Irvine Lake 04/15/04

[PilotBryson]

Hit up Irvine Lake with Trout Guy (Nick), Jstcrzyengh (James), and myself on thursday. Headed straight to Sierra Cove and the bite can't be explained as anything but ON FIRE! Cast after cast yielded beautiful, full-finned 1.5 to 2.5 pounders, with plenty of 1 pounders in the mix. Once in a while we saw a few 3+ pounders brought in, which kept things interesting. We released 90% of our fish, and even bought 2nd limit passes so we could keep some for dinner. The fish were healthy, strong, and fought like crazy. Many went airborn like ocean-going stealhead 3 feet out of the water! Things got a little redundant after catching and releasing so many fish, so we decided to head to the west shore and go for some fish of size. After about 5 minutes I hooked up to a drag screamin' 4.5 pounder that had beautiful colors. Made some casts and troll with a kastmaster and thomas boyant which yielded many 2-3 pounders, which were so finicky that they shook the hook many times and got away. After a while, we headed back to Sierra Cove and fished from shore for a while, which was not productive. As soon as we got back in the boat and went offshore 50 feet, the bite was again WIDE OPEN. This time the fish were going crazy for inflated nightcrawlers on 2 foot leaders. The size of the fish were still mostly 2 pounders. We finally left at 1545 because I had to be home to work at 1730. The bite was WIDE for us in Sierra Cove, and everyone was catching fish. Can't wait to go back and go for that 10+ pounder! We released 90% of our fish because we used circle hooks that lip hooked the fish everytime. We didn't even need to touch the fish, just pull the hook out of their mouth. If you go, I totally recommend using circle hooks so you can release a lot of fish, otherwise you will be leaving after 5 minutes with your limit. See ya!


Nice 2 pounders, which we caught all day long.













James hooks up to a nice 1.5 pound bass.


A 4.5 pounder I caught on a white Lip RipperZ.








James' 4.5 pounder caught on a nightcrawler.



My two biggest of the day, 4.5 pounds each.


A few of our trout.

[Sloper]

Nice pics....Looks like you guys tore it up and had a great time!!!! What kind of set-up were you using on the Lip RipperZ?

[PilotBryson]

I used the 1/64 oz. jighead on 2lb test, James and Nick split shot the Lip RipperZ. I think they worked equally as well.

[Wahoo!]

Awesome report guys! I'm definitely heading out to Irvine this weekend. I might even hit it up tomorrow morning. Thanks for the report.

Were you just using the circle hook for the inflated crawlers? What size circle hooks?

[PilotBryson]

Yes, circle hooks just for the crawlers. I think they are size 6.

[DementedFish]

Thanks for the report! How were u fishing ur lip ripperz? Were u letting em sink and jigging them? what did you do?

[PilotBryson]

Yeah, letting them sink and jigging them..