The Upper San Joaquin is high-country freestone fishing at its purest — the Middle Fork rising in the wilderness around Thousand Island Lake and running down past Devils Postpile and Reds Meadow in a granite-and-pine canyon below Mammoth. The trout are wild rainbows and browns, willing and unsophisticated the way fish that don't see much pressure tend to be, and the fishing is a backcountry pleasure: attractors and dry-droppers in the pocket water, a day spent as much for the place as the catch. It's snowmelt all the way, so the calendar is the snowpack's: roaring and unfishable through the peak melt, then dropping into prime shape through summer and into a quiet, golden autumn. Altitude is the other half of the story — it's cold up here, the season is short, and the road into Reds Meadow only opens when the snow lets it. Time it for the drop after runoff, hike in, and fish a river that still feels like wilderness.

• Volcanic

• Aquatic life: Supporting