I fished the East Walker and Owens over the weekend, hoping to catch some of the big migrating browns. I should have checked the flows before making the long drive. The East Walker is in very bad shape with the water flow at 20 cfs (yeah, that bad). I normally fish it in the 100 - 200 cfs range. We fished for about an hour (well really just walking) and decided to leave. Most of the pools I would normally fish were only inches deep, with only a few very small holes a little over knee deep. On top of that there were dead or half dead crappie or "sacramento perch" all over the place. I saw a few browns at first light, but decided they are best left alone given the conditions.
As a plan B we headed down to the upper Owens because we heard the water was better down there. It was flowing around 150 cfs. There were a lot of browns in the system, with quite a few in 14 - 18 inch range. But they spooked pretty easy due to the low water and clear weather, so it wasn't easy catching fish.
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