Real Trout Fishing Will Begin Early : Eastern Sierra: The die-hards will be out on Crowley Lake well before sunrise for Saturday’s opening day.

You may fish for trout year-round throughout most of Southern California--even in parts of the Eastern Sierra--but to thousands of anglers that doesn’t count.

For them, trout season opens only after a drive of five to eight hours up U.S. 395, a predawn wake-up call and a flare illuminating the promise of lunkers in Crowley Lake.

Then trout season is open.

The annual pilgrimage is a rite of spring in the Eastern Sierra--actually, a reason to clean out the old tackle box and a promotional opportunity for the region, which is a bountiful and diverse anglers’ playground supported in no small part by the fish factories operated by the California Department of Fish and Game.

Anglers at Crowley will sit shivering in hundreds of boats awaiting the rocket’s white glare at 5:20 a.m. this Saturday about an hour before sunrise, the legal fishing time.

But others will scatter to smaller lakes and clear streams from Lone Pine to Bridgeport, and some will seek out solitude and the native, or “wild,” trout found in the vast backcountry, by foot or pack horse. Six months later, on Oct. 31, after a million fish have been photographed and fried, there will be no flare, but the first fall storms will tell anglers the season is closed.

Opening-day interest will be focused not only on where the fish are biting but where the biggest single fish is caught. At one time, Crowley could be counted on to produce the trophy catch, but it slipped into a decline that remains unexplained.

Now the prize can come from anywhere, such as Rush Creek and the Twin Lakes at Bridgeport--as in the last three years--and probably weigh more than 10 pounds, perhaps close to 20.

This could be the year for Crowley to reclaim the honor. The water level is seven feet higher than it was for last year’s opening, partly because of the March rain and partly because of the break in the L.A. City Department of Water and Power’s pipeline that reduced releases from Long Valley Dam.

The best weather forecast is to be ready for anything. It was cloudy and windy this week, and Crowley hasn’t enjoyed a complete weekend of good weather for any recent opening weekends.

But fishing at the lake in 1990 was the best it has been in years, and the DFG has been working with hundreds of volunteers to find out what has been going on and what they can do to fix it.

The 408,255 trout planted since last summer were larger than usual--all keeper size--and 250,000 of them had their adipose and right ventral fins clipped so DFG fisheries biologists could chart their return. Also, a fish-diverting weir was installed at the lake’s north end to monitor migrations.

DFG sampling this week showed fish averaging more than a pound, but the best news for the future may be the stocking of 15,480 half-pound German browns last August. Browns, traditionally the trophy fish, hadn’t been planted in Crowley since the whirling disease epidemic shut down the Mt. Whitney Hatchery in the mid-1980s.

Mono County also plans to continue to plant rainbows from a private hatchery weighing three to seven pounds as part of its “Trophy Trout Program” to bring Crowley back to its former status.

Then Crowley may once again be the place to be on any day, not just on opening day.