By the 1950s, fishing demand often exceeded the fish supplied by the state's stocking program. Improvements in spinning reel technology made it easy to cast bait or lures for trout, and state fish and game officials struggled to keep pace with increased fishing pressure on the Middle Fork and area lakes. Surveys showed that at least half of all visitors in the Middle Fork Valley were there to fish. By the mid-1960s, the river was being stocked with 17,000 to 20,000 fingerling trout each summer and had become one of the most popular fishing destinations in the Eastern Sierra.