Diamond Valley Lake 4/20
Monday the marine layer rolled in, Tuesday it was so thick the skies remained gray all day. I finished all my chores and loaded my bass gear into the truck. This morning at four I peeked out the back door and saw we again had overcast, off to Diamond Valley Lake I went. With the recent Newport Road alignment it now takes me only thirty minutes to get there.
The big deal with the stratus is something The Breakwall Crew discovered many years ago while fishing Lake Casitas. When we have overcast in the spring, the bass stay shallow longer and you catch more. When I go to DVL while it’s cloudy I catch many bass. If it is sunny outside, I catch nothing. I don’t even bother going unless the marine layer extends all the way to Hemet and the more drizzly the better. This trick doesn’t work with storm clouds. When a storm blows through the barometer lowers, shutting down the bite.
I pulled up to the gate an hour and five minutes before the 6:15 lake opening and I was already in twelfth place. At opening, the line of cars was a half mile long. I paid the entrance fee ($7 parking, $3 fishing permit, $2 trail access) and was hiking briskly to the hot spot.
First thing noticed was after being down about a hundred feet last year, the lake is now ten feet from full and the shore is lined with submerged mule fat. This is fantastic!!! You always want to have some bushes in the water in the spring, where the bass will build their nests.
My hot spot is the point past Third Cove. You walk the lake loop road to where you see an old road that is now overgrown and take that to the shore. I could tell by the lack of trail or trampled grass that nobody has been to this area in quite a while. In fact, nobody even made it to the popular side of Third Cove for two hours. I had the whole place to myself.
I made my first cast with the four-inch purple curly tail Power Worm at 6:45. I had it rigged Carolina style but with all the submerged flora, I switched to Texas style using a 1/8 ounce bullet weight, which crawls over branches more easily. After a few casts I dropped the weight down to 1/16. Now the worm was crawling through all obstacles with no resistance.
It wasn’t until 7:30 before I finally landed a bass of one pound. As I worked my way back into the cove I caught more and more but out of the eight I pulled out, five were under a pound and none approached two.
Also I used a Storm WildEye sunfish with my other rod but never had a hit.
The water was clear but the dark sky made it impossible to sight fish. I cast out as far as I could but I noticed all the hits with the worm were happening when the lure was ten or fifteen feet out. All I had to do was flip it out to any of the stickups and they would hit it. I caught another three this way.
A couple dudes in a bass boat trolled by, I was thinking how cool it would be to show them up by nailing one right now. On queue I hooked up, the fish felt big as it ripped line off the spool. The bass broke the surface with its mouth, gave it the usual vibrating shake and spit the hook. Dam, it looked way over three pounds.
One of the tricks around here is to stop the fish from jumping once you set the hook. Every one I have ever caught here jumps, and when so, spits out the hook. What you do when you see the fish coming up to the surface is back off a little and stick the rod tip in the water. If you reel them in fast, the higher they leap out of the water.
Once I returned to the overgrown road I made a long cast so that the worm would slowly crawl in the middle of the road where it enters the lake. As soon as it was up to about seven feet deep I caught the biggest bass of the day, which was right around two pounds.
I cast to some likely spots at the back of the cove but didn’t garner any hits. I covered two points on the way back to the parking lot but by that time it was noon and sunny.
*****
Spring wildflowers across the freeway from me at Estelle Mountain were rather lackluster this year. Gallery
Took the 400 to Blair Valley in Anza Borrego State Park. Gallery
Took the 400 to Carrizo Plain National Monument. The bloom was legendary. Gallery
*****
Fish News:
Domoic acid affecting local sea mammals... again.
Sand bass and barracuda make local don't eat list
Big Bear Lake so full trout are spawning in the road
L.A. Times Big Bear Lake story
Feds being sued over Santa Ana sucker
Limited access to South Lake starting 4/15
World record white seabass caught off Laguna Beach
Guesstimated 2.5 million sardines died in King Harbor
Mammoth snowpack near all-time record
1-ton sunfish seen off Dana Point