Los Vaqueros Reservoir Fishing Report 8/10/11

General Conditions

Stripers continue to provide the main action at the reservoir. Water conditions for fishing are still good. The water temperature is between 70 and 72 degrees at the 5 foot depth. The water temperature around 40 feet is 68 degrees. Our hours are 6:00 am to 8:00 pm. Boats are due in by 6:30 pm. These will be our hours through August. Our water level is currently at 49%.

The entire shoreline remained open this past week and should remain open this coming week. The Rockwall parking lot and fishing beyond Oak Point is scheduled to be closed beginning August 15th. Please call for specific up to date information as the situation here can change day to day. Boat Rentals will continue open through September. The Marina building will be open through mid October.

Trout

Trout are receiving very light pressure as most anglers are going after striped bass. We only had a few reports of some trout being caught. Nightcrawlers are probably your best bet. Try fishing them on the edge of drop offs. Trout are found in surprisingly shallow water except on very hot days or during the middle of the day.

Largemouth Bass

There are not many anglers fishing for largemouth bass. The anglers that do target them have done well, mostly in Peninsula Cove and the back of Cowboy Cove. Senko’s are your best bet. Nightcrawlers are also a good choice. Try fishing any trees or structure you are able to locate. We did see some bass this week which were preparing to spawn and full of eggs. We appreciate you taking a picture of the bigger bass then releasing them to fight another day. The biggest largemouth of the week went 4.7lbs and was caught on a Senko.

Stripers

Fishing for stripers is best early or late in the day. We have checked in 50 fish over 8lbs in the last 6 days. We figure at least another 50 or 60 were caught and not reported. Anchovies continue to be your best choice for bait. Anglers fishing from shore are working a wide variety of shoreline and we are seeing fish being caught from the all open shoreline. Boaters anchoring off of points and casting into deeper water are also having good success on stripers. We had at least 3 or 4 boats catch limits every day last week. Stripers average 6 to 12lbs with fish up to 15lbs. There are still many shakers being caught, remember bass must be 18 inches to keep. Please release them quickly and carefully.  The largest striped bass reported this week was 14.87lbs caught is South Cove from the shore.

We have some pretty big stripers. Let’s see if any of you can find any bigger than the one Greg Myerson recently caught in Long Island Sound that weighed 81lbs. You have to check out the photos!

Salmon

We rarely see anglers targeting salmon this time of year. Trolling as deep as possible (30 to 60 feet) might be worth a try. There is no doubt the salmon are holding in the deeper/cooler water.

Catfish

Liver, anchovies and nightcrawlers will all take catfish. We appreciate catch and release of the catfish over 20lbs. Some of the 1 lb range catfish we planted two weeks ago continue to show up on anglers stringers. We will be putting another load of 500lbs in sometime in the next week or two. We had catfish checked at 13.6lbs. 18.3lbs and 24.6lbs over this week. We also had several large catfish reported from the shoreline but not checked in.