Got over to Yucaipa Regional Park at 8 this morning and went right to the middle lake. There was a nice school of little state fish in the spillway, but none wanted to hit. An older couple were tossing some heavy lures on them, which in turn was making them spook. Since I could be at the lakes all day I took a walk around the bottom, making casts here and there, but no fish. There was also 55 cormorants at the bottom lake as well.

I went back up to the middle and walked around the entire late. There was quite a few schools of state fish, but nothing of any size. At the docks, I counted 48 cormorants sunning themselves. That's a total of 103 cormorants for 2 lakes!!! Too bad Yucaipa doesn't do anything about them, all they do is stock fish to feed them.

By the time I made it back to the spillway, the other people were just leaving. I put out a pole with powerbait and tied on a 1/64th jig on my Phenix. I tossed the jig for a while, but with no takers. As I saw a few bigger fish around, I decided to tie on a 1/32 pearl jig, and this was the ticket. My bait pole never got bumped once.

By the time I left at 1, I had caught and released 18 small trout, with the biggest being 10 inches. I did lose one that would have gone around 2 pounds. One thing that struck me as odd, was that the bigger fish were keeping the little guys close to shore. Almost like they were corralling them. Anyone ever see this before? One of the bigger fish had a chunk out of his side, so maybe it was to protect them from cormorants? It was weird. Also the top lake was completely dead, with only 1 fish caught when I walked around.

Tight Lines,
Jason Huckeba

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http://www.SoCalFishing.net

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