My roommate and I charged out to Irvine Lake last Sat. To give you some background, my roommate works for Triangle Rock (the quarry plant that is mining the lake for aggregate materials). So we took the back door entrance, and loaded up the T Rock Toy...a 14' aluminum with a great Mariner kicker.

We fished the shallow and recently flooded flats around all the flooded trees and bushes. Nothing going. I couldn't believe how thoroughly we were fishing without a bite! We made a few passes with spinnerbaits, blanketing the areas, and still no bites.

It wasn't until we moved to a steep rocky shoreline with flooded brush that we got into 'em. I flipped a decent 2lber on a Strike King Pro Model, and 20lb P-line...yeah boy, I love yanking them out! Then we proceeded to miss a few strikes. Jeff, my roommate, missed one on the Ika, he had it hooked briefly. I switched him to a jig and flippin rod too, because it was obvious we were in the right area. We ended up catching 12 nice jig fish in a 100 yard stretch. The best fish was about 3 1/4 lbs. There was a sink hole in the mouth of a channel, and the fish were stacked. We got into 'em good there! There was bait moving around too.

That was the only area we could find fish though. The rest of the lake was void of fish for us. However, at Irvine lake, you can always get a kick out of the trout guys. Eavesdropping on intense conversations about, "sherbert Powerbait and long leaders!" or the advantages of flourocarbon leaders to getting the Powerbait down to the fish! I get a kick out of that stuff. At least they're into fishing, not shooting their classmates!

The water at Irvine in super algae green, with almost zero visibility. Sight fishing was out, but I'm confident those fish were on beds. We missed a lot of short biters I think were bed fish. My roommate is going to be a shreader fisherman, because he gets to hit up Irvine lake everyday after work! Talk about local knowledge.

matt