I’ll pretty much take a dark rainy day any time of year, and a stop at Diamond Valley Lake today seemed like a good bet. And because there was a lot of scouting going on for team tournaments this weekend, going with a purpose keeps your attention.
But as Gary Klein has offered more than once, “You want to establish or eliminate water.” Today, we mostly eliminated–from dam to dam.
Of course, that’s not entirely true. Some four-pound drop-shot fish were accounted for on at least one flooded hump, and the auxiliary dam cove gave up what appeared to be a good 6- to 7-pound fish tight to the bank on a reaction bait.
But mostly, my thumb got all day to heal up, as there were only a few bites in our boat. However, we did find enough shad to repopulate all of Southern California: it was packed so thick in the rock quarry cove, at times it fooled the sonar into believing it was 25 feet of water, instead of 62 in the back left corner.
That’s not to say, there wasn’t some bass action in parts of the lake that we didn’t sample, though other anglers were guarded in what they said. And the one thing everyone seemed to understand–the trophy is always real small for winning the pre-fish.