Forks of the Kern
This summer I had the pleasure of visiting the fabled Kern River. The Kern is one of the most interesting inland river systems in California. It’s home to three distinct species of our native trout, the California Golden Trout, Little Kern River Golden Trout and the Kern River Rainbow. Before ever visiting the Kern I’d looked at it on the map several times. The first thing that caught my eye is the upper reach of the main stem. It flows directly north to south in almost a straight line for near 20 miles, cutting through the southern most toe of the Sierra Nevada range. The Kern originates high in the mountains with it’s source waters coming from over 10,000 feet. As it wanders down through this arid landscape it’s met by the South Fork of the Kern and later by the North Fork of the Kern also known as the Little Kern River. This confluence is known as the Forks of the Kern.
The Forks of the Kern is within the Golden Trout Wilderness. From Kernville, it’s about an hour drive to the trailhead. The trail descends just over 1000 feet in 2.3 miles down to the river. At the bottom of the hill the trail crosses the Little Kern. From there you have the option to head up the Little Kern or cross and head up the main stem. Being my first time down there, I opted to explore a little of both.
The Little Kern was very low. I estimated about 20 csf or less. There were only a couple pools within a few miles of the confluence that were even holding fish at these flows. Hiking up the Little Kern is mostly off trail. At summer flows it’s easy to cross in several places which is a good strategy for working your way up river. I could see there being pretty good fishing at higher flows. With this being the 4th year of drought though, many of the fish from the tributaries had been forced to move down into the main stem or into the isolated cold reaches way up river.
Photo: Mike Wier