ON THE LAST SATURDAY IN APRIL, FISHERMEN ARE USUALLY ELBOW-TO-ELBOW, : BUT SINCE THE EXTENDED SEASON BEGAN LABOR DAY WEEKEND, LAKE CROWLEY IS : One of the Best-Kept Fishing Secrets

Maynard Morvay was on a roll. The Newport Beach fly fisherman, said by some of his eight fly fishing pals to be a novice, had just caught his third rainbow trout in a little over an hour on Crowley Lake.

Let’s hear it for Maynard. As a practitioner of the science of fly fishing, he wasn’t in the same league with them, these guys said. Maynard’s a nice guy, but he really doesn’t know what he’s doing, these guys said. When he caught his first three-pound rainbow, one of these guys said to an observer: “Maynard’s new to this--a hacker, really. The other guys will start out-fishing him soon.”

Then Maynard caught his second three-pound rainbow. Then he caught a third.

So who are these guys?

Shouts of good-natured insults traveled across cold, flat waters. “Even the blind pig finds an occasional acorn!” said one companion.

But Doc Randol said it best. Everyone nearly fell through their inner tubes when he yelled: “Do you guys realize that if Maynard were to die right now, the undertaker would charge us an extra $100 to get that smile off his face?”

Clearly, these guys were having entirely too much fun. That’s how it’s been, since Labor Day Weekend, when the first extended fly-fishing season at Crowley Lake began. The season ends Oct. 31. It’s one of California’s best kept fishing secrets.

In fly fishing, you commonly hear this about the Yellowstone region: “The 10 best fly fishing waters in America are all within 100 miles of Yellowstone National Park.”

If that’s true, Crowley, the 5-by-8-mile L.A. Department of Water and Power Reservoir in the Eastern Sierra, at least rates an asterisk, fly fishermen are saying. Here’s what else some of them are saying:

--Department of Fish and Game biologist Darrell Wong, himself a fly fisherman: “We’re talking world-class fly fishing. I’m no expert, but I’m catching 18- and 19-inch brown trout with no trouble.”

--Dick Dahlgren, veteran Mammoth Lakes fly fisherman: “Crowley is a fantastic place to fly fish. To me, it’s like fishing for bonefish in Florida. Several times this season, when the wind was down, I’ve seen two- to three-pound rainbows in the shallows see my fly, from 10 feet away. They go for it, accelerating like crazy right into the fly, smashing into it like a freight train, just like a bonefish. A 3 1/2- to 4-pound rainbow, I can’t hold ‘em. They’ll bend the hook or throw it on the first run.”

--Dan Stockton, Merced Fly Fishing Club: “Our club fished in mid-September and caught and released 50 or 60 rainbows one weekend between 15 and 21 inches.”

--Jim Brock, owner of Brock’s Sporting Goods, Bishop--”I’m hearing some awfully tall tales--like guys getting busted off by trout they couldn’t even turn around, or taking off 30 yards of backing, then busting off.”

In the first month of their new season, Crowley fly fishermen have been few in number.

Dahlgren said: “So far, it’s like a well kept secret. Word just hasn’t gotten around yet. On the busiest weekend day, we haven’t seen more than 50 or so fly fishermen on the lake. And the only place we’ve really fished since the opener is the flats, the area near the mouth of the Upper Owens River. The fishing has been so good there, there’s not been much reason to explore other parts of the lake.”

Pat Hogan, a newcomer to the Crowley fly fishing set, was taking an unmerciful ribbing over Maynard’s success. Hogan, riding a tube only 100 feet from shore, was getting one strike after another on his olive matuka. Unfortunately, he’d missed on every one of them. He was something like 0 for 20. Morvay, fishing in the center of Crowley’s north arm, was 3 for 3.

“Hey, Hogan--if Maynard is a novice, what’s that make you?” someone yelled.

Some Crowley fly fishermen look like flippered frogmen, going to war. They wear high waders, almost wet suits, and crawl into a relatively new feature in fresh water fishing, the float tube. Float tubes, particularly at Crowley, are the biggest item to hit fly fishing since tapered tippets.

