OWENS GORGE(OUS) : WILD-TROUT FISHING TURNS DREAMY.

Byline: Brett Pauly

Imagine a crooked canyon in a volcanic tableland that has been parched to a bone-dry powder for decades.

Now imagine it filled with water and four varieties of brown trout.

It would be like an angler's ``Field of Dreams'' - build it and they will come.

Well, Bishop has it's dream fishery, but hardly anybody knows about it . . . and that's just fine by the local fly-anglers.

I'm talking about the Owens River Gorge, northwest of Bishop, where wild browns to 15 inches are gobbling down dry flies size No. 16 and smaller on 5X tippets from a handful of lucky anglers privy to the secret.

``They'll hit anything. They don't know any better. They're not picky,'' said Bishop fly-angler Gary Gunsolley, who guided me into the picturesque chasm early one fine morning last month. ``But I'm sure in time they will be.''

Talk about no pressure. These fish were so tame, in fact, that I even landed my first-ever brown - a crazy-wrestling 9-incher that wore its black markings like a proud Dalmatian.

The last time browns rose to caddis and mayfly patterns was in 1953, before the gorge's flows were diverted through an aqueduct and a series of power plants to create electricity for Southland customers of the Department of Water and Power.

In the late 19th century, cutthroat trout from the Walker River Basin were transplanted to the high-desert gorge that carves through the boundary of Mono and Inyo counties. Later, browns were introduced and outcompeted their brethren. Stories of mammoth browns to 15 pounds drew anglers from around the region. That all changed in '53, when a slew of the beautiful trout were left to perish as the gorge was dewatered in the name of hydroelectric energy.

But the gorge and its wild browns would get a reprieve in 1991, when a penstock burst and filled a section with a flood of flows. The Department of Fish and Game fought to return water and the browns to the gorge, and won. DFG biologists packed nearly 42,000 browns - strains from Crowley Lake, Oak Creek, New York and wilds electrofished from a portion of upper gorge that wasn't dewatered - into the gorge (on their backs in 50-pound rucksacks) in 1994 and 1995.

Now three generations of trout swim in the narrow river, shaded by fledgling willows and cottonwoods and fed by insects that call the trees home.

With water provided by the DWP and fish from the DFG, it's a union that will be closely monitored for years to come by a plethora of scientists, engineers and government agencies.

``We are doing something that is probably pretty rare in environmental science,'' said Steve Weistling, the DWP's superintendent of the Owens Valley Electric System. ``It's a living laboratory.''

Bishop's Steve Parmenter, an associate fishery biologist in the DFG's Wild Trout Program, explained that the objective is simple:

``The goal is to restore the self-sustaining populations of wild fish. In order to do that, the impetus is not on stocking but on habitat restoration. Largely it's a natural process.''

Water will prompt a riparian plant community; roots will bind the soil in place to prevent erosion. Until then, fine sediment that is deposited in deeper pools, where larger fish thrive, will be flushed out by periodic floodlike flows and redistributed on the banks.

Two generations of young browns have been born in the gorge already, and, as the habitat improves, Parmenter expects the fish to reach 20 inches or more.

``The ones that the anglers come back talking about will be bigger than that,'' he said. ``We can easily anticipate that 5-pounders would not be uncommon and that larger ones can be expected.''

The flora has grown to the point where anglers require short (20 feet or less), accurate casts to navigate their flies between brushy corridors. (Watch for the stinging Russian thistle that has colonized; however scotching the gorge gets, hips waders can be a savior.)

``And it's only going to get worse because of the vegetation,'' Gunsolley said.

Translation for the experienced angler: It's only going to get better because the tyros will be weeded out.

``If the DFG gets its way, it's going to be a paradise,'' he said.

A sprinkling of access points to the gorge open up at intervals along the road that parallels it east of Highway 395. But few prints of wading boots can be found along the trail lined with sweet sage and rabbitbrush that descends 400 feet from a 5,200-foot plateau in about a third of a mile to a crooked slice of the gorge called Horseshoe Bend. You can make hundreds of casts with a 9-foot, 5-weight rod without seeing a soul.

``If there had been any other fishermen, it wouldn't have been the same experience,'' Bishop accountant Mike Nicholas said after returning from a recent jaunt to Horseshoe Bend. ``This beats the East Walker any day.''

There are no special regulations in the gorge - five fish per day on any tackle or bait - but fly-anglers, as they so often do, are setting a trend of catch and release.

Gunsolley, owner of Brock's fly-fishing shop in Bishop, recommends a double-tapered fly line, with a 6X 7-1/2-foot leader and a 5X to 6X tippet. Elk-hair, blue-wing olive and brown caddises, along with mayflies and attractor patterns, are excellent dries, while hare's ears, beadheads, pheasant tails, bird's nests and midge emergers are strong candidates for nymph-fishing.

Like he says, these browns aren't too selective. Anything that remotely resembles a bug will do well.

``At the present time, they are easy to catch - much easier than on the Lower Owens,'' Gunsolley said. ``It doesn't get a lot of fishing pressure.''

But, remember, dreams don't last forever.

MEMO: Outdoors Editor Brett Pauly's column appears Thursdays in the Daily News.

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Photo

Photo: (color) Owens River Gorge is teeming with brown trou t, such as this 9-incher - Brett Pauly's first-ever brown.

Brett Pauly / Daily News