The Kern at Kernville is where Los Angeles goes for a trout river with some size to it, two and a half hours north in the southern Sierra. The town water and the canyon above it up to Johnsondale Bridge are stocked with rainbows and open all year, with wilder fish further upriver. It's a big, fast, granite snowmelt river: spring runoff makes it dangerous, and the Kern has a long record of drownings. Fish it in the cooler months and briefly on the tail of the runoff, and stay off it when it's high; by midsummer the town water runs too warm to hold trout comfortably.

• Granite