A float tube is a truck inner tube, inside a nylon sleeve with zippered pockets--much like a back pack--and a seat. A wader-clad fly fisherman also wears his swim fins. Believe it or not, there are now swim fins made exclusively for the float tube fishing market. They’re extra long and extra pliable, to enable fishermen to climb in and out of their tubes without falling down onto a muddy or rocky shoreline.

Fall fly fishing at Crowley isn’t new. The normal last-Saturday-in-April-to-July 31 trout fishing season is still in effect. However, Crowley fishermen have been able to continue fishing for Sacramento perch, introduced illegally into the lake in the 1960s, through the Labor Day weekend.

Dahlgren: “We’ve always had September to fly fish for trout. We simply released all we caught. But all of us knew October would be a super time to fish Crowley, because the bigger trout would be in the shallows, working their way to the mouth, to go upriver to spawn.

“Really, the fishing is just unbelievable. We’ve had guys here who’ve canceled their trips to Yellowstone to fish Crowley. We’re also starting to see fly fishermen here who normally only fish blue-ribbon streams such as the East Walker River and Hot Creek, guys who ordinarily wouldn’t be caught dead on Crowley.”

Crowley, on the last Saturday in April, looks like Game 1 of the World Series. Last April 27, 18,825 blood and guts types, armed with treble-hook lures, bait, sharpened knives, chain stringers and portable barbecues, showed up to embark upon the biggest slaughter of trout seen yet at Crowley. Biologists estimated about 70,000 trout were caught and killed on opening day, more than 100,000 for the weekend.

A growing number of fishermen, many of them fly fishermen, wonder how the Department of Fish and Game, a state agency, supposedly entrusted with protecting California wildlife, can condone such bloodbaths, let alone supervise it.

One of the major differences between fly fishermen and bait fishermen, aside from profound differences in tackle, is that most fly fishermen rarely kill trout. Many use barbless hooks and most release their fish, unharmed.

Dahlgren was a ringleader in the creation of Crowley’s new fishing season. He was also a ringleader in court efforts that have thus far prevented the Department of Water and Power from shutting off the water to Lower Rush Creek, a Mono Lake tributary.

“A bunch of us (members of the Mammoth Fly Rodders) were sitting around Filson’s Sporting Goods in Mammoth one day a year ago, griping about not being able to fly fish later into the fall. I called Phil Pister (DFG fisheries biologist) and asked him what would be involved in getting an extended fly fishing season. He told me to write a letter to the (Fish and Game) commission.

“Really, it just sailed through. We couldn’t believe it.”

The extended season doesn’t exclude non-fly fishers. Regulations call for a limit of two trout, 18 inches or longer. Only artificial lures or flies with single, barbless hooks may be used. Boats aren’t allowed after Aug. 1.

Recently, about 50 fishermen were working Crowley’s northernmost waters, near the Upper Owens’ mouth. It was fantasy weather--cold, but sunny and bright, with only a breath of wind. The reflection of the Eastern Sierra’s spectacular face was only a ripple away from a mirror image on the lake’s cold, flat waters. A fat, three-quarter moon hung from a blue sky above the Sierra’s jagged Minaret peaks.

There were perhaps 15 fly and spin fishermen riding float tubes on the water, the rest waded the shores in rubber waders, using fly and spin fishing gear. Some were using bubble-and-fly spinning rigs, a plastic bubble half-filled with water for casting weight, tied on about six to eight feet behind a fly. They might as well have been bird watchers. A variety of marine birds, gulls, avocets, blue herons, loons and white pelicans among them, were visiting Crowley, too.

Veteran Crowley fly fishermen also recommend binoculars as standard equipment, but they’re not for the birds.

“Whether you’re riding in a tube or walking the shore, you can scope the water, looking for signs of feeding trout,” Dave Moore of Northridge said.

