Eagle Lake

Eagle Lake lies at about 5,100 feet north of Susanville, California's second-largest natural lake at about 22,000 acres. Its water is too alkaline for most trout, but the Eagle Lake trout, a native strain found nowhere else, thrives in it and grows big on tui chub. The fish are raised from the lake's own spawners and stocked back.

The season opens the Saturday before Memorial Day and runs through February. Early summer and fall are best, when the trout cruise the shallows of the south basin and the points; leeches, chub patterns and woolly buggers on a sinking line take most fish, and chironomids work in calm water. Summer pushes the fish to deep water off the north basin. The limit is 2 trout, and the water inside the Gallatin Marina breakwater and Pine Creek Slough is closed.