Making another stop in my local area, today I enjoyed an excellent half a day of fishing at Lake Skinner, east of Temecula. And as it turned out, the lightly fished reservoir proved to be a real “Wynner” as in Rod Wynn, my host pro on the day.

I confess it’s been more than a decade since I launched here, but Rod’s “pre-practice” proved invaluable as he was able to pinpoint some areas of deeper reeds on the south side of the lake, around ramp #2, and some reefs in the cove between North and South bays. Not only were his areas ripe with fish, his choice of a watermelon colored Senko was dead on.

After watching him set the hook and battle half a dozen fish, I decided to switch things around and ended up with a 3/32nd-ounce wacky jig and 4.8-inch watermelon Flick-Shake on an 8-pound fluoro leader.

Although the wacky jig tended to fall “deeper” in the grassier areas, once the wind kicked up, it was much easier to control. Either way, there were plenty of bites and we had something on the order of 16 to 17 pounds for the five best.

Since there was a riffle on the surface early, it didn’t seem to matter much today, but Rod had suggested we use 5- or 6-pound fluoro leaders. The water was extremely clear toward the west end, but some portions of the bays were not so transparent and heavier line didn’t seem to matter.

As for retrieve methods, though, except for the hard bottom points, the best thing was to put little movement to the baits and the fish would pick up the baits and move off.

The water level was definitely up, perhaps a little more than a foot below the high water line, and launching was easy. And because the bite was so good, Rod stayed out while I beat it home to post this report.

And you know what? I’m ready to go back.

(BTW: Click on any photo for a better look).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 5th, 2010 at 5:31 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Lake Skinner a winner today…”