he’d be back to the trailhead by 6PM. If he wasn’t back by 7PM….call the rescue team. We talked to him as he descended the trail until the radio transmissions got scratchy…..then silence….he was out of radio range. During our last legible transmission I told Mark that Pops and I were going to return to Peppermint Creek to do a little fishing and would be back at the parking lot no later than 4PM.

Returning to Peppermint Creek, Pops & I fished upstream this time. There were lots of good holes many loaded with small fish. Pops was using a spinning rod that I’d put a 4lb. tippet and bead-head pheasant tail fly on. I told him to let it drift down into the pools and see what happened.

We leapfrogged from hole to hole catching a few fish and missing lots more. Some were Golden hybrids, but no pure Golden Trout. Pops pheasant-tail fly was working great, he out fished my dry fly (Ant, emerger & Royal Coachman patterns) 3 to 1. We’d hiked nearly a mile upstream when we heard a loud clap of thunder, followed by several more. Soon there was an unusual noise in the woods…..it was large hail falling thru the trees! Pops called on the radio and said he was headed back to the truck. Then the skies opened up and it began to pour. By the time we’d reached the truck we were soaked to the skin. Soon after the rain stopped, the sun came out and the humidity went thru the roof.

On the way back to the trailhead were we left Mark, we spotted a sign that said "George Bush Tree" pointing to a little dirt road to the left….we took it.

At the end of the road, we hiked about a ½-mile to the tree. It was a spectacular Sequoia Tree! The sign said that President George Bush (Sr.) had dedicated the tree on July 14, 1992 as a symbol to "manage these objects of great beauty for perpetuity." I walked up to the tree with my arms stretched out and attempted to measured the circumference; 6-feet times 12 arm-widths = ~72 feet!! By pacing off a nearby fallen tree, Pops and I estimated the Bush tree to be somewhere near 250’ high! Wow!! What a tree!

There was another pair of these giant Sequoia along the trail, both with the bases burned out nearly hollow, one of the great trees had very little base left and was leaning on its twin for support. We asked ourselves if this area had once be covered by these massive trees, but saw no evidence of ancient logged off stumps. It was odd to think only a few of these trees existed in this grove.

Apparently the reason for the dedication of this tree was that Pres. George Sr. had proclaimed the Giant Sequoias to be off limits to logging according to this Internet article.

I looked for something more on the web about this President George Bush Senior Tree and found this article written about his son, George Jr., who apparently has a slightly different view about trees than his Dad:

Pops and I left the Sequoia grove and headed back to the trailhead to find Mark. Upon arriving at 4PM, I called Mark on the radio….surprisingly, he answered. He was nearing the top of the trail. It took him about 50 minutes to hike down to the rivers and a little over an hour to hike back out. The rivers were very high and fishing was tough. He had caught several Rainbows in both the Kern & Little Kern, but no Golden Trout. The high water had prevented him from traveling very far up the Little Kern. The Volcano Creek (aka: Golden Trout Creek) golden trout are located several grueling miles and mountains(read: pack horses) up the main stem Kern River canyon. There were several other rigs parked in the lot, but Mark reported that he saw no other anglers on the stream.

On the way back to town, we stopped back at the Bush Tree, Mark hiked in to take a look after Pops & I told him how cool it was.

At 6PM we were having a great dinner at "McNally’s Fairview Restaurant & Lodge" on the Kern River. We had a great dinner while a local cowboy serenaded all with cowboy tunes.

Pops reminded us that he wanted to take a few trout home with him, so after dinner we returned to the Golden Trout Resort, geared up and went down to the Kern River below the resort. The river was large & fast, strewn with huge boulders and blazing whitewater. We found a large fast run below a huge set of rapids that looked like it might hold fish.

Right away Mark caught a nice rainbow bouncing a nightcrawler / split shot rig along the bottom. Andy tried the nightcrawler rig, but soon switched to a fluorescent red Mepps spinner. On the first cast, he caught a nice rainbow. Soon Mark was hooked up with another rainbow, followed by another fish that turned out to be a large Sacramento sucker….a cool looking golden fish.

Andy changed to a Kastmaster chrome spoon, his first cast bounced off the far bank, about halfway back on the retrieve….Bamm….another nice rainbow. We fished until dark and came back with 4 nice rainbows for Pops. Mark cleaned and iced the fish.

Mark was up early, 5:30AM, he’d gone back down to the river to do a little more fishing. Pops & I slept in until nearly 7AM. Mark was back at 7:15 with two more nice rainbows.

The Troutfitters store is a great little fly shop with all the goodies. Mark and I bought a few cool flies and a neat Troutfitters Golden Trout t-shirt.

Back on the road we drove thru Kernville, around the north end of Lake Isabella and back to highway 178 arriving at the Bakersfield Airport at 11AM. We’d traveled 472 miles on our Golden Trout Adventure since leaving Bakersfield on Wednesday. Our plane left Bakersfield at 1:10 PM for Salt Lake City, getting us back to Seattle at 8:16PM where Georgia picked us up at Sea-Tac Airport.

Wow!!!….it began to sink in…..we’d actually caught a Golden Trout!! Way Cool!!!

After a day or two of rest we both filled out our IGFA "Royal Trout Slam" paperwork, including pictures of all seven required species, a write-up about catching each species and had it notarized.

Andy’s Brook Trout came from Okanogan, Washington; the Bull Trout from the Metolius River in Oregon; the Lake Trout from Lake Michigan at Benton Harbor, Michigan; the Rainbow (a Washington State Record) from Monroe, Washington; the Westslope Cutthroat from Fernie, British Columbia; the Brown Trout from Pass Lake in Washington; and the Golden Trout from the Cottonwood Lakes of California. In addition to the 7 required species, Andy submitted an eighth species (actually a hybrid), a Tiger Trout (IGFA World Record, pending) from Omak, Washington.

After many years of anticipation, research, fishing and many, many miles of travel, we had reached our goal……joining the small group anglers (6) that have documented their catches and received the International Game Fish Association "Royal Trout Slam"!!

Andy also has the IGFA "Royal Salmon Slam" that requires an angler to catch the King, Coho, Chum, Sockeye, Pink and Atlantic salmon species. He is the third angler in the world to record both the trout & salmon slams with the IGFA.

The Golden Trout Adventure was a grand trip!