The water level at Crowley is so low, it’s possible to drive from Alligator Point all the way to the Owens River mouth, about three miles, on the graveled, sandy shore. Numerous dirt roads leave the Benton Crossing road, on Crowley’s east side, and run through the sagelands to the lake.

Dahlgren was in the laborious process of squirming into his tight-fitting waders.

“This is the bad part of all this, getting into the waders, the fins and then climbing into the tubes,” he said. Dahlgren and a couple of his pals waddled to the waterline, where they encountered soft, black mud. Watching them enter the water . . . well, it was not a pretty sight.

Dahlgren pointed to piles of dead weeds, on the shore.

“Those weeds were giving us sensational fishing up until a week ago,” he said. “The Sacramento perch minnows were hanging tight in those weeds, for cover. So the trout were there, too. I saw big trout in feeding frenzies in those weeds that looked like something you’d see in the Sea of Cortez, not Crowley. We were getting big rainbows and browns to eight and nine pounds when those weeds were around. But the weeds always die off in late September or early October.

“What we’re trying to do now is find out where the perch minnows went. If we find them, we think we’ll find the trout, too. Right now, most of us are paddling out where we’re right over the old (Owens) river channel, where the spawners are moving toward the river.”

Pat Hogan, one of Dahlgren’s pals, prefers it weedless.

“I’ve fished every day for a week, and haven’t been skunked yet,” he said. “I’m not that great a caster, so I’d just as soon not have the weeds around.”

The best time on Crowley, most agree, is early morning.

Dahlgren said: “I catch twice to three times as many trout in the early morning as I do in late afternoon. Since the extended season began, I’d say a typical morning for me would be 6-for-10 (catches to hookups).”

The current favored pattern for the Mammoth Fly Rodders is the olive matuka, slightly weighted with lead wire on the shank. When submerged, the olive matuka is believed to resemble a perch minnow. Hornberg specials, black matukas and black-white marabous also are favorites.

Doc’s Twin Lakes special is a creation tied by Randol, veteran Eastern Sierra fly fisherman and a Mammoth Fly Rodders member.

A black woolly bear is a fly tied by a Bridgeport California Highway Patrol officer, Mike Kingston. It imitates a black caterpillar that hatches on the underside of leaves hanging over the East Walker River every summer and should be ineffective on Crowley, right? Richard Witthoft of Lakeside tried one at Crowley not long ago and nailed an 8-pound 12-ounce brown.

The favored tippet (leader) size is six-pound-test and rising.

Dahlgren: “I’m up to 10-pound. I started out using six-pound and couldn’t believe how these healthy rainbows were breaking me off. Fly fishermen use the word ‘presentation’ a lot. Presentation isn’t a factor here. You put the fly in the water, count to two, twitch it a time or two and . . . bam, it’ll feel like a locomotive.”

Crowley had an extended fly-fishing season in the mid-1960s, but it was dropped when game wardens complained of enforcement problems. Said DFG biologist Pister: “The wardens said then there were so few fly fishermen around, it wasn’t worth the wardens’ time to patrol it.

“There just wasn’t a big push for fly fishing then. In the mid-1960s, there weren’t 10% of the number of fly fishermen there are today.”

PAT LYNCH / Los Angeles Times

‘So far, it’s like a well kept secret. Word just hasn’t gotten around yet. On the busiest weekend day, we haven’t seen more than 50 or so fly fishermen on the lake. And the only place we’ve really fished since the opener is the flats, the area near the mouth of the Upper Owens River. The fishing has been so good there, there’s not been much reason to explore other parts of the lake.”

--Dick Dahlgren

FISHING TIPS

Binoculars are recommended for looking for signs of feeding trout.

Early morning is the best time on Crowley, with some catching twice to three times as many trout in the early morning as in late afternoon.

The current favored pattern is the olive matuka, slightly weighted with lead wire on the shank. Also being favored are Hornberg specials, black matukas and black-white marabous.

Favorite leader size is six-pound-test.

FISHING FACTS

Limit of two trout, 18 inches or longer.

Only artificial lures or flies with single, barbless hooks may be used.

Season ends Oct. 31.