The Lower Owens below Pleasant Valley is the Bishop area's winter and shoulder-season workhorse — a tule-lined desert tailwater that holds a lot of wild browns and rainbows and fishes when the high country is locked in snow. It's a flow-and-wading river: at fishable levels it's a pleasant wade among the reeds with midges and blue-wings in the cold months and caddis as it warms; pushed up by aqueduct operations it gets harder and, high enough, unsafe to wade. The Wild Trout section below Pleasant Valley Campground down toward Five Bridges Road is the quality reach. In summer it warms and the trout pay for it, so it's a cool-season river first. Check the flow before you commit, because it answers to LADWP, not the sky.

• Mixed

• Aquatic life: Not assessed