BY MIKE STEVENS
CROWLEY LAKE – Last October, a gnarly winter-like storm slammed the brakes on my annual run to Crowley Lake. Boat rental refunded, lodging at McGee Creek Lodge canceled, and the trip was semi-salvaged when Taylor Miller and I decided to fish the Lower Owens River and crash in Lone Pine before making the run home the next day. Luckily, the fishing down there was outstanding, but it didn’t change the fact that we’d now gone two years in a row (the previous squashed by an out-of-state wedding we both attended), so this year’s was highly anticipated to say the least.
The game plan rolled over to this year: fish the Lower Owens on the way up before checking in at McGee Creek Lodge, Crowley on Day 2, freelance on Day 3 until it’s time to head home.
Quick-turnaround trout ninjitsu.
The Lower O fell short of expectations, but a few smaller largemouth bass at least got the bendo party started, even if we were on the hunt for smallies and brown trout.
Miller and I checked into McGee Creek Lodge (McgeeCreek.com), which is a spot I’ve wanted to crash in since Convict Lake Resort ownership bought the joint, completely revamped it and made it a top-notch spot, especially for Crowley anglers considering one can see the lake out of half of the lodge’s windows. For a couple low-maintenance dudes who only demand clean and comfy, it easily checked those boxes, and the newness of everything kicked it up a notch. That included – among other things – a heated floor in the bathroom and a towel warmer.
That’s right. A freaking towel warmer.
With temps in the 20s until at least 9:30 a.m., we opted to stay in MCL an extra hour rather than being first through the gate at Crowley when it opens at 7. By 8:30 we were in “our” Gregor rental boat from Crowley Lake Fish Camp and on our way to McGee Bay, the first of many zones on our hit list loaded with intel from Doug Rodricks of Sierra Drifters, Estevan McDonald of Golden State Custom Baits and our own playbook from five or so years of making this October run.
We spent about a half hour battling gusty winds in McGee before advancing the itinerary by heading up into the North Arm early in hopes of finding some shelter, which we found at some level.
Boiling the next 7-plus hours of fishing down into something that fits into this space would read something like: we employed our standard tactic of moving upwind of a target area and drifting through it, throwing heavy metal (Thomas Bouyants for the most part) until we got to deep and either did it again or moved on to do it somewhere else. “We” (Miller smoked me on this trip) seemed to get about one hookup per drift, give or take, and while we metered a lot more fish hanging in the top third of 20 to 24 feet of water, almost all the biters were caught in 9 to 11 feet. Most were rainbows including some quality “Crowley Chrome,” and Miller stuck a cutthroat about a half hour before the buzzer.
Drift zones included Leighton Springs to Alligator Point, Green Banks, North Landing Point, back to McGee Bay before finishing up in Big and Little Hilton Bay. It wasn’t our worst October Crowley Run overall (it was almost mine), but it certainly could have been better. More importantly, just getting to do it again re-lit the fire.
