I last visited the Upper Kings river over three years ago in October and fished some of the best fly fishing water the Central Valley had to offer. Since that trip my wife and I bought our first home and welcomed our baby girl to the world. It’s been three years of the classic taking care of the kids and working on the house routine. Now that things are finally starting to settle down I found some time to plan a second trip to the Upper Kings with my cousins. The plan was to spend two nights at Garnet Dike and explore the river above it that is only accessible through hiking, boulder hopping, and bushwhacking.
The Upper Kings has had its fair share of getting beaten by mother nature since I was last there in 2022. In 2024 the road to Garnet Dike was destroyed after several winter storms. Large boulders and landslides blocked several parts of the road and rushing water carved out other portions of it. The road would be closed indefinitely until repaired which happened surprisingly fast reopening mid-2025. Just after the reopening the Upper Kings was hit by a lightning storm in August that sparked the Garnet Fire which burned over 60,000 acres of the north side of the river. Although things look to have calmed down at this time we have yet to see the outcome of what the Garnet Fire will have on the river this coming winter and spring.
Fresno is about a three-hour drive from my location and I wanted to get on the river before the sunset. We were able to meet up and be on the river a little past noon. The weather was much warmer than I had expected in mid-November with highs in the 80s and lows in 60s. The flows on the Upper Kings were at around 300 CFS which was a bit on the low end for my tastes but still plenty of good water fish. The water was starting to really cool down for the winter but just warm enough to keep the fish active. I didn’t observe a whole lot of insect activity despite the warm weather. It felt like most of the hatches were done for the year with just a few appearances of caddis and mayflies throughout the day.
The fishing was great. The first day we fished a little less than a mile above the Kings River Trail exploring all the different holes and pockets. The following day we explored a little further past where we had left off the previous day and covered about a total of a 1.5 miles of water above the trailhead. The fish were taking all kinds of flies but seemed to like the prince nymph and BWO patterns the most. Most of the fish were found in pockets, seams, and tailouts. The deep beautiful pools where we should’ve found some monsters were unfortunately empty.
The last day we fished below Garnet Dike and the difference in fish density compared to the section above it was night and day. Although we only fished parts of the river that were easily accessible from the road the fishing was tough. It just didn’t seem like there a lot of fish and you had to really work to find them. It would be interesting to see if the spots that take more effort to get to fishes better.
Overall this visit to the Upper Kings was a great. There’s is still a lot of unexplored water to see on the Upper Kings river and I am looking forward to making more trips in the future.
