- Fly Fishing the Desolation Wilderness Area by Jerry Yesavage ( yesavage@stanford.edu ) The Desolation Wilderness is a 100 square mile federal wilderness area directly to the west of Lake Tahoe, a well-known recreational area on the California/Nevada border with many fishing opportunities. The granite and glaciers of the Sierra Nevada have strongly affected this region leading to the formation ...www.stanford.edu/~yesavage/Desolation.html