Cruised down to San Diego last week to fish a couple of the lakes down there...

Cuyamaca was the first lake fished with trout and steelhead fishing excellent (nightcrawlers and powerbait). Most people I spoke to limited out. Despite the good report for bass in the local paper (for the previous week) I would have to say that the bass fishing sucked. The water level there is really low right now and in fact a part of the lake is off limits due to the shallow waters. The weeds are as thick as clam chowder and the wind conditions just made the experience even worse! Best bet is the dam -- unfortunately you can only fish up to the buoy line. Cast as far as you can towards the dam. Shad are plentiful so bust out the small gold treble hooks to make bait -- if your into that kinda stuff...

Lake Murray (after hours).. Oh boy! Snuck into the beautiful lake late at night (after midnight) after fishing Cuyamaca. (Don't try this at home kids!) It was spooky especially with it being so quiet and our footsteps amplified clear across the lake. Police on bikes regularly patrol the area but with it being graduation night for all the high schoolers I'm guessing the cops were a little busy and had better things to do. We were still quite paranoid especially knowing the risk of sneaking into lakes after hours. (up to a $1200 fine plus all your gear confiscated -- ouch!) Anyways.. it was an awesome night.. as soon as we walked up to the lake you could hear boils everywhere.. huge boils. We hiked in about 30 minutes or so to get as far as we could away from the local residences. We fished the north side of the golf course arm (San Carlos Bay) where there is a ledge / weedline that follows the shoreline.. On about my tenth cast I hooked up... It was huge! Woooo! It was a beautiful female.. not very plump but very squared out in shape. Unfortunately I did not have a scale with me but it was in the double digits pretty easily. I got pictures of it so I will try to post them as soon as I figure out how.. It was caught on a Black w/ blue flake Senko. I was casting into the area where the ledge droped off -- into the weeds. The weeds at Lake Murray is perfect right now as it is not too thick and easily fished. I let the senko sink all the way to the bottom and slowly twitched it back in through the weeds. I want to thank my buddy Eric for helping me land the fish -- he literally walked into the water to lip the fish. We didn't want to push our luck -- especially with all the noise and the camera flashes -- so we called it a night and left just before 4 AM.

We fished poway the next day.. actually at night as it was open for night fishing. There were mostly bait soakers out that night -- most people were there for catfish with about 2 - 3 rods per fisherman on shore. It wasn't too much of a crowd however. We fished from shore and walked around the lake down to hidden bay. Water level was low and bass were sitting in deeper waters. No sign of bass (visually) boiling or swimming along the shoreline. We threw everything out there: plastics, cranks, topwater... but to no avail. We ran into a fishing buddy up there and he said he caught a couple three pounders off the point just outside of half moon bay (texas rigged worm). We fished for a couple hours and decided to head in. Poway is an awesome lake and I love fishing it! Even if the fishing is slow.

Well there you have it.. 3 lakes, 2 days, 1 Bass.. and a big koolaid smile on my face.. =)