I attended opening day at El Capitan Reservoir near San Diego today, bringing with me five crawdads from Sport Chalet to toss around.

    I parked on the dirt road past the launch ramp, hiked around two small inlet creeks and started casting the ’dads along the shoreline across from the facilities.  Even though the lake was fifty feet below high water, the impoundment had risen substantially enough so that there were many trees and other vegetation submerged to provide the resident Florida largemouth nesting cover for what was hoped would be an early spring spawn, thanks to all our warm sunshine lately.

    The lake opened at 05:00, I made my first attempts at 6.  With the monsoon rain we received this year and considering the surrounding mountains were smack dab in the fire zone of 2003, the water was predictably stained brown with about a two-foot visibility, a factor against a productive day.

    By 11:00 I had marched all the way out to the main point, casting there and all the other sub-points, trees and bushes I could find, running through all five baits in that time with no takers.

    What saved the day was the nature hike factor.  The hillsides were a stunning emerald green with lots of poppies and other assorted wildflowers starting their bloom, combined with cutesy butterflies fluttering about everywhere.

    I did witness some action, however, in the form of one boil in a cove real early in the morning, a four-pound bass being towed on a rope behind a boat and another dude netting a one-pounder from a different boat while the angler was using some sort of jig.

    As the feeder creeks are still running high and muddy, it’ll be a month or so before the water shapes up enough for the fish to be able to see your bait.  Until then, use a rattling stick bait.

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