Irvine Lake closed on Thanksgiving Day, additional trophy trout stocking due.

The excellent trout bite continued at Irvine Lake, and some of the trophy-class fish stocked last week started to hit the scales, reported Jimmy Getty at the Pro Shop.

"The overall trout action is very good", said Getty. "There are lot of the nicer-size fish in the 3 and 4-pound class, and we saw some of the big 8 and 10 pounders this week. A lot of beautiful brook trout from 2 to 4 pounds are also on the stringer."

Getty added, "We will be closed on Thanksgiving Day so that our staff can spend the holiday with their families. We will be putting in a bonus planting of trophy rainbows to over 15 pounds early this week, so fishing on the day after Thanksgiving should be pretty exciting!"

Best bait was a Power Mouse in the "dirty rat" color, constructed with a white Gulp Salmon Egg as the head, and a 2-inch piece of natural-color Power Trout Worm or Gulp Floating trout worm as the trailer. Plenty of fish were also caught on traditional Power Bait, Gulp Trout Dough and nigthcrawlers spritzed heavily with Gulp Alive garlic spray.

Trolling is starting to pick up, with brighter colors producing best Top choices forb trollers are Rapala Countdown CD03 and CD05's in firetiger, hot mustard, fire minnow or hot olive colors, along with Rapala Jointed J05's fluorescent orange or fluorescent chartreuse.

Good catches for both bait dunkers and trollers were reported from Trout Island, Santiago Flats, the west shoreline, Sierra Cove, Rocky Point and near the dam. Most fish on the stringers were in the 1 to 5-pound range, with a mixture of larger fish and exotics spicing things up.

Bass anglers are seeing some lunker-class fish blow up on large swimbaits and wakebaits, but few largemouth were landed during week. The incidental catch of catfish has dropped off, but the trout bite has been so good that a few good-size rainbows were actually caught by catfish chasers offering cut mackerel.

Families with children age 12 and under are finding very good fishing on stocker-size trout, using the usual assortment of Power Bait, jigs or worms.

The lake level continues to rise as much as one foot per day. The west shore road is under water, with access possible only as far as Woody's Cove. A buoy line is up at the inlet pipe in Sierra Cove, with access restricted to no closer than 50 feet.

Outstanding catches of the week at Irvine Lake included:
Mike Traut of Costa Mesa, 10-6 Rainbow Trout on Nightcrawlers at the flats.
Rick Orantes of Riverdale, 10-3 Rainbow Trout on a Rapala at the west shore.
Arn Johnson of Lakewood, 10-2 Rainbow Trout on a Power Nymph at the west shore.
Adrian Pintor of North Hollywood, 4-0 Brook Trout on a Mini Jig near the docks.
Dusty Faiello of Long Beach, 3-12 Brook Trout on a Power Mouse at the west shore.
Peter Cho of Arcadia, 3-2 Brook Trout on Power Bait at Trout Island.

Media contacts:
Daniela Gavaldon or Jimmy Getty at the Pro Shop [714-649-9111]
Steve Carson at scarson@sunset.net