My wife and I went to the Yacht Club/Community Center Thursday afternoon, 5/23. The center was open with restrooms, after school programs and Zumba Dancing lessons, and quite a few people. Tilapia fishing was wide open on a dense school of the critters by the rocks in front of the Yacht Club. We ended up catching 36 Tilapia in about 3 hours, but the fishing was even better than that because it took me about 1/2 hour to figure out where the fish were, and my wife waited for the temps to start cooling down before she started fishing around 7 p.m. After she started, I mostly watched and helped her. I counted 6 times I caught 2 fish at the same time on the pole with two salmon egg hooks. The fish averaged around 1/2 pound I would say, not big but not too small. I think my wife Eunice caught about 10 of them in the last hour of fishing. They bit on both nightcrawler pieces and redworms equally well. After a while, the fish seemed to gather nearby where we were, so we simply casted out about 10 feet and felt the ravenous bites of the Tilapia within seconds nearly every time.
We didn't think of taking photos until after Eunice had been fishing for awhile. I took 3 photos which just happened to record a fish biting and her catching it. I will attach them here.
I think the state of California could have a commercial Tilapia fishery at the Salton Sea and maybe pay off some of its debt as there are so many countless millions of the critters there, and the water is actually very free of pollution even if it is murky.