Ellery Lake

Ellery Lake is the granite bowl Highway 120 skirts about a mile below Tioga Lake, at roughly 9,490 feet. Southern California Edison holds it behind Rhinedollar Dam, an 18-foot rockfill dam at the east end, as the forebay for its Poole Powerhouse, and at full pool it covers 61 acres. Because the powerhouse intake sits right here, the level moves less through the season than it does at Tioga or Saddlebag, so you do not start June looking at a ring of bare rock. CDFW plants catchable rainbows in summer, wild brook trout live along the shore and in the Lee Vining Creek inlet, and a few browns round it out. Most rainbows run 10 to 13 inches. A fish over a pound is a good one, and a brown is a bonus.

The lake fishes in two halves. The west end, where Lee Vining Creek comes in, is shallow, and the east side by the dam drops to 15 to 30 feet. For a few weeks after ice-out, usually late May to mid June, the larger rainbows patrol the shoreline and the inlet, and a float tube put in near the dam or at the west end gets you over them. Hang a size 16 to 18 chironomid or small beadhead under an indicator just off the drop-offs, or strip a small olive or black leech on an intermediate line. Brookies hold where the creek current fades into the lake, so fish the mouth before anything else. On calm summer evenings, midges and caddis bring fish up to a Griffith's Gnat, Parachute Adams or Elk Hair Caddis in 16 to 18. By midday in July and August, fish slide toward the deeper water by the dam.

This is roadside water, and bait anglers line the bank for a few days after every plant. Afternoon wind off the pass is the rule, so the first and last hours of light are the ones to plan around. The legal season is open all year, but the road decides when you can actually fish: Highway 120 over Tioga Pass usually opens in late May or June and closes in November, and it opened May 15 in 2026. Ellery sits about 160 feet below Tioga Lake and usually loses its ice first. There is no level gauge or water temperature station, and the nearest fly shops are in Mammoth Lakes and Bridgeport, about 50 minutes away. If the lake is busy, Tioga Lake is a mile up the road, Saddlebag Lake is about 3 miles away, and Lee Vining Creek below the dam holds small wild trout.