The California Department of Fish and Game has posted the list of the fishing spots that they will be stocking this week for Region 5-South Coast Region. Remember to practice catch and release as much as possible, pick up trash when you see it, and respect this resource so that everyone can enjoy it!!!
Downey Wilderness Park Lake is one of those odd little places that really epitomize what SoCal urban Flyfishing is all about.
It is a pair of roughly dumbbell shaped, blue-tinted ponds that sit in the middle of a narrow stretch of park nestled between the 605 Freeway, the San Gabriel River and Florence Ave.
In fact the entrance to the park is the same road that dumps you onto the southbound 605 if you are not paying attention.
Despite its name, there ain’t no wilderness about it. It is about as “wild” as the Jungle Boat ride at Disneyland, unless your definition of wild includes overweight, thieving squirrels with cholesterol issues and geese with a distinct preference for churros over stale bread.
Even the portion of the San Gabriel River the runs next to it is nothing more than a giant culvert with a tiny trickle of water running down the middle of its concrete belly for most of the year. Our Kelvin fishing friend from Scotland would seriously hurt himself from laughing if he saw how we define urban river.
Yet, the park is a welcome spot of green in a great location for a quick opportunity to wet a line for a half an hour or so between appointments or on the way home from work. As a bonus, the high-powered aerators in the ponds create pleasant, albeit somewhat industrial looking, fountains of water which help to drown out noise and make talking somewhat difficult and pointless.
All in all, Downey Wilderness Park is one of those places to keep tucked away in the back of the mind when there is not enough time to go anywhere else but the need to cast a few flies is so overwhelming that you are bordering on homicidal. You might call it a “Mayday Lake” as in “Help. My head is going to pop off the end of my neck if I don’t do some fishing soon!”
Anyway, the time issue is what drove Sean and I there last Saturday. We only had about two hours to spare, including drive time, and Downey was the closest body of water to where we needed to be later in the morning.
We parked on the street and walked into the park to avoid the $2.00 parking fee. Now, you might think that we are unusually cheap — which we are, but we also have gotten the system down so that we use the walk time to get our rods assembled and rigged. By the time we walk up to the water’s edge, we’re ready to go. I prefer to think of it as skill building rather than penny-pinching.
Anyway, Sean has this sweet, little rig that he uses when we hit these pocket lakes. He ties on a stimulator with a small nymph trailing about eight inches behind it – a basic, textbook rig. No big deal, right? Well, it has proven deadly on numerous occasions and has become a go-to first strike set-up on these tiny pocket waters.
Within two casts we were pulling in small sunfish, mostly taken on the nymph. If you know anything about panfish, where there is one there are many. So we worked the school for quite a while. I could literally feel my shoulders relax and a smile come back to my face as we hauled in the little guys on almost every cast.
We followed the school around the edge of the pond for a while until the heat of the day drove them down into the deeper water. After that, things slowed down dramatically. We switched over to small Krystal buggers and though we had a couple of half-hearted hits, nothing much happened.
Still, the flyrod had worked its magic and the rest of the day seemed to go just a little bit better. Sometimes it’s not where you go, just that you went.
The Zonker is one of my favorite Mulit-Species all around Big Fish Flies. This is a lively imitation that can be almost any baitfish you want it to be (match the fly color to the Baitfish). I was talking to a guy that was fishing Red and Yellow Zonkers in a Park Lake once, and I asked him ‘What Are you Catching”. He replied to me “The big fish in this lake, these are my tick them off flies”. In short the Zonker is a great streamer for big fish on the bite, and works great both as an Imitator and an Attractor Pattern. Get great quality flies at an unbeatable price at “The Trout Spot”.
“The Trout Spot has been generous enough to give our readers a 10% discount on any purchases made on their site. Just reference the promotion code UFV at checkout”
This is a photo of a nice Bluegill that I pulled out of Big Bear Lake. I love fishing the coves up there from the Spring to the Fall. You never know what you are going to hook up on, and I have seen people catch many different species of fish out of this lake (I heard that Dan aka The Fishing Guru even caught a frisbe one time). So the next time your up in Big Bear wet a line, you never know what you might bring in!
The California Department of Fish and Game has posted the list of the fishing spots that they will be stocking this week for Region 5-South Coast Region. Remember to practice catch and release as much as possible, pick up trash when you see it, and respect this resource so that everyone can enjoy it!!!
I you haven’t already seen it. UrbanFlyyis an awsome Fishing Blog run by a couple of fellow Southern California Brownliners. They fish alot of the same waters that we do, and have some great info on catching Southern Cali Fish on the Fly. So check them out, and tell them UrbanFlyVenturessent you!!!
The Dog Days is a term that refers to the hottest days of the Summer months. The Romans believed that during the Dog Days men were more inclined to go insane, dogs were more likely to bite and wine was more likely to go sour, among other various and sundry unpleasantries. A more technical definition defines the Dogs Days as the period between early July and early September corresponding roughly to when Sirius, the Dog Star, rises just before or at the same time as sunrise.
However you look at it, the Dog Days have always been associated with heat, sweat, and insanity.
So, now that we have that little detail cleared up, you will understand what I’m talking about when I say that Sean and I got to experience our own little taste of the Dog Days this past weekend as we headed out to Cerritos Regional County Park for what we thought would be a couple of hours of Urban fly lining.
As it turned out, we picked one of the hottest days of the year, so far, to walk around a nearly shadeless lake while battling a stiff, hot, westerly breeze only to come up completely skunked…as in zip, zero, nada. If you don’t think that is enough to drive either of us to the point of insanity, you just haven’t been following this site long enough.
Anyway, It’s not as though the location was bad—especially compared to some of the places we usually fish. I never once felt the urge to check for my back up weapon. Cerritos Regional Park is a nice, tidy, well designed family park in the middle of a nice, tidy suburb just a few miles southeast of downtown L.A.. It has plenty of sturdy, clean picnic tables and open spaces where families can barbeque and kids can play pick up games of football and tag and the like while the grownups lounge on fold-up chairs under insta-shelter canopies. The grass is mostly green and well maintained and everything just… looks good…”All Ozzie and Harriet”, as we used to say in the ‘hood.
But as anyone who has fished for more than a week will attest, looks ain’t everything. Turns out we just could not catch a break.
We tried wooly buggers, nymphs, dry/nymph combos, poppers, mild profanity and outright bribery but nothing worked.
I once read somewhere that the Romans would sacrifice a small, brown dog at the start of the Dog Days in a futile attempt to ward of the maladies associated with the season. There was a middle-aged couple strolling the perimeter of the lake with a tan Chihuahua but they simply wouldn’t part with the little mutant.
We called it an early day and took our wives for pizza instead.
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