Owens River, California

Upper Owens above Crowley Lake

The Upper Owens rises at Big Springs north of Mammoth Lakes and winds about 26 miles through open meadow to the north end of Crowley Lake, reached from Benton Crossing Road off US 395. It is a treeless spring creek with hairpin bends and undercut banks, and its best fish are browns and rainbows that run up from Crowley to spawn and linger in the river. Mid sections pass through two private ranches.

Owens Gorge above Pleasant Valley Reservoir

Below Crowley's Long Valley Dam the river drops through the ten mile Owens Gorge, which LADWP dewatered in 1953 and which has run again since a pipe failure in 1991 and a stocking of browns in 1994. Base flows of 35 to 85 cfs hold thousands of small wild browns per mile. Access is by foot from Gorge Road and the power plant roads, with a steep climb out.

Wild Trout section below Pleasant Valley Dam

The Lower Owens starts at Pleasant Valley Dam six miles north of Bishop, and the roughly 13 miles down to the Five Bridges crossing is the state-designated Wild Trout section, with Chalk Bluff Road paralleling the river and dirt spurs down to the bank. Below Five Bridges the tules close in and the river is drift-boat water with more stocked rainbows.

Brown trout

Wild browns are the fish of every Owens section: small and eager in the Gorge, plentiful in the Wild Trout section, and big when they run up the Upper Owens from Crowley. Midges carry the winter, baetis the spring and fall, and caddis the summer evenings on the lower river.

Rainbow trout

Rainbows are a mix of wild fish and hatchery plants on the lower river, more common the farther you go below Five Bridges, and Crowley rainbows run the Upper Owens in spring. Pleasant Valley Reservoir is stocked and gets some very large fish.

Season and regulations

The Wild Trout section fishes best from October through November and again February through March, when flows run 100 to 200 cfs and wade easily; once irrigation releases push past about 350 cfs wading is unsafe and the fishing shuts down, so 100 to 300 cfs is the window this page treats as ideal. There is no active USGS gauge on the Owens, and the flow this page shows is the closest reporting gauge in the region, not the river itself; LADWP publishes the Pleasant Valley release.

The Wild Trout section is catch and release with barbless hooks, with a seasonal two-trout allowance on the short reach between the campground footbridge and the dam and a closed spawning channel just below the dam. The Gorge and the reservoir are open all year under standard California limits, and the Upper Owens follows the Eastern Sierra season. Check the current CDFW regulations for each reach.