June Lake

June Lake is the first lake you hit coming up CA-158 from the south end of the loop, and it is the big one: 320 acres of cold, very clear glacial water at 7,621 feet, dropping to about 168 feet at its deepest. CDFW planted it six times between the April opener and late September in 2026, and the June Lake Loop Trophy Trout Program, Mono County and June Lake Marina put bigger rainbows on top of that, some in the 3 to 8 pound range. A small population of Lahontan cutthroat and a few large browns are the fish worth hoping for.

For a fly rod this is boat and float tube water. The far shore across from the road falls away fast, and the trout only hold shallow early and late in the season and in low light. From the opener into June, and again in October, work the tule and weed edges on the west shore and the shelf off the beach with an intermediate line and a leech, a Woolly Bugger or a Grey Ghost, or hang a chironomid under an indicator in 10 to 20 feet. Callibaetis and damsel nymphs fish well over the shelves in June and early July. By midsummer the fish slide deep through the middle of the day, so fish the first and last hour or go down with a full sinking line along the drop-offs. The water is clear enough that fluorocarbon tippet in 4x or 5x makes a difference, and the afternoon wind comes up most days.

Most of the traffic is trollers and bait anglers working out of the two marinas at the village end, so a fly angler is in the minority. The season runs from the last Saturday in April to November 15 with a 5-trout limit, and the marinas shut down in mid-October, which leaves the last month to people with their own boat or a tube. Every trailered boat in Mono County now needs an Eastern Sierra mussel sticker before it launches. If June is crowded or blowing, Gull Lake is a few minutes west and is the better float tube lake.