Breakwall Angler Catch Report 2012

Each spring and summer I anticipate a good largemouth bass bite at local Southern California reservoirs during marine layer weather conditions that stretch across the Inland Empire all the way to Mt. San Jacinto. This week the stratus is so thick it never burned off in the afternoon. The only thing we have been missing is April heat. Normally we would have three weeks of 90-degree sunshine to warm up the water before the June gloom rolls in. Not this year. The lake temperature currently is a lower than normal 62 – 65 F.

I lined up at the gate an hour before the six o’clock opening, ending up third in the queue. After paying the $12 total access fee I was hiking by 6:07, then around Third Cove, making my first casts at the far point by 6:40. I started out with the standard six-inch black curly tail Power Worm rigged Texas style with a 1/16th ounce bullet weight. After forty minutes I detected something wrong, as I felt no takers. Quite possibly it was a combination of factors, such as a lowering barometer, cool water, 20-mph winds out of the south.

Or maybe my choice of lure color. Due to the stiff breeze, the 1/16th ounce sinker wasn’t allowing for much control over where the lure was cast and it wasn’t hitting bottom fast enough. At seven thirty, while switching over to a 1/8th ounce weight I pinned on a purple version of the above bait and the first cast into the small curve inside of the main point, where the Breakwall crew always catches something, I felt weight on the line that moved. I counted to five then set the hook on a fish that fought very well. The bass at this lake put up a tougher battle than what I’m used to in largemouth, so it was difficult to determine the size of the lunker until I lifted it out of the water and hung it on the scale. It felt like four pounds but weighed only 2-14, just two ounces shy of three pounds. Here’s a StickPic of my pretty face posing with it. Looks like I need to practice on the focus while holding the camera out there on the end of my trek pole, which I remembered to bring this time.

A few more casts here and there with the purple worm, it was another half-hour before I felt the next bite, which ended up to be your basic two pounder. By nine I felt two more takers that didn’t stick to the hook. I used the black worm early due to the dark sky conditions. The book says to use black for dark stained water and purple for clear, which is what Diamond Valley has. The book is right.

Now and then I would reel in a wad of algae, which was voiding out the use of a Texas- or Carolina -rigged worm. I replaced it with a drop-shot worm so that the weight goes through the algae but the bait swims above. This worked well, as I had two more bites for about five seconds each before they came off.

I spent three more hours walking and casting around the back of Third Cove to the next point but had no other hits.

The whole day I made many casts using the Huddleston trout on my 15-pound baitcaster outfit. Each time I reeled it in the nose was more beat up and white. I’ll have to touch it up with a magic marker. After one cast, when I reeled it in, I felt resistance so I set the hook but had nothing. When I brought it up I found the swimbait sliced in half the long way, as if it ran into some rogue fishing line out there. All the pieces were still attached and at $20 per lure, a little Crazy Glue will be used in its rehabilitation.

What we will need in the near future before I visit this lake again will be at least a week of hot weather in May, then a return of the marine layer over western Riverside County in June.

*****

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