Getting There

The Twin Lakes are located just inside the Desolation Wilderness boundary in El Dorado County. They can be reached by taking Wrights Lake Road off of Highway 50. Follow Wrights Lake Road until you reach Wrights Lake. At the junction by the stop sign, turn right and follow it to the end where you will find a parking lot. Remember to go here to get your Desolation Wilderness permit if you plan on staying at the Twin Lakes.

The Hike

Easy hike to Twin Lakes. At 2.5 miles to Lower Twin Lake it makes for an easy day trip. I packed into Twin Lakes and it was a very easy hike. It is uphill most of the way. One important note: you will reach a section that travels up gentle granite slopes which other hikers have kindly placed rock cairns to guide you. Some of these are a little sketchy. Keep a little to the right and head for the saddle and you will, I'm sure, find the trail again to Twin Lakes.

I stopped to do some fishing at Lower Twin Lake for a while and did not see any signs of life at first. I began to worry so I took the quick walk over to Upper Twin Lake to see what was happening there. Again, I failed to detect any fish life at Upper Twin Lake and this made me suspect that the MYLF people had come to degrade the watershed like they have elsewhere in Desolation Wilderness. After receiving no bites on bait or flies at Upper Twin Lake, I went back to Lower Twin Lake and sat down for a while.

Eventually, as the sun went down on Lower Twin Lake, the fish began to rise as the evening hatch took off. I pulled out my fly rod and began casting a small Pheasant Tail nymph and hooked up with a few stunted Brookies feeding close to shore. While the fish were not large, I was still relieved that the fishery is still alive!

The fish were biting at Lower Twin Lake! While fishing Lower Twin Lake I found action casting from the east shore to around the small island. There is a drop off there on the south side of the small island where the trout were hitting right away. I used chartreuse and red Powerbait with glitter while fishing Lower Twin Lake and had plenty of takes but difficulty keeping anything on the hook long enough to bring it in. There is abundant Hydrilla growing on the bottom of Lower Twin Lake. There were other fisherman on the west shore of Lower Twin Lake that seemed to be getting hits but I didn't see any fish landed. I casted some dry flies with nymphs on droppers but raised nothing so I stopped fishing Lower Twin Lake and headed a couple hundred yards east to Upper Twin Lake.

While fishing Upper Twin Lake I had no luck. I did run into another fisherman who was fishing at Upper Twin Lake and he had two 10" Brook Trout on a stick. He said he was using gold spinners at Upper Twin Lake. When I saw him, he was fishing at the very south end of Upper Twin Lake at the bottom of the scree field and I am pretty sure he caught his fish in that area. Both Upper Twin Lake and Lower Twin Lake appear to produce fish.