Not sure why families would show up for trout season, they are not going to stock the lake.
Is trout island the hill of the point? Most of that bay from the parking out that way is mostly dry mud flat.
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Not sure why families would show up for trout season, they are not going to stock the lake.
Is trout island the hill of the point? Most of that bay from the parking out that way is mostly dry mud flat.
Trout Island is indeed the point on the right as you see it from the parking lot. As for stocking trout, I heard the ZZ top dude talking on the phone (he was that close in the boat, as he was scaring all the fish away) they have a hypothetical stocking budget of $250,000, if they grossed a million dollars in revenue. (that's all hearsay, so don't take that to the bank!) But keep this in mind, the old group stocked what? 4-5,000 pounds of trout a week. So that's up to 20,000 pounds a month on the high end. By doing that, they had good trout fishing on the bank. If they only stock say 2- 3,000 pounds a month. It will only be good for several days where they stocked it and after that, it just swims away! If you don't believe that, have you been to LNL lately? That is exactly what happens and it's tiny in comparison! I do think they will stock trout, but it's not going to be like the old day's would be my guess!
I hope they do stock, but having 'fished' LNL I don't have high hopes. Sadly most of SoCal seems to degenerate into pay to fish like SARL or chase the el cheapo stocking rate and pay the public park fees to put a line in the water.
Most of what I've read regarding getting it reopened doesn't paint a rosy picture.
Feels like I should give out some positive notes here.
The parking situation is well organized. They will let people in around 6am and let you park inside so there's no need to wait on the road. At 7am, then they will open the gate of the foot path for people to start fishing. Was told this will be the normal operation and not just reopening day thing.
It is a bit of a walk between the parking lot and the water, especially in the hot sun. But we did saw a worker got their vehicle stuck in the sand and had to call for another vehicle to help. So in a way, there is good reason for not allowing cars park right up to the shore. One can argue that they can setup a designated parking area closer to the water, but it's still dirt road so it is possible they simply choose not to deal with the road trouble/maintenance . They do have some sort of a golf cart running around transporting people. I'm not sure how that is arranged. For the elderly or those that have trouble walking, they'll likely to provide the transport service.
There were a lot of workers there. Pretty sure the extra men power are there to make sure the reopening day runs smoothly. The workers/rangers do come around and inform people of the rules. I saw no citation or ticket given. For those with more than 1 pole in the water were simply told to put the extra one away.
1 pole only does suck. But for the price of no license and zero fishing fee, it's hard to complain. No fee which also means there's no revenue to restock fish, so they needed the catch and release rule.
People might get a laugh out of this! Egster is my fishing partner, we fished Irvine lake together this past weekend. So if I came off a little harsh about the place (it's just an opinion) the guy who sat next to me in the car ride over there, could see things a little differently then me! Lol
I was there on opening day on the east shore. I believe you can see the fence line in this pic Attachment 52197
My only catch from opening day...caught it around 10:30 am using cut mackerel bought from the lake's tackle shop. Casted as far away from shore as I could to get away from all the people fishing on top of me. Fishing was good until about noon when it got quiet. It was definitely great to be back at Irvine Lake even with all the changes and restrictions
Attachment 52204 Attachment 52205 Attachment 52206