I only fished the river a few times back then and it was a number of years until I finally revisited the area. It’s no secret that the Mokelumne is one of my favorite rivers in the world. I spent a lot of time on that river growing up. Fishing, but also just swimming, exploring, jumping off cliffs, and rafting. The truth is, most of the Mokelumne isn’t that great for fishing. Much of the upper reaches are not stocked and the wild fish are few and far between . But, if you put in some work and are in the right spot at the right time, occasionally it kicks down some really nice wild fish . The lower Mokelumne is different. It is stocked, quite heavily in fact. Though maybe not in the way you are thinking.
The Lower Mokeulmne refers to the section from below Camanche Dam to where it meets the Sacramento River in the Delta. The Comanche Dam is the end of the line for anadramous fish returning from the ocean and following their instincts to head up river. The Mokelumne was once a great salmon and steelhead producer for the west slope and contributed greatly to the Sacramento-San Juaquin system population. In fact, the name Mokelumne refers to a band of Miwok Indians that lived along the river and means “people of the fishing nets”. There were several villages along the river and the Mokelumne people used to dip net giant salmon from below some small falls somewhere near where Pardee Reservoir is now.
After the gold rush the entire river was permanently changed. The first ever hydro powerhouse in California was built on the Mokelumne and soon after its pristine cold water resources were harnessed and sent to the Bay Area for drinking water and municipalities. Eventually several large dams were built and all of the headwaters habitat was cut off from the migrating salmon and steelhead. A hatchery was built at the bottom of Comanche Dam to help mitigate the loss of the upstream habitat. Today, the hatchery program releases thousands of juvenile fall-run Chinook salmon and steelhead into the lower river. The program seems to be one of the best in the valley and the Mokelumne has received record returns for the past couple years. Last year, nearly 20,000 fall run Chinook returned to the Moke hatchery. It was the highest return since 1940. There is also currently talk of trying a trap and haul program on the Mokelumne. Some agencies want to truck fish from the Camanche hatchery to above Pardee Reservoir in an attempt to re-introduce salmon to the upper watershed. CalTrout has put considerable resources into studying the efficiency of trap and haul programs throughout the Northwest and those findings were recently released in a white paper by one of our senior science researchers Dr. Rob Lusardi.